Beijing: China has announced its first overall population decline in recent years amid an aging society and falling birthrate. The National Bureau of Statistics reported that there were 850,000 fewer people in the country at the end of 2022 than in the previous year. It counts only the population of mainland China, excluding Hong Kong and Macao as well as foreign residents. The bureau said in a briefing on Tuesday that the total number of deaths stood at 1.411.75 billion, with 9.56 million births against 10.41 million deaths. The bureau said the number of males also outnumbered females, from 722.06 million to 689.69 million, a result of the strict one-child policy that only officially ended in 2016 and allowed male offspring to carry on the family name. had traditional priority. Since abandoning the policy, China has sought to encourage families to have second or third children, with little success. The cost of raising children in China’s cities is often cited as a reason, mirroring attitudes in much of East Asia where birth rates have fallen sharply.
China has long been the world’s most populous country, but India is expected to overtake it soon, if it hasn’t already. Estimates put India’s population at over 1.4 billion and continuing to grow. The last time China is believed to have recorded a population decline was Mao Zedong’s disastrous drive for mass farming and industrialization during the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s, which caused a massive famine that killed millions. People were killed.
The bureau said Chinese people of working age between 16 and 59 totaled 875.56 million, accounting for 62.0 percent of the national population, while those aged 65 and above totaled 209.78 million, accounting for 14.9 percent of the total. The data also showed increasing urbanization in a country that until recently was largely rural. In 2022, the permanent urban population is projected to increase by 6.46 million to reach 920.71 million or 65.22 percent, while the rural population declines by 7.31 million.
There was no direct comment on the possible impact on population figures of the outbreak of COVID-19, which was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan before spreading worldwide. China has been accused by some experts of blaming virus deaths on underlying conditions, but no estimates of the actual number have been published.
The United Nations estimated last year that the world’s population would reach 8 billion on November 15 and that India would replace China as the world’s most populous country in 2023. In a report released on World Population Day, the United Nations also said that global population growth fell below 1 percent in 2020 for the first time since 1950.
Also on Tuesday, the bureau released data showing China’s economic growth slowed last year to its second lowest in at least four decades under pressure from anti-virus controls and a real estate slump. The world’s No. 2 economy will grow 3 percent in 2022, less than half of the previous year’s 8.1 percent, the data showed.
It was the second-lowest annual rate in 2020 since at least the 1970s, when growth plunged to 2.4 percent at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, though activity has rebounded after keeping millions at home and sparking protests. Starting from