China has entered an “era of negative population growth”, after figures revealed a historic drop in the number of people for the first time since 1961.
The country had 1.41175 million people at the end of 2022, compared with 1.41260 million the previous year, the Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday. It marked the beginning of what is expected to be a long period of population decline, despite major government efforts to reverse the trend.
On the eve of the data release, Cai Fang, vice chairman of the National People’s Congress Committee on Agriculture and Rural Affairs, said China’s population had peaked in 2022, much earlier than expected. “Experts in the fields of population and economics have predicted that by 2022 or no later than 2023, my country will enter an era of negative population growth,” Cai said.
For several years now, China’s government has been struggling to encourage people to have more children and avoid the impending demographic crisis caused by an aging population. New policies have sought to ease the financial and social burdens of raising children, or actively encourage childbearing through subsidies and tax breaks. Yet after decades of a one-child policy that punitively discouraged multiple children and the rising costs of modern living, resistance continues among couples.
China is on track to be overtaken by India as the world’s most populous nation.
Last year’s birth rate was 6.77 births per 1,000 people, down from a rate of 7.52 births in 2021, the lowest birth rate on record. In real numbers, there were more than a million fewer registered births in 2022 than the previous year’s total of 10.62 million.
The country also recorded its highest death rate since 1976, recording 7.37 deaths per 1,000 people compared to a rate of 7.18 deaths in 2021.
Cai said China’s social policies needed to be adjusted, including care for the elderly and pensions, a national financial burden that would worsen in the future and affect China’s economic growth.
Online, some Chinese were not surprised by the announcement, saying the social pressures driving the low birth rate still remain.
“Housing prices, welfare, education, healthcare – reasons why people can’t afford to have children,” said one commenter on Weibo.
“Now who dares to have children, housing prices are so expensive, nobody wants to get married and even fall in love, let alone have children,” said another.
“There is no talk of increasing social security, there is only talk of increasing the fertility rate, it’s all bullshit.”
On Tuesday, China’s government also announced that GDP had grown by 3% in 2022. This figure would mark one of the slowest periods of growth in decades, but was still higher than expected, prompting some skepticism among analysts given the incredibly strict zero-Covid restrictions in place during the fourth quarter.
China’s strict zero-Covid policies that were in place for three years before an abrupt reversal that has overwhelmed medical facilities have caused further damage to the country’s demographic prospects, population experts have said .
Yi Fuxian, an obstetrics and gynecology researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an expert on China’s population changes, said the population decline was happening nearly a decade earlier than the government had predicted. country and the United Nations.
“It means that China’s real demographic crisis is beyond imagination and that all of China’s past economic, social, defense and foreign policies were based on flawed demographic data,” Yi said on Twitter.
“China’s demographic and economic prospects are much bleaker than expected. China will have to undergo a strategic contraction and adjust its social, economic, defense and foreign policies. China will improve relations with the West.”