Lizzi C. Lee
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent article in Qiushi, the Communist Party’s flagship journal for outlining core ideology and policy, frames China’s demographic challenges as a strategic opportunity. It offers Xi’s most detailed vision yet for addressing the country’s aging population: shifting from a labor-intensive, population-driven economy to one powered by innovation, education, and productivity. Yet beneath the lofty rhetoric lies a familiar and contentious concept: renkou suzhi, or “population quality.”
The notion of suzhi has long been a cornerstone of Chinese policymaking, shaping debates on everything from education to health care. On the surface, it advocates for cultivating a healthier, better educated, and more skilled population. But its implications run deeper—and are more divisive. Historically, suzhi has been used to draw lines between urban elites and rural or migrant populations, carrying connotations of class bias and, at times, embracing eugenicist thinking. Implicit in calls for a “high-quality population” is the judgment of a “low-quality” counterpart, reinforcing societal divides in a way that is rarely acknowledged outright.
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