China’s population faces ‘endless period of decline’, with demographic shift far from finished

China’s population decline is irreversible, and believing otherwise is futile, demographers warned on Tuesday as the world’s long-time most populous nation announced that it shrank last year for the first time in six decades. Nonetheless, they say the urgency of the situation shows that more must be done to stem the tide, including ramped-up efforts to boost the birth rate. “It’s unquestionable that China will not see population growth from now on, as an endless period of population decline began in 2022,” independent demographer He Yafu said. “There’s no hope that the decline can be reversed.” Setting off renewed debate and concerns over the potential implications on economic growth, the National Bureau of Statistics confirmed on Tuesday that China’s overall population dropped by 850,000 people to 1.4118 billion in 2022, down from 1.4126 billion a year earlier. The last time that deaths outnumbered births in China was 1961, when the nation was still reeling from Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward. Tens of millions of people died of starvation during the Great Famine that swept through the country from 1958-61. Last year, the national birth rate fell to a record low of 6.77 for every 1,000 people as Chinese mothers had only 9.56 million babies – the nation’s lowest total in modern history and the first time the figure fell below 10 million. China allowed couples to have three children in 2021 after dropping the notorious one-child policy that was in place from the 1980s until 2016, when the two-child policy followed. Having additional children is also no longer punishable by law, but they would not qualify for any legally mandated childcare and benefits. One of the most urgent moves needed to encourage births, according to He, would be to completely scrap the family-planning policy and drop all number restrictions. “Despite the limited actual effect – as only a small number of couples would want to have more than three children – replacing the three-child policy by encouraging unlimited births would have a tone-setting significance, indicating a complete shift in birth policy,” the demographer said. Additionally, he said, China should give larger cash handouts to new parents while offering greater and more affordable day-care services for children under the age of three. Seeing the writing on the wall, a number of provincial and municipal authorities – including Shenzhen last week – have started offering financial incentives to couples to have kids. However, critics say that, compared with the actual cost of raising a child, the subsidies are far from sufficient. Yuan Xin, vice-president of the China Population Association and a professor of demography at Nankai University in Tianjin, said that although the population is headed for a normalised phase of decline, it is possible that it could still fluctuate around zero growth for the next few years. “Three years of the pandemic have had a negative impact on births, as many people might have cancelled or delayed pregnancy plans, due to risks from vaccinations and infections,” Yuan said. “It’s unclear whether there will be a rebound after the pandemic. “Additionally, the three-child policy was implemented in 2021, and provincial officials have rolled out pronatalist policies since then. The effects would have been shown in 2022 if it weren’t for the Covid outbreaks, and whether [the effects] will be delayed [is unclear]. There are certain degrees of uncertainty surrounding births in the two to three years after the pandemic’s end.” Nonetheless, births will remain low as the number of women of childbearing age will continue to drop, while their reluctance to have more babies will remain prevalent, Yuan added. Kang Yi, director of the National Bureau of Statistics, confirmed that the number of women aged 15 to 49 – which the World Health Organization considers to reproductive age – plunged by nearly 4 million last year. This further compounded the decrease in births and marriages. Young Chinese ‘can’t wrap head around starting a family’ as burdens pile up Yuan also contends that China is still in the early stage of its population decline, characterised by mild and slow drops, and will maintain a large population of at least 1.25 billion until 2050. “At least in the next 30 years, we still have the opportunity to take advantage of [the population dividend] and maximise them with the right socioeconomic policies,” he said. “We still have a massive potential consumer market and potential productivity, and we must continue to grow the economy and raise people’s incomes to realise that potential.” China’s working-age population – those between 16 and 59 years old – stood at 875.56 million at the end of 2022. And Yuan said that, even if it shrinks by 200 million in the coming decades, it will still be larger than those of all developed countries combined. The need for manual labour, he noted, is also decreasing due to technological advancements. “We will depend on technology and talent to drive economic development and make China a hub of innovation and technology,” he said. Yue Su, principal economist with the Economist Intelligence Unit, said smaller family sizes will also drive the transformation and affect consumption. “The ‘silver economy’ associated with ageing trends will be another growth point,” Su said. And despite an overall decline in the population, major cities “will continue to attract population inflows”, he said, adding that this will support sales of consumer goods while offering some resiliency in property prices. Compared with China, other East Asian regions and countries, with some of the world’s lowest birth rates, are facing even more severe demographic plights. South Korea has the lowest birth rate in the world, at 0.81 births per woman in 2021, when the country saw its population decline for the first time in the country’s modern history. Education ‘could offset the perils’ of China’s shrinking, ageing workforce Its government attempted to encourage births by incentivising couples with more days off and cash handouts for parents, by eliminating discrimination against childbirth outside of wedlock and through beefing up its workforce by recruiting more foreign and senior workers. In Taiwan, the population has been dropping for three consecutive years, with a record low 138,986 births in 2022, according to official figures. Japan’s population also dropped for 13 years in a row through 2021, when Japanese mothers had 811,604 babies – the fewest since records began in 1899 – and leading to an overall population drop of 628,205 to 125.44 million. Policy-support measures in these places have largely failed to incentivise childbirth, while child-rearing costs remain high, and education resources are uneven and competitive.