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

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.

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“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.