China’s population shrinks for first time in over 60 years, deaths outnumber births in 2022

mangaloretoday.com

Beijing, Jan 17, 2023: The world’s most populous country, China, has witnessed a historic drop in its population, according to a report released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday. The fall has been reported for the first time in over 60 years after a steady and years-long decline in its birthrate.

 

The population of mainland China, excluding foreigners, declined by 850,000 people in 2022 to 1.41 billion, the statistics bureau said. The country reported 9.56 million births and 10.41 million deaths for 2022, reported CNBC.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the mainland China population, excluding foreigners, rose by 480,000 to 1.41 billion people at the end of 2021.

The data by the National Bureau of Statistics revealed that new births declined by 13% in 2021 and it fell by 22% in 2020.

Meanwhile, the country’s health authorities revealed that around 60,000 people died of Covid-19 in Chinese hospitals between December 8, 2022, and January 12, 2023, reported CNBC.

The last time China recorded "negative population growth" was in the early 1960s, said Yi Fuxian, a critic of China’s one-child policy and author of the book “Big Country With an Empty Nest.”

The declining population may be a sign of a demographic crisis in China. Deaths outnumbered births last year for the first time in six decades, reported The New York Times.

The data by the National Bureau of Statistics showed 9.56 million births in China in 2022, while 10.41 million people died. It was the first time that deaths were more than births in China since the early 1960s, when the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong’s failed economic experiment, led to widespread famine and death.

The decline, coupled with a long-running rise in life expectancy, is pushing China into a demographic crisis that will have consequences in this century, not just for China and its economy but for the world, experts told the New York Times.

According to a professor of sociology at the University of California at Irvine who specializes in demographics in China, Wang Feng, “In the long run, we are going to see a China the world has never seen.”

“It will no longer be the young, vibrant, growing population. We will start to appreciate China, in terms of its population, as an old and shrinking population,” added Feng.

ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS

As fewer people are born and more people are getting older in China, a day will come sooner when the country will not have sufficient people of working age to fuel the high-speed growth that made it an engine of the global economy.

Labor shortages will also reduce tax revenue and contributions to a pension system that is already under enormous pressure, reported the New York Times.

According to some of the experts, the decline in China’s population could have implications for the global order, with India’s population poised to outgrow China’s later this year.

STEPS TAKEN TO CONTROL BIRTH RATE DECLINE

Chinese officials last year accepted that the country was on the verge of a population decline that would likely begin before 2025.

Chinese officials have taken steps to try to slow the decline in births. In 2016, they relaxed the one-child policy that had been in place for 35 years, allowing families to have two children. In 2021, they raised the limit to three. Since then, Beijing has offered a range of incentives to couples and small families to encourage them to have children, including cash handouts, tax cuts and even property concessions.

Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, recently made the issue a priority, pledging “a national policy system to boost birthrates.”

Courtesy: India Today