DChina's population decline has accelerated over the past year. As the statistics office in Beijing announced on Wednesday, around 1.41 billion people lived in the People's Republic at the end of December, 2.08 million fewer than a year earlier.
By 2022, China's population had shrunk for the first time in six decades. However, the decline of around 850,000 people was smaller than in the previous year.
As a sign of the difficult demographic development, the number of births continued to slow. 9.02 million babies were born in China. In 2022 there were still 9.56 million. At the same time, the number of deaths rose from 10.41 million to 11.1 million, probably against the background of the corona pandemic.
China has long suffered from a sharp decline in the birth rate and an aging population. The effects of the decades-long “one-child policy” are becoming increasingly clear. The easing of the controversial birth control regime has only led to a slight increase in the number of births since 2016.
Experts see the high costs of housing, education and health care in China as well as the declining willingness to marry as the real reasons for the worrying development.
The population last shrank in 1960 and 1961 – as a result of severe famines following the devastating industrialization campaign of the “Great Leap Forward”. In 2021, the population grew by 450,000 people for the last time.
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