So doing a google search for "2023 Gallup research poll lonliness" brings up a bunch of articles saynig that, on average, across the world about 1 in 4 people are lonely. (Even with me misspelling "loneliness")

The article gives the number of lonely people in China as 23%.

Which is is about 1 in 4 people.

So this seems less like a "crisis" and more that China is a fairly average country when it comes to self reported loneliness of its people.

China’s one-child policy has been singled out as a cause of this wave of loneliness, but that might not hold in light of international comparisons. Japan, which has a comparable total fertility rate to China, is less lonely.

The one child policy has been done away with for over 10 years now. There is no discussion about why having more children in a society would make its people report being less lonely. The link in this article goes to, "Too many men: China and India battle with the consequences of gender imbalance", which is another SCMP blogpost from 2018 that seems fairly obsessed about the number of unmarried men in China, men not having sex, and the amount of money not being spent on having what I'm assuming to be a typical Western-style nuclear family (mortgage, childcare expenses and medical bills, education bills, all the consumer spending that goes on with children who outgrow clothes and toys, etc).

There could be a critique of cultures that have an expectation of having a "family" that looks a particular way (in this case, I'm guessing its a one husband with one wife and 2.5 kids along with all the trappings).

But I have the sneaking suspicion that the South China Morning Post's blogposters doen't have any problems with that.