China: China’s population declined in 2023 for the second year in a row, signalling the worsening of a demographic crisis that would have a big impact on the second-biggest economy in the world.
According to an announcement from China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the population decreased to 1.409 billion in 2023, a decrease of about 2.08 million from the previous year.
China’s economy expanded by 5.2 percent last year, according to the NBS, compared to the government’s target of about 5 percent growth. While this expansion marks a significant pick-up over 2022, when China’s economy grew by just 3 percent, it is still one of the country’s worst economic performances in over three decades.
In addition, China’s birth rate fell to 6.39 births per 1,000 people, the lowest since Communist China was founded in 1949, from 6.77 births per 1,000 people a year earlier. There were 9.02 million births, as opposed to 9.56 million in 2022.
The number of workers in the nation, which is made up of individuals between the ages of 16 and 59, decreased by 10.75 million from 2022 to 2023, while the number of senior citizens over 60 increased by 16.93 million.
The most recent statistics follow China’s population decline for the first time in many years in 2022, which observers said was the nation’s first decline since the famine of 1961 brought on by the Great Leap Forward under former leader Mao Zedong. The world’s most populous nation, India, overtook China last year.
The government is trying to encourage more married couples to have children after decades of birth control restrictions, but the birth rate is still declining.
After realizing the restrictions had contributed to a rapidly ageing population and shrinking workforce that could seriously disrupt the nation’s economic and social stability, Beijing abandoned its long-standing and highly contentious “one child” policy in 2015.
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