China's population continued its downward slide this year, according to the government's latest data, adding to the country's long-term economic woes amid a stop-start post-pandemic recovery.
The latest annual data set, published on Sunday by China's National Bureau of Statistics, covered 31 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions. A significant decline in birth rates was trending across the nation, the numbers revealed.
The census provides critical insight into the ongoing demographic shift in China—meaningful not only to outsider observers, but also to the Chinese leadership, which measures the one-party state's overall strength in comprehensive national power.
In 2022, the country recorded 9.56 million births, a decrease of 1.06 million from the previous year and a 0.75 percent decline compared to 2021. Roughly two-thirds of China's various regions was home to a shrinking population, according to the data. Only 11 of 31 regions maintained positive growth.
The major port city of Shanghai—population 26 million—witnessed a significant drop in its population growth rate, falling by 1.61 percent. Beijing, the capital city, reported a negative growth rate of 0.05 percent.
Conversely, Tibet recorded the highest growth rate at 8.76 percent, an outlier in the national trend.
Kang Yi, who heads China's statistics bureau, said the country shouldn't worry about the falling birth rate because labor supply remained higher than the current demand.
By comparison, the birth rate in the United States increased by 0.09 percent from 2021 to 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall growth that year was 2.06 percent, down 3.88 percent from the previous year.
The declining Chinese birth rate has led experts at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences to believe that China's population may have peaked in 2021. For a country used to decades of explosive growth, it marked a historic turning point not seen since the Great Chinese Famine of 1959-1961.
The following year saw the nation's population decline for first time since the Great Chinese Famine of 1959-1961, prompting X (formerly Twitter) CEO Elon Musk to post that "population collapse is an existential problem for humanity, not overpopulation!"
Earlier this year, India overtook China as the world's most populous nation, although both populations currently sit at roughly 1.41 billion.
Despite the Chinese government's efforts to reverse the declining birth rate, including the relaxation of the so-called "one-child policy" to allow two children in 2016 and three in 2021, the impact appears limited, or perhaps too late.
A notable factor influencing this trend is the reluctance of many young couples to have more children. Issues such as the rising cost of living and generational shifts in values are cited as leading reasons.
Officials at the highest levels in Beijing have also introduced or promised measures to encourage childbirth—child-rearing subsidies, housing benefits and tax cuts—but these too have been met with mixed responses.
Additionally, China faces the challenge of an aging workforce, a factor that could further impede economic growth in the coming decades.
The ongoing changes are poised to have far-reaching implications for China's future economic and social policies, as well as its position in the global arena.
The International Monetary Fund has forecast China's GDP will grow by 5.3 percent this year amid a housing market crisis and slowing international demand for its manufactured goods. This figure would be an improvement over the 3 percent growth recorded last year during China's strict anti-virus measures nationwide, but still a far cry from the 8.5 percent of 2021.
The challenge occurs amid a changing global trading environment post-COVID-19, in which previously China-centered supply chains are being restructured and where geopolitical tensions are leading to controls on emerging technologies that will become future economic drivers.
China is far from the only major economy to risk growing old before it grows rich. Neighboring Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all have struggled to reverse population trends, although their GDP per capita is already higher, according to the IMF.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Micah McCartney is a reporter for Newsweek based in Taipei, Taiwan. He covers U.S.-China relations, East Asian and Southeast Asian ... Read more
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