China’s population falls for first time in decades

Reluctance to have children prompts 850,000 fall in citizens that could have global economic impact

China’s population has fallen for the first time in 60 years, according to government data that have alarmed policymakers and cast doubt on the country’s economic prospects. Beijing yesterday reported that the country was home to 1.41billion people last year, an annual drop of 850,000. China now risks losing its spot as the world’s most populous country to India, a change that will have global economic implications at a time when domestic growth is stumbling.

CHINA’S population has fallen for the first time in 60 years, according to government data that have alarmed policymakers and cast doubt on the country’s economic prospects.

Beijing yesterday reported that the country was home to 1.41billion people last year, an annual drop of 850,000.

Kang Yi, the head of the National Statistics Bureau, said that it was “mainly a result of people’s [decreasing] willingness to have babies, the delay in marriage and pregnancy, as well as a fall in women of child-bearing age”.

It marks the first decline since the early 1960s when Chairman Mao Tsetung’s disastrous policies led to mass famine and millions of deaths.

China now risks losing its spot as the world’s most populous country to India, a change that will have global economic implications at a time when domestic growth is stumbling. It could also now struggle to overtake the US as the world’s richest nation, as declining growth sees citizens buy fewer goods.

Yesterday, Beijing announced that the country’s GDP expanded by 3 per cent last year, far short of the government’s target of 5.5 per cent.

That represents the slowest pace of economic expansion since 1976, when the Cultural Revolution ended around the time of Mao’s death. All this poses a challenge to the ruling Communist Party under leader Xi Jinping, which has long staked its legitimacy on increasing the wealth of the population.

For decades, China’s economy grew exponentially every year thanks to a vast, cheap labour force that produced everything from erasers to mobile phones.

Policymakers also implemented the one-child policy, sometimes with forced abortions, to prevent the population growing at a rate the economy could not sustain.

In 2016, Beijing finally rolled back the baby cap, gradually allowing couples to have up to three children. The government was trying to tackle the issue of waning births that was limiting the size of the country’s working-age population.

But experts said then that it was too little, too late, as couples grew more reluctant to have children as more women prioritised their careers and living costs rose.

More recently, snap Covid lockdowns have hit the economy with businesses forced to shut down. Sudden school closures have also burdened families, contributing to a growing reluctance among couples to have more children.

Local governments have worked to incentivise couples to procreate, offering subsidies to families with newborns as a way to offset childcare costs.

But it has not been enough to entice the Chinese to give birth.

Government data released yesterday showed that the national birth rate also fell, dropping to 6.77 births for every 1,000 people, the lowest rate on record since data collection began in 1949.

In 2021, China disputed reports that it had recorded a population decline with its once-a-decade census results, with the total figure falling below 1.4 billion. Some experts think the government may have massaged the final data release.

Stuart Gietel-basten, professor of social science at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, said the decline would have an impact on China’s national sense of identity.

“It’s a big psychological issue. Probably the biggest,” he said.