anchor: this is al jazeera and these are the top stories. results prosecutor general has filed the first charges against 39 people accused of storming governor -- government buildings on january 8. more than a thousand were arrested. supporters of the former president wanted to overturn the result of october's election. reporter: the majority of the people who have been charged, 22 of them are men, 17 are women. we know they are from the states of sao paulo, which is the

richest state in brazil and they are also from the capital, brasilia. are we expecting more? yes. they are investigating who finance this operation because it wasn't something people just came out of nowhere. brasilia is in the middle of brazil, so there were people who paid for buses for these people to arrive from different parts of the country. anchor: the u.n. has sent its top ranked woman as part of its highest level to the afghanistan region since the taliban seized power. russia is intensifying attacks on a ukrainian city -- it forces trying to secure a rare military victory after months of fighting. ukrainian president says there is no place that is not covered with blood around the city. baylor's has put their exiled opposition leader on trial in

absentia for treason along with four of her allies. the outspoken critic of their leader says the trial would be a farce. funerals have been held for some of the victims of sunday's plane crash in nepal. the flight was approaching the tourist town when it went down. 72 people were on board. those are the headlines. the news continues after insight story. thanks for watching. ♪ >> is the world's most populous country heading for a demographic crisis? china's population is strong for the first time in 60 years. what would it take to reverse the trend?

this is inside story. welcome to the program. this is inside story. china's population has shrunk for the first time in 60 years full supper official data shows the birth rate slowed to six point 77 babies per 1000 people in 2022. compounding the issue is deaths outnumbered births last year. economists warned the low birthrate and rapidly aging population will have far-reaching effects and not just locally but on the global economy. katrina you begins our coverage in northern china. reporter: he's lived in this villages whole life in the

streets are quieter than they used to be. most young people have moved to beijing, 65 kilometers away. >> there are more and more old people now. too many old people in the link. five passed away recently due to covid. they were over 80 years old. reporter: the situation is similar and may parts of china where increasingly deaths are outstripping births. the population shrunk by 850 thousand people in 2022. it is the first decline since 1961, a year of great famine in china. economists say strict coronavirus measures enforced until late lyse -- late last year accelerated a looming demographic >> >> crisis. the pandemic has been the biggest constraint for people's family planning. a lot of chinese people believe the vaccination would be bad for fertility, so many families have been postponing.

when it comes to economic pressure, it was an even bigger problem for urban residents. reporter: the government abandoned its one child policy in 2016 and allows families to have up to three children now, but many are unwilling, citing soaring housing prices and education fees. meanwhile, china's workforce, a key driver of economic growth is rapidly aging. analysts predict the elderly will make up a third of the population by 2050. most of the residents here are retired. the cost of living in villages like this is far less than the bigger cities. locals tell us the problem is being able to find a stable income. many of the young people born here have been forced to leave to secure a job. this man and his wife have no children but still struggle to make ends meet. for many here living day to day, having to support large family

has little appeal. sohail: for years, china's population has been shaped by birth control regulations. in 1979 in an effort to slow population growth, beijing implemented a one child policy that was strictly enforced with fines and punishment like loss of employment and forced abortion. the -- traditionally male children are preferred to carry on the family name. baby girls were dumped, placed in orphanages or even killed at birth. the policy was revised but couple hesitated citing high cost of property and education. the 2000 20 census highlighted a looming demographic crisis and prompted another revision, this time up to three children. let's bring on our guests for this edition of inside story. the senior fellow at the tyee

institute. in bristol, a senior lecturer in china economy at bristol university. in switzerland, a professor of macro economics. can i come to you in beijing first? this is a story that seems to resonate with a lot of countries at the moment globally. this sort of demographic change has become a topic of conversation. why should the authorities or public in china be worried about the shrinking population when there are over a billion in terms of the population clamoring for the same resources from the government? >> it has a lot to do with workers and smoothing out the line. if you look at china's population over the last 70 or 80 years, you will see there were times when there were a lot of births and then times when there were very few, especially

during the one child. that was a deliberate policy to bring down the population, but now, they have put it into reverse and want to be sure not that they have lots and lots more people but they have the number of people they need in order to run their economy. they are very much concentrated on this idea of expenditure driven and things like that but it also has to do with infrastructure. imagine trying to build cities and thinking to yourself, if we have less people in the future, but people have needs now. it's all about putting the pieces together. sohail: an expert in the chinese economy -- would you agree with what was just said because it is a conversation happening globally in different countries and through different cultures as well. guest: that is for sure, not just with regards to developed worlds but within the developing

world, picking up on his point about infrastructure, a key point is due to the fact that because china has traditionally relied upon its population and family and community networks with regard to support with childcare and health care care for pensioners and elderly, there is a significant infrastructure deficit in china itself the government is trying to build up in order to help take care of an aging economy. if you are going to have a population you are trying to encourage have children after decades of a shift in policy, you need to make up for a deficit in that area because you don't have the kind of childcare provisions that are necessary. in terms of legitimacy, this is a key thing not just in regards to ensuring the economic engine continues, but with regards to making sure the population itself is supported. sohail: let's go to switzerland -- how concerned will the

government be at these statistics in beijing because they have made the statistics public and analysts like yourself and others globally with a range of social and economic experience will look out what reforms the chinese communist party has to make because it has to make serious decisions in the next few years. guest: yes and what is difficult is to change a plan that is predetermined from the past. even with increased childcare and food increased, any policy possible to stimulate birthrates still it will take some time. 20 years until these people can work. meanwhile, if you look at the chinese population, the most hefty group is the group in their 50's. from 50 to 59, who were born just before 1980 and the single

child policy. in 20 years time or even less, these people will be unable to work and they will bear on the pensions. so the young will have to support them and this is going to be a daunting task. sohail: if i could come back to you in beijing, we are focusing on young people -- one has to look back at history and one of the big issues in the 60's was this one child policy. it was a policy conducted and executed at a time in history the chinese communist party thought was the right decision. in retrospect, was it? guest: absolutely. you can't imagine child with a burgeoning population with every family having six or eight kids as was traditional. obviously infant mortality was

an issue back then but with modern medicine, imagine. you would be blowing past 2 billion people. while this is the finale about how china is reacting to it, let's look at this in a modern context. the fact is, in the u.s., agriculture produces more food than u.s. citizens can actually consume with less than 2% of the population. china has 32% of its people in the rural areas. automation is changing the way factories work. there are less and less line workers and more a more people repairing the machines actually doing it. i don't necessarily know there is a correlation between its classical economic model that you need more people in order to grow. as we enter a tertiary economy, it's about having disposable

income and that means a greater and larger middle-class, not necessarily just more people. look at india, look at africa. they have plenty of young people but lengthy of problems that they don't have jobs. sohail: 2016 saw the policy scrapped up to allow two children and last may, the policy was revised to three children. you can't demand or expect people to produce children on the get go, can you? it's a very difficult scenario to be and if you are in a society where you are not allowed to have more than one child for a long time and then all the sudden, you can have a few more. guest: that is very true. you're talking about a mindset you are changing of a policy in place for well over three or four decades. the thing we really need to take into account is there is a different kind of context the chinese population is facing. if you look from the 1980's

until 2020, the population grew from 660 million to 1.4 billion. the previous speaker is correct. it takes time but there are other policy initiatives the government can take into account if we are talking about trying to bolster the economy. china's foreign population in terms of foreign residents is very small compared to the native population itself. if we are talking about scope for feeding into the young workforce and there's definitely a means to do that. with regards to innovation, it is about how you use the resources you have more efficiently. innovation, focusing on health care, focusing on technology, the internet of things are all strategies the chinese government has tried to adopt as a means to diversify its economy

away from the traditional made in china, export-oriented economy we are used to. there is potentially more breathing space for china's growing middle class or its use to choose what kind of job or career they want to have, that is far more innovative, higher paid and therefore provides for a larger and better tax base. sohail: obviously you have the urban mindset and the rural mindset. very different mindsets culturally as well and if you say you can have more than one child, the urban mindset is to have more children to look after the farm or the community. it might not necessarily get the education level of education to actually help the chinese economy in the future when it comes to technology or development. how do you regard this rather interesting equation at the

moment the chinese communist party will have to think about? guest: absolutely. as the country grows, and the transition inevitably takes place, this happens everywhere. of course it happened before in europe but then, it's happening in the rest of the world. there is a transition. do you want to have many unskilled, uneducated children or a few or even one or two well-educated children? of course families decide for this as the country grows and education compensates for quantity because it allows innovation. it was mentioned also, artificial intelligence -- these are aspect in which china is already a champion and it has to invest a lot. having a more mature population

compared to india, if we compare the two, 50% of the population in india is below the age of 29. 39 would be the number for china. having more mature people means having more educated people. if india managed to well-educated's population, they may reach china and their knowledge would be less obsolete. there are opportunities but innovation would be the major challenge and it has to be at the center. it has to be indigenous innovation, not just importing knowledge from the rest of the world. for example, intellectual property rights. sohail: you were nodding in agreement? guest: yes.

first off, let's not take this too far out of context. we are coming out the next ordinary time with covid. during that, there were a lot of changes, a lot fewer marriages, a lot fewer children being born, a lot more uncertainty. people or isolating physically, so the ability to find a mate and have children or the time to have a children were potentially dangerous. people did hold back and also, there are certain things culturally in china. they like the year of the tiger and things like that. that it and make as big a difference as we thought. in any event, put it into context. it is a quality versus quantity issue and it has to do with the ability of these young people to earn money so they can in fact support not only their elders but pay taxes, support the

entire social service system. i agree with my colleagues that this is not something -- 8 billion people are putting a lot of pressure on the world's resources, adding more to it irresponsibly would not help. sohail: you talked about how the state is saying what it wants to do and yet, society has changed and so has technology over the past 20 years. we are living in a time of social media, the internet, seeing and experiencing the world where previous generations lived in an isolated, closed society china could be described as. does the state's requirement for manpower resonate with the younger generation who aspire to want the things other young people around the world want? they want to travel, they want to see the world, they want to

buy a house. where if there were more children in the family, they may not get those opportunities. guest: chinese people are like any other people. it's human nature to want to be curious and move up the social ladder or experience things others experience. that's without a doubt. one way that is problematic of looking at it is we see the chinese youth or young labor force as in a bubble, that they are located in china and that's where they will stay. in actual fact, they are very mobile. they're are very well educated and very ambitious the very fact the chinese economy is no longer restricted to its domestic borders but through its belt and wrote initiative, the strategy to promote and invest and collaborate with other economies internationally, not just developing economies but western economies and developed economies, there is scope for

these graduates and the chinese labor force to expand, not just expand their footprint internationally but to bring that back to china domestically to try to promote the mastic development in tandem to find a balanced way. there is a way to contribute to the dumbest economy as they try to go abroad and experience the experiences any young person would want to experience. sohail: looking at social media coming out of china about debates over having the child policy, whether it is 1, 2, or three, comments like things like i don't want kids, have a problem my -- in my own workplace. some women talking about no children until they have had higher education opportunities and career regression. others talking about longer working hours and do you want to

be in that scenario? genuine concerns and worries about the work lace and bringing young people into a world revolving around manufacturer or industry. guest: there is definitely a lot higher expectations. but when i first came to china, i met a man by the side of the road whose house was about three feet from the road and he was beaming and told me he was happy the road with their because he could get his produced market. he had chicken once a week instead of once a year. china has come a long way but the middle class has come very quickly and as a result, there is a different sense of these things. i talked to people all the time. i have younger children in the 20 or 30 year age and they say how many children do you actually want?

they are concerned about the environment and the impact people have. and we are not talking just about china, this phenomenon goes across the western world. sohail: i quickly want to bring another angle to this because china talks about wanting to be captain on the water, it wants to explore space. not everyone produced in china will have that brainpower to be part of that scientific or military group. you touched on it a moment ago about whether china may have to look beyond its border to bring the talent in. would it look to foreign workers to bring advancement to the country? is that something has to consider? guest: it has already begun doing that. with regards to its technologically-based strategies, it adopted specific policies to allow for easier visa pathways for residency

requirements, to encourage foreign workers of specific industries, high skilled, highly educated, highly experienced to come to china to feed into the industries the chinese government and communist party are interested in developing in china. it is not a new thing and at present, i think it's relatively untapped because it's not just about raining people into china, it's about its own citizens going abroad and returning to influence their own development, which is something that has happened in the past. sohail: china isn't the only country in the region thinking the same way. you have india which you touched upon which has a lot of young graduates go abroad and come back to help with the dumbest economy. china is looking over its shoulder and becoming stronger neighbors. guest: clearly, india is more

integrated than the western world and china a little less. geopolitics matters, so we hope in the economy that was mention, social media, digitization and this is super important for innovation, ideas can be shared better. respecting the awards for innovation, certainly. i was surprised in this vaccination race to see china failing to import modern technology and they relied on vaccinations that are more dangerous and less effective than rna or the techniques used.

there's a lot more knowledge sharing to be accomplished to overcome the challenges of population aging not just in china, also in the western world because ideas can be infinitely replicated in production, so it's important to find the right way to share them. sohail: and there we have to leave it because the debate about covid in china is a different story for a very different day. for now, we have come to the end of this edition of inside sorry. thank you very much. and thank you for watching as well. you can see the program again by visiting our website and for further discussion, go to our facebook page. you can join the conversation on twitter. from all of the insights rate team here, thanks for your time

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- hey i'm valerie ne. coming up on reel south . - [valerie] in the wake of the vietnam war, vinamese rugees wereelocatedo the texagulf coast. nguage a cultura barriers kt them apart om their new neibors d disput over fiing had re conquences. we wertrying tstop any viole. - [narrator] major funding for reel south was provided by: etv endowment, the national endowment for the arts, center for asian-american media, and by south arts. additional funding for "seadrift" was provided by the corporation for public broadcasting,