BEIJING/HONG KONG: China’s population fell last year for the first time in six decades, a historic turn that may mark the start of a long period of decline with profound implications for its economy and the world.
China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported a drop of roughly 850,000 people for a population of 1.41175 billion in 2022, the first dip since 1961, the last year of China’s great famine. That possibly makes India the world’s most populous nation. Last year, UN experts put India’s population at 1.412 billion in 2022, but they didn’t expect the country to overtake China until this year.

Demographers lament China will get old before it gets rich
China’s population is shrinking faster than expected. Long-term, UN experts see the country’s populace shrinking by 109 million by 2050, more than triple the decline of their previous forecast in 2019. In 2022, the country officially registered its first population dip in six decades.
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, defence and foreign policies,” said demographer Yi Fuxian. He added that the country’s shrinking labour force and downturn in manufacturing heft would further exacerbate high prices and high inflation in the US and Europe.
Kang Yi, head of the national statistics bureau, dismissed concerns about the population decline, telling reporters that “overall labour supply still exceeds demand”.
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. The one-child policy and a traditional preference for boys have also created a deep gender imbalance.
The data was the top trending topic on Chinese social media after the figures were released on Tuesday. One hashtag,”#Is it really important to have offspring?” had hundreds of millions of hits. “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,” posted one netizen.

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.
Local governments have since 2021 rolled out measures to encourage people to have more babies, including tax deductions, longer maternity leave and housing subsidies. President Xi Jinping also said in October the government would enact further supportive policies. The measures so far, however, have done little to arrest 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.