According to official figures, China has experienced a population loss for the first time in more than 60 years.
This is a historic development for the most populous country in the world, which is now anticipated to experience a protracted period of population reduction. Birth rates in the 1.4 billion-person nation have dropped to all-time lows as the labor force ages, a trend that some fear could hinder economic development and put an additional burden on the nation’s already-stressed public finances. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in Beijing said on Tuesday that the population of mainland of China was roughly 1,411,750,000 at the end of 2022, down 850,000 from the end of the previous year.
According to the NBS, there were 10.41 million deaths and 9.56 million births. In China, men still outweigh women by a ratio of 722.06 million to 689.69 million. The new estimates represent the first decline in China’s population since 1961 when the nation struggled with the greatest famine in its modern history as a result of Mao Zedong’s disastrous agricultural strategy known as the Great Leap Forward.
India is predicted to surpass China as the world’s most populated country if it hasn’t done so already. China has held the title for a long time. India’s population is thought to be above 1.4 billion people. People shouldn’t be concerned about China’s population drop, according to the NBS’s Kang Yi, because there is still an excess of labor supply in the nation.
Despite allowing couples to have three children after ending its rigorous “one-child policy” in China between 2016 and 2021, the change in the law has not stopped the country’s demographic decline. Long-term, according to United Nations analysts, China’s population might drop by 109 million by 2050, more than quadruple the decline they had predicted in 2019.
Reporting from Beijing, Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu said China has tried several steps to avoid a “demographic disaster,” including abandoning the one-child limit and extending parental leave as well as subsidies. These initiatives, however, don’t seem to have been successful. “If we go deeper into the data, it shows that China’s birth rate was 6.77 births per 1,000 people and that its death rate has grown to the greatest that it has ever been as well,” she said.
Yu claimed that although “health experts have been scratching their heads” on the reasons for people having fewer children, the COVID-19 pandemic response and rising living expenses in Chinese cities appear to be the main culprits. “I think one of the causes is the skyrocketing expense of living here in China, especially in the cities when it comes to housing and schooling,” she added.
“People are postponing marriage, choosing not to wed, or choosing not to have children at all.” The COVID-19 pandemic was another crucial factor, as China had just abandoned a strict “zero-COVID” policy that had lasted for three years and caused “huge uncertainty” and disruption in people’s lives.
According to Yu, during that time, many were opting not to start or grow their families. China is particularly concerned about how a shrinking population may affect its economy because, for many years, the country’s sizable working-age population — which was almost 70% of the total population in 2010 — has been the main driver of economic growth.
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