China’s Population Shrinks for First Time Since 1960s in Seismic Shift
- Births decline despite efforts to encourage bigger families
- Nation already facing increasingly serious demographic crisis
This article is for subscribers only.
China’s population started shrinking in 2022 for the first time in six decades, the latest milestone in a worsening demographic crisis for the world’s second-largest economy.
The country had 1.41 billion people at the end of last year, 850,000 fewer than the end of 2021, according to data released by the National Statistics Bureau on Tuesday. That marks the first drop since 1961, the final year of the Great Famine under former leader Mao Zedong, and coincided with figures showing China’s economy expanded last year at the second-slowest pace since the 1970s.