China’s population has been in decline. In 2022, the country recorded the first drop in its population in about six decades. At the end of 2023, China’s population was 1.40967 billion, a decrease of 2.08 million over 2022, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Although China has adjusted its family planning policy to encourage couples to have three children, the downward trend has yet to be reversed. In previous decades, China’s society and economy have benefited from a demographic dividend, whereby the declining birth rate has increased the ratio of working-age people to their dependents. However, as these working-age people reach retirement age, the continued low birth rate is seeing proportionally fewer young people replacing them in the workforce, decreasing the proportion of working-age people within the…
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Beijing Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, Vol.67/No.11