China Records First Population Decline Since 1961

Beijing: China has announced its first overall population decline in recent years amid an aging society and plunging birth rate.

The National Bureau of Statistics reported the country had 850,000 fewer people at the end of 2022 than over the previous year. It counts only the population of mainland China while excluding Hong Kong and Macao as well as foreign residents.

That left a total of 1.411.75 billion, with 9.56 million births against 10.41 million deaths, the bureau said at a briefing on Tuesday.

Men also continued to outnumber women by 722.06 million to 689.69 million, the bureau said, a result of the strict one-child policy that only officially ended in 2016 and a traditional preference for male offspring to carry on the family name.

Since abandoning the policy, China has sought to encourage families to have second or even third children, with little success. The expense of raising children in China's cities is often cited as a cause, reflecting attitudes in much of east Asia where birth rates have fallen precipitously.

China has long been the world's most populous nation, but is expected to soon be overtaken by India, if it has not already. Estimates put India's population at more than 1.4 billion and continuing to grow.

The last time China is believed to have recorded a population decline was during the Great Leap Forward at the end of the 1950s.

The bureau said Chinese of working-age between 16 and 59 totalled 875.56 million, accounting for 62.0% of the national population, while those aged 65 and older totalled 209.78 million, accounting for 14.9% of the total.

The statistics also showed increasing urbanisation in a country that until recently had been largely rural. Over 2022, the permanent urban population increased by 6.46 million to reach 920.71 million, or 65.22%, while the rural population fell by 7.31 million.

No direct comment was made on the possible effect on population figures of the COVID-19 outbreak that was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan before spreading around the world. China has been accused by some specialists of under-reporting deaths from the virus by blaming them on underlying conditions, but no estimates of the actual number have been published.

The United Nations estimated last year that the world's population reached 8 billion on November 15 and that India will replace China as the world's most populous nation in 2023.

In a report released on World Population Day, the UN also said global population growth fell below 1% in 2020 for the first time since 1950.