China population decline

Deaths outnumbered births last year for the first time in six decades. Experts see major implications for China, its economy and the world.

In 2021, they [raised the limit](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/31/world/asia/china-three-child-policy.html) to three. “I have never had the desire to have children all along.” The growing costs of raising a child and finding an apartment in a good school district have hardened her resolve. But a picture is emerging of [the virus spreading like wildfire](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/25/world/asia/covid-spreading-china.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-china-zero-covid&variant=show®ion=MAIN_CONTENT_1&block=storyline_top_links_recirc). [the “one-child” policy](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/29/world/asia/china-one-child-policy-timeline.html?searchResultPosition=2) that had been in place for three decades, allowing families to have two children. Sometimes, elders in the family nag them about having a baby. “In the long run, we are going to see a China the world has never seen,” said Wang Feng, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Irvine who specializes in China’s demographics. But experts have questioned the accuracy of Births were down from 10.6 million in 2021, the sixth straight year that the number had fallen, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Now, facing a population decline, coupled with a long-running rise in life expectancy, the country is being thrust into a demographic crisis that will have consequences not just for China and its economy but for the world. “I can’t bear the responsibility for giving birth to a life,” said Luna Zhu, 28, who lives in Beijing with her husband. By 2035, 400 million people in China are expected to be over 60, accounting for nearly a third of its population. It was the first time deaths had outnumbered births in China since the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong’s failed economic experiment that led to

While China may feel the sting of shifting demographics for years to come, the challenges arrived in other star economies some years ago. · In some ways, this is ...

[South Korean ](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-04/south-korea-s-first-population-decline-has-few-easy-fixes-in-covid-era?sref=FiLfbRnr)deaths began exceeding births in 2020 and Singapore’s population [declined for a couple of years](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/singapore-population-rises-after-two-years-as-workers-return?sref=FiLfbRnr) before notching a gain in the year to mid-2022. Even the Philippines, long a big exporter of people, is starting to face some of the [same headwinds](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-16/philippine-fertility-rate-drops-to-less-than-two-kids-per-woman?sref=FiLfbRnr). While China may feel the sting of shifting demographics for years to come, the challenges arrived in other star economies some years ago.

China is getting old before it gets rich, the result of a demographic crisis worsened by decades of the strictly enforced one-child policy.

Unemployment among 16- to 24-year-olds remained high, at 16.7 percent for the year, after reaching nearly 20 percent in July. Starting in the 1970s, Communist leaders’ fears of an expanding population outstripping food supply led to a campaign telling families to marry later, wait between children and have fewer offspring overall. A video of a Shanghai resident telling [coronavirus](https://www.washingtonpost.com/coronavirus/?itid=lk_inline_manual_36) prevention workers that “we are the last generation” went viral in May, with many online saying how the phrase captured a sense of desperation they, too, felt about the lack of a desirable future into which they might bring offspring. The danger for Chinese leader Xi Jinping is that his pursuit of “national rejuvenation” ends in economic stagnation similar to that which has plagued Japan since the 1990s. Officials also announced Tuesday that gross domestic product grew by only 3 percent last year, as regular disruptions from “zero covid” policies hurt consumption at the same time that the critical real estate sector contracted. Shanghai last year gave mothers an additional 60 days of maternity leave on top of state-mandated time off; paternity leave was extended to 10 days. Its solution was the draconian one-child policy, implemented in 1980. Among the policy’s many unintended consequences has been a steep gender imbalance, as pregnant women had sex-selective abortions. With a comparably contracting workforce, China, too, could fall short of its ambition to become a global leader. If not addressed, Yi argues, China’s rapidly aging society will undercut Beijing’s vision of itself as an ascendant power poised to overtake the United States. China faces a shrinking workforce that will struggle to support a rapidly aging population. But neither that revision nor a 2021 adjustment to allow three children has

China's birth rate declined for the first time in decades, China's National Bureau of Statistics said. It could impact the global economy.

China has been the world's most populous nation since at least 1950, and it has not seen any measurable decreases to its population since 1961, the final year of China's Great Famine. By that time, India will have more people than any other country, with a projected population of 1.53 billion. "Participants are worried about China’s economic performance this year as they pinned their hopes on China playing the role of a growth engine in the current economic crisis." "There is a clear trend among young women not wanting to get married and have children anymore, a phenomenon which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the harsh lockdowns," said Martina Fuchs, a business journalist for Xinhua, a Chinese state news agency. Fuchs is at the World Economic Forum's annual gathering this week in Davos, Switzerland. The world's most populous country had 1.41175 billion people in it in 2022, a drop of 850,000 compared with 2021. [YuWa Population Research Institute](https://www.yuwa.org.np/thematic-areas), a Beijing-based think tank. [ Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/india-will-soon-overtake-china-to-become-the-most-populous-country-in-the-world), a research unit affiliated with Oxford University. China's zero-COVID policy had a major effect on its economic activity in 2022. A shrinking labor force could make it harder for China's government to fund its public health and welfare costs, which would suppress China's economy. YuWa has calculated that China is one of the world's most expensive places for child-rearing; the average cost of raising a child to age 18, as of 2019, is $76,629 – or 6.9 times China's per capita GDP that year. "Fewer births in China will lead to economic slowdown, manufacturing recession, university bankruptcy, and will also lead to high prices and high inflation in the US and EU,"

"China's demographic and economic outlook is much bleaker than expected. China will have to adjust its social, economic, defense and foreign policies," said ...

For women who give birth this leads to a serious decline in their quality of life and spiritual life," posted one netizen with the username Joyful Ned. The imbalance, which is more pronounced in rural areas, has led to fewer families being formed in recent years. experts predicted last year India would have a population of 1.412 billion in 2022 though they did not expect the South Asian nation to overtake China until this year. In contrast, searches for elderly care homes surged eight-fold last year. The latest data shows China with around 722 million males compared to 690 million females. That possibly makes India the world's most populous nation.

Ultimately it resulted in low fertility rates and a large aging population. Last year, China saw more deaths than births, according to government data ...

"This is truly an open question and truly remains to be seen how the Chinese Communist Party will react," she said. The government may project an "even more nationalistic imaginary" or, on the other hand, put a renewed emphasis on social stability, she suggested. The policy was intended to further limit China's population growth and help stimulate an economic boom. Zhou said that if China's population continues to decline and its economy slows, it could lead the country and its leaders to view China's place in the world differently. "But since China is an authoritarian country, it remains to be seen just to what extent and how extreme the state will actually go in trying to incentivize births." The last time China is believed to have seen its population dip was during a tumultuous period known as the Great Leap Forward that began in the late 1950s.