China’s population shrank in 2022 for the first time in decades, a historic shift that is expected to have long-term implications for the domestic and global economy.
The world’s most populous country has long been a crucial source of labor and demand, fueling growth in China and the world.
On Tuesday, the Office for National Statistics announced that the total population fell by 850,000 in 2022 to 1.41175 billion, the first decline in 60 years.
“This is truly a historic turning point, the beginning of a long-term and irreversible population decline,” said Wang Feng, an expert on China’s demographic changes at the University of California, Irvine.
The decline officially began last year, when deaths outpaced births, but some demographers say the trend may have started before then.
China’s strict zero-tolerance policy to contain the coronavirus is believed to have accelerated the country’s declining birthrate as couples delayed or decided not to have children during the health crisis and economic slowdown. Last year, 9.56 million babies were born, up from 10.62 million the year before.
The birth rate in 2022 was the lowest since records were kept more than seven decades ago, at 6.77 births per 1,000 people, down from 10.41 in 2019.
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The decline is rooted in Beijing’s one-child policy, imposed in 1980, which limits the number of children a couple can have below the average level of 2.1 needed to keep the country’s population stable.
Authorities scrapped the policy in 2016, replacing it with a two-child limit, but the number of births has fallen each year since then.
The country’s death rate was 7.37 per 1,000 in 2022, the highest since 1970, up from 7.09 in 2019.
Fuxian Yi, a demographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, estimated that China’s population began to decline in 2018, but the decline was hidden by “flawed demographics.”
“China is facing a demographic crisis that is far beyond the imagination of the Chinese authorities and the international community,” Yi said, noting that the trend will act as a long-term brake on the country’s property market, a key driver of growth.
“China cannot rely on the demographic dividend as a structural engine for economic growth,” said Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management. “Economic growth will have to depend more on productivity growth, which is driven by government policies.”
Some economists argue that increased automation will offset rising labor costs as the number of workers declines.
But analysts largely agree that the country’s welfare and medical infrastructure is ill-prepared for an aging population.
China’s sudden exit from its strict zero-covid policy last month and the spike in infections that followed quickly overwhelmed hospitals. Wang said it should serve as a “wake-up call for China to speed up reforms of its still highly inefficient and inequitable health system.”
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China’s demographic tipping point puts it on the same path as Japan, where the population began to decline in 2010 and has declined every year since.
The United Nations predicts that China’s population will drop to 1.31 billion by 2050 and 767 million by the end of the century. The projection for 2050 will make China 3.5 times the size of the US, which is expected to have 375 million people by then. It is currently 4.7 times the size of the US.
UN forecasts for 2022 also predict that India will overtake China as the world’s most populous nation this year. India’s population currently stands at 1.4066 billion.
Additional reporting by Tom Mitchell in Singapore and Ryan McMorrow in Beijing
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