The choice to have a child comes with significant familial and social pressure in China, which some prospective parents avoid by raising children of a different sort.
In China’s big cities, more and more couples are choosing not to have children. Despite having stable and often high incomes, they ignore government and familial incentives to start families. That is — they decline to enlarge their human family. Many, instead, choose to dote lavishly on a different kind of “child.” “Fur kids,” as they are affectionately nicknamed, include cats, dogs, rats, parrots and even capybaras.
Almost a decade after the abandonment of the one-child policy, China’s population is shrinking. There were 2 million fewer people in 2023 than the previous year, and the birth rate remains at a historic low. As of 2021, the rate of people in the country’s four largest cities — Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou — who are single has passed 60%.
Waiting for a pet fashion show in Shanghai
Fur kids have become a booming trend. As the popularity accelerates, new services have sprung up to accommodate them: pet daycare, school buses, fashion shows, gallery outings, playgrounds, cinemas, toy shops and bakeries. Virtually every product or service once tailored for human children now exists for pets. The overall pet industry in China is projected to reach almost $50 billion next year.
But such indulgences for nonhuman companions — which people view as like having children but with fewer obligations — reflect a deeper societal malaise among a generation grappling with economic and emotional uncertainty. Pet parents are willing to spend generously on their fur kids because pets have become substitutes for family structures that they are no longer interested in pursuing or maintaining. Yet the need for affection persists, and pets provide the precious attention and unconditional love that many people feel they never received from their parents or from society. As one pet owner put it, “Pets are more reliable than some people.”
Watching “Black Dog,” a Chinese movie that won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes last year.
Even among society’s privileged classes, expectations for the future are uncertain. For many, achieving their current social status required significant sacrifices. Some harbor painful memories of childhood dominated by relentless study and the weight of parental expectations. They project their own difficult growing-up experiences onto their pets; for some, raising a pet is a way to raise themselves again, another chance to experience the joy and attention they missed, and it lets them avoid the obligations, competition and societal pressures that come with raising a human child of their own.
Pets of all sorts attended a fashion show and photography exhibition opening in Shanghai. The capybara, Pumpkin, was a star of the show and the final pet to walk down the catwalk.
A dancer with her pet honey glider at her home in Shanghai
A huge range of services have sprung up to accommodate China’s booming world of pets. Above: Dogman, as he is known around Shanghai, is a French-born trainer. Above left are the founders of a dog transportation and daycare service, and above right are strollers and other pet gear at the biggest pet store in Shanghai.
Elaborate funerals and remembrances are common choices when pets have passed away.
January 16, 2025 - By Weilian Zhu and Matjaž Tančič from NoemaMag
