By Jennifer Jett -
NBC News
HONG KONG — China announced Tuesday that its population declined last year for the first time in more than six decades, a historic shift with profound implications for the world's second-largest economy.
Officials with the National Bureau of Statistics reported that mainland China had a population of 1,411.75 million people at the end of 2022, compared with 1,412.60 million a year earlier, a decrease of 850,000 people.
There were 9.56 million births - a record birth rate of 6.77 per thousand - and 10.41 million deaths.
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The announcement is part of a broader release of economic data for 2022, a year in which President Xi Jinping's strict "zero covid" policies weighed on growth.
The authorities reported a 3% increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), exceeding expectations, although it remains one of the weakest numbers in decades.
The economy is expected to improve in 2023, when China emerges from the pandemic lockdown, Kang Yi, director of the National Bureau of Statistics, told a news conference in Beijing.
He also stated that China's population decline was not a cause for concern and that the global supply of labor was still higher than demand.
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The number of births in China has been declining for about a decade, undermining the consumption-led growth model of the ruling Communist Party and raising questions about whether China can overtake the United States as the world's largest economy.
According to the United Nations, India will overtake China as the world's most populous nation by the end of this year.
The 9.56 million births in China represent a decrease of almost 10% compared to 2021, when some 10.6 million babies were born.
The death rate, at 7.37 per 1,000 people, rose from 7.18 in 2021, when China recorded 10.14 million deaths.
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As in other countries, falling births mean an aging workforce for China, which has built its economic power largely on a manufacturing sector dependent on cheap labor.
Officials said Tuesday that working-age people between the ages of 16 and 59 accounted for 62% of the national population - up from 70% a decade ago - while those over 60 accounted for nearly 20%.
One of the main reasons for China's population decline is the rise of the middle class, according to Kent Deng, Professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
“Once there are well-skilled and educated urban people, they decide not to have many children,” he says, especially given the rising cost of living in China.
A man pulls a child past a Lunar New Year decoration displayed on the pedestrian shopping street in Qianmen, a popular tourist spot in Beijing, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023. Andy Wong / AP
COVID-19 is also believed to have played a role, although China appears to have experienced the vast majority of its cases and deaths in recent months.
Following international criticism for not being transparent about the severity of its current outbreak, China declared over the weekend that it had recorded nearly 60,000 coronavirus-related deaths since early December, when it abruptly ended three years of anti-virus measures. after infrequent mass protests.
Experts say the actual death toll could reach a million or more in the coming months.
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The total number of deaths from all causes in China in December is not yet known and is not reflected in the 2022 population statistics.
The numbers announced Tuesday are the start of what is expected to be a long decline in China's population, which the UN says could hit 800 million by the end of the century.
By contrast, the US population is projected to increase from the current 337 million, primarily through immigration.
The world population reached 8 billion in November, according to the UN.
Although populations are declining in many countries, this is the first time China's has declined since 1961, following a three-year famine spurred by then-leader Mao Zedong's industrialization drive, the "Great Leap Forward," which is estimated to have killed to tens of millions of people.
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Thereafter, the country experienced explosive growth during the second half of the 20th century, and its population more than doubled.
Concerned that overpopulation could harm development, the Chinese authorities introduced a series of reproductive restrictions centered on the "one-child policy," which ran from 1980 to 2015.
Although the one-child policy was effective in curbing population growth, critics say it led to rights abuses and a disproportionate number of men compared to women, especially in the countryside.
It also fundamentally changed Chinese ideas about family size, as parents realized that they could achieve upward social mobility by investing more in the education of just one child.
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that they can send their children to the best schools and then to the best universities,” he said.
Chinese authorities have anticipated the demographic crisis, allowing couples to have two children from 2016 and up to three from 2021. A national policy document released last year encouraged employers to provide childcare and flexible working arrangements and to local governments to offer preferred housing and other incentives.
Xi promised additional measures to increase the birth rate at a party congress in October.
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But public opinion has responded with indifference.
A study published last year by the YuWa Population Research Institute, a Beijing-based think tank, found that Chinese people's desire to have children was among the lowest in the world.
On Tuesday, the hashtag “increasing enthusiasm for motherhood starts with reducing the burden” was one of the top trends on Weibo, a popular Chinese social media platform.
The best way to reverse the trend, according to Deng, is to offer family allowances like those offered by some European governments.
“It takes a lot of resources to convince young Chinese that it pays to have a second child,” he says.
The relative lack of support makes motherhood especially unappealing to young urban women, such as Beijing resident Nora Yang, who declared herself “80%” against having children.
“The work environment is really hostile for mothers,” says Yang, 24.
"Once you have a baby, it's really hard to progress further in your career," she added.
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The young woman agreed with Deng that the government is not doing enough to change her mind.
If Chinese officials want to encourage childbearing, they should “give money to those who have the most babies.
Otherwise, they will fail,” he opined.