People walk out on the Bund promenade along the Huangpu River in Shanghai on January 16, 2023.
Hector Retamal | Afp | Getty Images
BEIJING — China’s population has declined in 2022, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday.
The decline is the first since the early 1960s, according to Yi Fuxian, a critic of China’s one-child policy and author of the book “The Great Empty-Nest Country.”
Mainland China’s population, excluding foreigners, is expected to drop by 850,000 in 2022 to 1.41 billion, the statistics bureau said. The country reported 9.56 million births and 10.41 million deaths for 2022.
In 2021, China’s population grew at the slowest rate in history. Mainland China’s population, excluding foreigners, increased by 480,000 to 1.41 billion at the end of 2021, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Newborns on the continent fell by 13% in 2021 to 10.62 million babies, the data showed. In 2020, new births fell by 22%, the data show.
Separately over the weekend, Chinese health authorities revealed nearly 60,000 Covid-related deaths in Chinese hospitals between December 8, 2022, and January 12, 2023. Most were senior citizens, and the average age of death was 80.3, authorities said .
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