Alarm Sounds on Demographic Crisis as China Witnesses First Population Drop in 6 Decades

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BEIJING/HONG KONG — China’s population fell last year for the first time in six decades, a historic turn that is expected to mark the start of a long period of decline in its citizen numbers with profound implications for its economy and the world.

The country’s National Bureau of Statistics reported a drop of roughly 850,000 people for a population of 1.41175 billion in 2022, marking the first decline since 1961, the last year of China’s Great Famine.

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That possibly makes India the world’s most populous nation. Although U.N. experts predicted India’s population would reach 1.412billion in 2022 last year, they did not anticipate South Asian nations to surpass China.

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India does not collect population figures every 10 year, and the country’s most recent census, originally planned for 2021, was postponed due to the pandemic.

Long-term, U.N. experts see China’s population shrinking by 109 million by 2050, more than triple the decline of their previous forecast in 2019.

That’s caused domestic demographers to lament that China will get old before it gets rich, slowing the economy as revenues drop and government debt increases due to soaring health and welfare costs.

“China’s demographic and economic outlook is much bleaker than expected. China will have to adjust its social, economic, defense and foreign policies,” said demographer Yi Fuxian.

He added that the country’s shrinking labor force and downturn in manufacturing heft would further exacerbate high prices and high inflation in the United States and Europe.

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“Economic growth will have to depend more on productivity growth,” Pinpoint Asset Management chief economist Zhiwei Zhiwei Zhang added.

Kang Yi (head of the national stats bureau) dismissed concerns about population decline and told reporters that “overall labor supply still exceeds demand.”

China’s birth rate last year was just 6.77 births per 1,000 people, down from a rate of 7.52 births in 2021 and marking the lowest birth rate on record.

Kang reported that China’s number of women who are pregnant has dropped by 4 million.

The highest death rate since 1974, during the Cultural Revolution was 7.37 per 1,000 people. This compares to a rate that is 7.18 per 1000 people in 2021.

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IMPACT OF THE ONE-CHILD POLICY

Much of the demographic downturn is the result of China’s one-child policy imposed between 1980 and 2015 as well as sky-high education costs that have put many Chinese off having more than one child or even having any at all.

Deep gender inequalities have been created by the one-child policy, as well as a preference for boys. China’s latest data shows that there are 722 million men in China, and 690 millions women. In rural areas, this imbalance has resulted in fewer families being formed over the years.

After the Tuesday release of the figures, data was the top topic on Chinese social networks. One hashtag,”#Is it really important to have offspring?” had hundreds of millions of hits.

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“The fundamental reason why women do not want to have children lies not in themselves, but in the failure of society and men to take up the responsibility of raising children. For women who give birth this leads to a serious decline in their quality of life and spiritual life,” Joyful Ned was the username of one netizen.

Chinese netizens also complained that newlyweds were pressured to have children as soon as possible. They reported receiving regular calls from their local government, asking when they can expect a baby.

China’s stringent zero-COVID policies that were in place for three years have caused further damage to the country’s demographic outlook, population experts have said.

Since 2021, local governments offer tax deductions and housing subsidies to encourage more children. In October, President Xi Jinping said that further supportive policies would be enacted.

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However, the measures taken so far have not been able to stop the long-term trend.

Online searches for baby strollers on China’s Baidu search engine dropped 17% in 2022 and are down 41% since 2018, while searches for baby bottles are down more than a third since 2018. The contrast is that searches for elderly care facilities grew eightfold last fiscal year.

In India, the reverse is true. Google Trends shows that searches for baby bottles have increased by 15% over the past year, while searches to buy cribs has increased almost fivefold.

(Reporting by Albee in Beijing, Farah Master Hong Kong; additional reporting by Kevin Yao in Beijing and Ella Cao New Delhi; Editing done by Edwina Gibbs