China’s birth rate problems underlined as Ningbo projects 27 per cent drop in newborns for 2020

Ningbo, with about 8.5 million residents, is so far the only Chinese city to publish a half-year population update

Local authorities do not speculate on what factors may be to blame, but the number of China’s newborns sank to a six-decade low in 2019

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A newborn is weighed at a hospital in China’s Hebei province. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 7:05pm, 8 Sep 2020Updated: 12:55pm, 10 Sep 2020

One of the most populous cities on China’s east coast predicts that the number of local births will plummet by 27 per cent this year from 2019, further signalling that the country is facing a demographic crisis.

Local authorities in Ningbo, where the population of roughly 8.5 million is similar in size to that of New York, said in a recent report that the number of newborns in the city looks to be about 36,000 in 2020. That would mark a steep decline of 27 per cent from last year’s 49,464 births.

In the first half of this year, Ningbo reported 17,945 new births, down nearly 20 per cent from a year earlier, according to the half-year report published by the city’s health authorities in late August.

So far, Ningbo is the only Chinese city to have published its half-year population update. The Chinese government does not release nationwide forecasts for new births, and few Chinese cities make such public predictions.

But while the demographic estimate for Ningbo – the third most populous city in Zhejiang province, after the capital city of Hangzhou and Wenzhou – represents only a single city, it serves to fuel concerns over China’s declining birth rate.

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