Hong Kong.- The world’s most populous country has reached a turning point: China’s population has begun to shrink, following a years-long steady decline in its birth rate that experts say is irreversible.
The government said Tuesday that 9.56 million people were born in China last year, while 10.41 million people died. It was the first time deaths had outnumbered births in China since the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong’s failed economic experiment that led to widespread famine and death in the 1960s.
Chinese officials have tried for years to delay this moment, easing the one-child policy and offering incentives to encourage families to have children. None of those policies worked. Now, faced with a declining population, coupled with a prolonged increase in life expectancy, the country is thrust into a demographic crisis that will have consequences not only for China and its economy, but also for the world.
Over the past four decades, China has emerged as an economic powerhouse and the world’s factory. The country’s evolution from widespread poverty to the world’s second-largest economy led to an increase in life expectancy that contributed to today’s population decline: more people were living longer and fewer babies were being born.
That trend has accelerated another worrisome event: the day China won’t have enough working-age people to fuel its growth.
Government handouts such as baby cash and tax cuts have failed to change the underlying fact that many young Chinese simply don’t want children.
Births were down from 10.6 million in 2021, the sixth consecutive year that the number declined, according to the Office for National Statistics. The total population of China now stands at 1.41 billion. By 2035, 400 million people in China are expected to be over the age of 60, representing almost a third of its population.
