China: The country’s population decreased for the first time in sixty years

The birth rate in 2022 has also fallen from 7.52 in 2021, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, which released the figures on Tuesday.

In comparison, in 2021, the United States recorded 11.06 births per 1,000 people, and 10.08 births per 1,000 people were recorded in Britain.

And the birth rate in the same year in India, which is preparing to overtake China as the largest country in the world in terms of population, was 16.42 births per thousand.

The number of deaths also exceeded the number of births for the first time last year.

The country recorded 9.56 million births and 10.41 million deaths in 2022, according to the Statistics Office.

China had the highest death rate since 1976, at 7.37 deaths per 1,000 people, up from 7.18 the previous year.

Earlier government data had warned of a demographic crisis that would, in the long term, shrink China’s labor force and increase the burden on health care and other social security costs.

Results of the 2021 census show that China’s population is growing at its slowest pace in decades. The population is also shrinking and aging in other East Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea.

“This trend will continue and may even get worse post-Covid,” says Yoo Su, lead economist at The Economist’s Economist Intelligence Unit. Su He is among the experts who expect China’s population to contract further in 2023.

“The high youth unemployment rate and weaker income expectations may delay marriage and childbirth plans further, leading to a lower number of newborns,” she adds.

It says the death rate in 2023 is likely to be higher than it was before the pandemic due to Covid infection. China has seen an increase in the number of cases since it abandoned its zero Covid policy last month.

China’s population trends over the years have been greatly influenced by the controversial one-child policy, which was passed in 1979 to slow population growth.

Families who broke the rules were fined and, in some cases, lost their jobs. In a culture that historically favored boys over girls, that policy has also led to forced abortions and distorted gender ratios since the 1980s.

That policy was abolished in 2016 and couples were allowed to have two children. In recent years, the Chinese government has also offered tax breaks and better maternal health care, among other incentives, to reverse or at least slow the declining birth rate.

But these policies did not lead to a steady increase in births. Some experts say this is because policies that encouraged childbirth were not accompanied by efforts to ease the burden of childcare, such as more help for working mothers or access to education.

In October 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping made increasing birth rates a priority. Xi told a five-year Communist Party congress in Beijing that his government will “pursue a national proactive strategy” in response to the country’s aging population.

Apart from offering incentives to have children, Busarawan Terauchichinan, director of the National University of Singapore’s Center for Family and Population Research, says China must also improve gender equality in families and workplaces.

She adds that Scandinavia has shown that such moves can improve fertility rates.

“The scenario is not catastrophic,” says Paul Cheung, a former Singaporean chief statistician, adding that China has “a lot of manpower” and a “long lead time” to manage the demographic challenge.

Observers also say that simply raising birth rates will not solve the problems behind China’s slow growth.

“Boosting fertility will not improve productivity or increase domestic consumption in the medium term,” says Stuart Gitell-Basten, a professor of public policy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “How China responds to these structural issues will be more important.”