China population: kindergartens fall for first time in 15 years as demographic crisis takes a toll

Number of kindergartens fell in China by 5,610 to 289,200 last year, marking the first drop since 2008, according to a Ministry of Education annual report

The number of students enrolled in kindergartens and preschools also dropped, a trend that coincides with China’s plunging birth rate and overall demographic crisis

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The drastic drop in enrolments coincides with China’s plunging birth rate after Chinese mothers gave birth to just 9.56 million babies last year. Photo: CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Published: 11:00pm, 6 Jul 2023Updated: 12:16am, 7 Jul 2023

The number of kindergartens in China fell for the first time in 15 years in 2022, signalling the toll taken by the country’s plunging births amid exacerbating demographic challenges.

According to an annual report published by the Ministry of Education on Wednesday, the number of kindergartens fell by 5,610 to 289,200 last year, marking the first drop since 2008.

The report also showed the number of students enrolled in kindergartens and preschools dropped by 3.7 per cent from a year earlier to 46.3 million in 2022.

The number of primary schools in China also tumbled by 3.35 per cent to 149,100 at the end of last year, while new enrolments sank by 4.55 per cent to 17 million.

A kindergarten in the Xisanqi suburb of Beijing, which opened in 2009, is set to close at the end of August due to “increasing enrolment difficulties, including falling births and the constant increase in public kindergartens”, it said in a recent letter.

The drastic drop in enrolments coincides with China’s plunging birth rate after Chinese mothers gave birth to just 9.56 million babies last year. This represented the lowest total in modern history and the first time the figure had dipped below 10 million.

China’s birth rate also fell to a record low of 6.77 per 1,000 people, while the overall population fell by 850,000 to 1.4118 billion, as deaths outnumbered births for the first time in six decades.