China facing crisis as country to lose 50 million people in population collapse | World | News
China could lose over 50 million people in the next ten years and shrink its population size by 50% by 2100, according to new analysis from Bloomberg Intelligence.
Once the most populous country in the world before it was overtaken by India last year, China could see its population drop further from a 2021 peak of 1.41 billion to 1.36 billion by 2025, according to research based on data from the United Nations.
Reports suggest that this decline could then accelerate further and drop to just 770 million by the end of the century.
The Chinese government has introduced measures to accelerate the birth rate over the last decade, including revising its controversial one-child policy, extending it first to two and then three children in 2021—but the numbers show it hasn’t been enough to reverse the negative trend.
Deaths outnumbered births in the country for the second year in a row in 2023, a trend widely thought to be driven by a growing older population and the correlation between advanced education for women and a lack of offspring.
Authorities are, however, hoping to reform “the barriers standing between reproductive-age couples and their desires to build families”, Ada Li, senior industry analyst at Bloomberg, told Newsweek, based on the link between marriage and births in East Asian societies.
The Chinese government is also trying to encourage people to continue working into later life by raising the statutory retirement age for men from 60 to 63, beginning in 2025.
It’s an uphill battle—Li estimates that 40% of China’s population is made up of those aged 60 and above, which poses a risk to the country’s rate of economic activity.
An effort to incentivise parenthood to young people will also be difficult, given the country’s high youth unemployment rates and low wage growth.
Zhou Yun, a demographer at the University of Michigan, told Reuters that, “as we have observed again and again from other low-fertility countries, fertility decline is often very difficult to reverse.”
China isn’t alone in the struggle against a shrinking population. Neighbouring countries are facing similar challenges. South Korea, which has the lowest fertility rate in the world at 0.72 births per woman, is launching a government ministry dedicated to tackling the decline this year.
