China’s government announced Tuesday that the country’s population is shrinking officially for the first time in over 60 years.
The world’s largest country saw 9.56 million people born, while 10.41 million died in 2022. It tried to reverse the decline the last few years by reversing its one-child policy and by providing incentives for creating families, but the policies haven’t stopped the trend, according to The New York Times.
“In the long run, we are going to see a China the world has never seen,” Wang Feng, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Irvine, told The New York Times. “It will no longer be the young, vibrant, growing population. We will start to appreciate China, in terms of its population, as an old and shrinking population.”
When was the last time China’s population shrank?
The year 1961 was the last time China experienced population decline, due to famine after Mao Zedong’s failed Great Leap Forward policy, coupled with floods, drought and other weather issues.
Will India become the world’s most populous country?
India will likely surpass China as the most populous nation in the world this year, according to predictions by the United Nations, The Washington Post reported.
How did China get here?
In 1980, China implemented the one-child policy, which ended up causing “mass forced abortions, sterilizations and the insertion of intrauterine devices.” It also created a stark gender imbalance that “resulted in China having a sex ratio of 104.69 men to every 100 women as of 2022,” per The Washington Post.
The shrinking population could have large impacts on the country’s economy, with a smaller workforce that China depends on, which could also have larger implications on the global economy.
“This trend is going to continue and perhaps worsen after Covid,” Yue Su, principal economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit, told BBC. “The high youth unemployment rate and weaknesses in income expectations could delay marriage and childbirth plans further, dragging down the number of newborns.”