China population: plummeting births in Anhui province underscore ‘extremely severe’ demographic problem

Name: China birth rate at 60-year low as new census shows population grew slightly to 1.412 billion
Uploaded: 2021-09-29T10:30:15.000Z
Duration: 2 min 33 s
Description: China birth rate at 60-year low as new census shows population grew slightly to 1.412 billion

New data from the Anhui government offers fresh insight into China’s declining fertility rate and rapidly ageing population

Births in the province will drop by 17.8 per cent this year compared to 2020, showing the fertility rate is ‘falling off a cliff’

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Anhui, the ninth most populous of China’s 31 provincial-level jurisdictions, says the number of newborns this year is down almost 20 per cent on last year. Photo: AFP

Orange Wang

Published: 6:30pm, 29 Sep 2021Updated: 9:43pm, 29 Sep 2021

Births are set to tumble nearly 20 per cent in the central Chinese province of Anhui this year, underlining the severity of the nation’s population crisis and prompting the local government to declare the number of newborns is “falling off a cliff”.

Births will drop by 17.8 per cent to 530,000 this year compared to 2020, the fourth straight annual decline, following falls of 12.1 per cent, 11.4 per cent and 15.8 per cent in the preceding three years, data from the Anhui government shows.

China’s seventh national census showed its population grew in 2020, but the number of new births fell for the fourth consecutive year and the country is ageing rapidly.

Anhui, the ninth most populous of China’s 31 provincial-level jurisdictions, is the first local government to estimate births for this year, offering fresh insight into the nation’s declining fertility rate.

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China birth rate at 60-year low as new census shows population grew slightly to 1.412 billion

“The population situation is extremely severe …[the number of births] shows the overall trend is falling off a cliff,” said the provincial government in a draft regulation on demographic and family planning that was published for public comment on Monday.

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