China marks the fall in Population over 60 years

Key Takeaways:

• China, experienced its first population decline in more than 60 yrs last year as a result of an impending demographic crisis.
• Chinese officials acknowledged that a population decline was imminent and would likely begin before 2025.

According to official data released on Tuesday, China’s population shrank for the very first time in much more than six decades last year as the world’s most populous Nation faces a looming demographic crisis.

The drop, the worst since China’s Great Famine of 1961, adds credence to predictions that India will overtake China as the world’s most populous country this year.

According to the government, 9.56 million people will be born in China in 2022, while 10.41 million will die. It was the first time in China that deaths outnumbered births since the early 1960s, when Mao Zedong’s failed economic experiment, the Great Leap Forward, caused widespread famine and death.

The number of births decreased from 10.6 million in 2021, the sixth year in which the number decreased. According to experts, this decline, along with a long-term increase in life expectancy, is pushing China into a demographic crisis that will impact the world in the twenty-first century.

According to Dr Wang Feng, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, who specialises in Chinese demographics, “in the long run, we are heading to see a China the world has never seen.”

“The population won’t be as young, alive, and expanding. Regarding its population, we will begin to recognise China as having an ageing and declining population.

According to the national statistics bureau, people shouldn’t be concerned about the population decline because “overall labour supply still exceeds demand.”

The announcement comes at a difficult time for the Beijing government, dealing with the fallout from the abrupt change in its zero-tolerance policy toward Covid-19 last month.

China has become the world’s factory floor and an economic powerhouse over the last forty years. As a result of that transformation, life expectancy rose, which added to the situation today—more people are ageing while fewer babies are being born. 

400 million people in China are anticipated to be over 60 by 2035, making up nearly one-third of the country’s population.

Another worrying occurrence is being hastened by this trend: the day when there won’t be enough people in China who are of working age to sustain the country’s rapid economic growth and make it a global economic powerhouse. Lack of labour will result in lower tax collections and contributions to an already overburdened pension system.

Since India’s population is expected to surpass that of China this year, according to a recent UN estimate, the outcome, according to some experts, could have effects on the world order.

This situation was expected. Last year, Chinese officials acknowledged that the Nation was on the verge of a population fall that would probably start before 2025. But it arrived earlier than predicted by demographers, statisticians, and the Communist Party in power in China.

To stop the decline in births, officials have taken action. They loosened the 35-year-old one-child restriction in 2016 and now permit families to have two kids. 

The cap was increased to three in 2021. Since then, Beijing has provided various incentives to encourage couples and small families to have children, including financial assistance, tax breaks, and even property concessions.

China’s top leader, Mr Xi Jinping, recently prioritised the issue and promised “a national policy system to boost birthrates.” But in reality, according to experts, China’s declining birth rates show an unabating trend.