China’s population shrank for the first time in more than 60 years, official data showed, a historic turnaround for the world’s most populous nation, which is now expected to experience a long period of population decline.
In the country of 1.4 billion, the birth rate is falling to record lows as the workforce ages, a decline that analysts warn could stall economic growth and pile pressure on the country’s strained public finances.
Mainland China’s population was estimated at 1,411,750,000 at the end of 2022, Beijing’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Tuesday, a decrease of 850,000 from the end of the previous year.
The number of births was 9.56 million, the NBS reported, while the number of deaths was 10.41 million. Men also continue to outnumber women in China at 722.06 million to 689.69 million.
The new data marks China’s first population decline since 1961, when the country was battling the worst famine in modern history caused by Mao Zedong’s disastrous agricultural policy known as the Great Leap Forward.
China has long been the world’s most populous nation, but is expected to be overtaken by India soon, if it hasn’t already.
India’s population is estimated to exceed 1.4 billion people.
NBS chief Kang Yi said people should not worry about China’s population decline as the country’s overall labor supply still exceeds demand.
Although China ended its strict “one-child policy” in 2016 and allowed couples to have three children in 2021, the policy change has not reversed the demographic decline.
In the long term, UN experts estimate that China’s population could decline by 109 million by 2050, more than triple the decline in their previous forecast in 2019.
“Demographic crisis”
Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu, reporting from Beijing, said China has tried many initiatives to avoid a “demographic crisis”, including scrapping the one-child policy and increasing parental leave as well as subsidies. However, such efforts seem to have failed.
“If we dig into the numbers, the birth rate in China is said to have been 6.77 births per 1,000 people, and the death rate has also risen to its highest level ever,” she said.
While “health authorities are scratching their heads” and asking why people are having fewer children, Yu said the main reasons appear to include the rising cost of living in Chinese cities and the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I think one of the reasons is the skyrocketing cost of living here in China, especially in the cities, when it comes to housing, when it comes to education, people are delaying marriage or choosing not to marry or not have children at all,” she said.
Topic: 1) #China’s population has dropped by 850K, the first decrease since the Great Famine of 1961. This is not a complete shock, the birth rate has been on a downward trend in recent years, despite the introduction of a 3-child policy from 2021 .
— Katrina Yu (@Katmyu) January 17, 2023
The COVID-19 pandemic was also an important factor, as China had just emerged from a three-year strict “zero COVID” policy that involved “tremendous uncertainty” and disruption to people’s lives. People chose not to have children or to expand their families during this time, Yu said.
The economic effect of a shrinking population is also a major concern for China, as for decades the country’s large working-age population — nearly 70 percent of people in 2010 — was the engine behind the economy’s growth.
“Now that the working age is shrinking and the number of elderly people in China is growing … Many experts are concerned that this ultimately means that China has not been able to get rich before it gets old,” Yu said.
Xiujian Peng, a senior research fellow at the Center for Policy Studies at Australia’s Victoria University, told Al Jazeera that China’s birth rate is now much lower than countries such as the United States, Australia and “even lower than Japan”.
China’s government probably did not expect such a significant drop in population figures, she said, because authorities had already relaxed the one-child policy. However, the effect of COVID-19 on job insecurity and other factors such as the rising cost of living in China, particularly housing and education, means that policies to reverse the decline in birth rates have not worked.
The Chinese are also “getting used to the small family because of the decades-long one-child policy,” she told AFP news agency.
“The Chinese government must find effective policies to promote the birth rate, otherwise the birth rate will fall even lower,” she said.
“This will have a profound impact on China’s economy from now to 2100.”
Many local governments in China have already taken measures to encourage couples to have children.
In the city of Shenzhen, for example, the authorities now offer a birth bonus and allowances paid until the child is three years old. A couple having their first baby will automatically receive 3,000 yuan ($444), an amount that rises to 10,000 yuan ($1,480) for the third. In the eastern part of the country, the city of Jinan has been paying a monthly stipend of 600 yuan ($89) to couples who have a second child since January 1.
The new data was the top trending topic on Chinese social media after the data was released on Tuesday. One hashtag, #Is it really important to have offspring? (Is it really important to have offspring?) had hundreds of millions of hits.
“The main reason why women do not want to have children is not themselves, but the failure of society and men to take responsibility for raising children. For women who give birth, this leads to a serious decline in their quality of life and their spiritual life,” posted one netizen using the username Joyful Ned.
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