China’s population reportedly experienced a sustained reduction last year, despite a slight increase in births for the first time in eight years, marking a third consecutive year of decrease as deaths surpassed births.
Since 2017, the year following the termination of the one-child policy, China has experienced a significant decline in birth rates, despite the government’s promotion of families having three children.
Concurrently, the mortality rate in China has been gradually increasing due to the aging population.
The data from the previous year indicated a temporary reversal of the trend. Births increased to 9.54 million from 9.02 million in 2023, as reported by the National Bureau of Statistics on Friday.
This remains far lower than the over 16 million recorded in 2015, the concluding year of the one-child policy.
According to Friday’s figures, the number of fatalities decreased to 10.93 million last year, down from 11.10 million in 2023.
This resulted in China’s total population decreasing from 1.410 billion in 2023 to 1.408 billion last year.
Certain demographers anticipated a modest increase in birth rates in 2024, predominantly occurring during the Year of the Dragon, regarded as a favorable year for marriage and childbirth in Chinese culture.
The increase in births is not anticipated to be sustained. China’s fertility rate, defined as the number of children a woman has in her lifetime, is below the replacement threshold of 2.1, indicating that each subsequent generation will comprise fewer than half the population of its predecessor.
According to He Yafu, an independent demographer in Guangdong, Chinese couples who postponed marriages and childbirth during the epidemic expedited their deliveries in the Year of the Dragon.
He asserts that the long-term trend indicates a progressive annual increase in mortality due to the accelerated aging of the population. In 2010, about 13% of the population was aged 60 and above.
The age group now constitutes over one-fifth of the population, specifically 22% last year, an increase from 21% in 2023.
In 2022, fatalities surpassed births for the first time. Prior to that, the sole previous year since the establishment of the People’s Republic in which mortality exceeded births was 1960, during which the nation experienced widespread famine due to Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward.
China continues to experience rapid aging. According to the 2020 census, individuals of Chinese descent aged 80 or over constituted 2.5% of the population; however, U.N. projections indicate that this figure will exceed 5% by the end of this year and reach 10% by 2050.
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