For the first time since 1961, the population of China in what is expected to be the beginning of a long stage of decline for the number of people living in the Asian country, despite the significant efforts made by the Government to reverse this situation. According to the National Statistics Office, between 2021 and 2022 there are around 850,000 fewer people, something that complicates local demographics.
Despite the fact that historically in the 80s and 90s there was the well-known “one child” policy that seriously affected couples who wanted to have more than one heir, over the years, the population of the Asian giant began to age. Now, the Beijing government fails to reverse it. While they offer various benefits for having children, such as subsidies and tax breaks, the rising cost of living in China it makes the younger ones resist the idea of forming a couple with several descendants.
This comes hand in hand with the announcement that GDP grew by only 3% in the eastern nationone of the slowest increases in decades, partly because of aging demographics, but mainly because of the restrictive Zero Covid policies that were in place until late last year. According to some experts, these anti-illness policies that packed hospitals affected the thinking of couples in China to have children, in addition to increasing the demographic crisis they are facing.
The problematic side of this is not that it happens, but that almost ten years have passed before what the projections of the Beijing government and the UN marked. According to Yi Fuxian, a professor of gynecology at the University of Wisconsin and a specialist in population changes in ChinaHe remarked that it means that “the crisis in which they find themselves is worse than can be imagined” and that “all economic, social, defense and foreign policy projects were based on wrong data.”
the new king
While the size of the population in the Asian giant appears to be entering a period of depression, on its southwestern border, India is preparing as the fastest growing territory for this new decade, where it could quickly become the most populous nation in the world.
Despite this, specialists indicate that one must also keep an eye on Africa, especially Nigeria and Ethiopia, where a significant population explosion has been going on for several years.
