China’s Population Declines for the First Time in 60 years

Photo Credit: Tingshu Wang/Reuters via Aljazeera

China’s population has declined for the first time since the Great Chinese Famine in 1961. The National Bureau of Statistics in China reported a decrease of 850,000 people, making their population 1.41 billion people, in 2022. This decline may suggest India has surpassed China as the most populous nation. The United Nations had predicted this overtake to occur in 2023, however, they predicted China’s population to be 1.43 billion in 2022 and India’s to be 1.41 billion.

According to UN population forecasts, China’s population could fall to less than 800 million people by 2100. 

China’s economy has already been struggling, much due to COVID-19 and housing prices, and the shrinking workforce may continue to hurt it. This could cause a ripple effect on the world as a whole.

The Director of the Indo-Pacific Development Centre at the Lowy Institute, Roland Rajah told the Guardian, “The key thing is the declining birthrate. This means China will have fewer workers in the future and that will reduce how big we expect China’s economy to ultimately be in the future, other things being equal.” He continues, “The ability of the Chinese economy to be the engine of global growth that it has been in the past looks increasingly in question.”

In 1980, China’s government introduced the one-child policy. This policy was an attempt to control China’s rapid population growth, but due to the favour of male children, many Chinese parents had abortions or committed infanticide. This led to a gender imbalance, and as Reuters reported in 2022, there are 690 million females to 722 million males in China.

The gender imbalance greatly impacted the birth rate. According to the World Bank, China’s birth rate was at 2.74  per woman in 1980 but decreased to 1.16 by 2021.

In a report published by YuWa Population Research Institute, the average cost of raising a child in 2019 was $76,629 USD, which was 6.9 times the GDP per capita. This makes it more expensive to raise a child in China than it is in Japan or the USA.

Reuters reported that in an attempt to stimulate the birth rate, local governments have offered housing subsidies, longer maternity leave, and tax deductions associated with having children. 

The large number of Chinese emigrants also contributes to China’s population decline, with 0.1 migrants leaving the country for every 1000 people, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration. COVID-19 has also lessened these numbers, with The Economist estimating between 1.4 and 2.4 million excess deaths in December alone.

To add to the demographics crisis, China’s population is aging, with the number of people over 60 reaching 28 per cent last year.