The reduction is anticipated to have a significant influence on the global economy and lends credence to forecasts that India may surpass China as the world’s most populated nation.
China has experienced its first population decrease in sixty years, as its birth rate has declined.
China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported on Tuesday that the world’s most populous nation had 850,000 fewer inhabitants at the end of 2022 than it had the previous year.
The agency stated in a briefing that the global population was 1.41 billion, with 9.56 million births and 10.41 million deaths.
Excluding Hong Kong and Macao as well as international inhabitants, the figure solely covers the population of mainland China.
The decline, the first since 1961 in the final year of China’s Great Famine, is anticipated to have far-reaching effects on the country’s economy and the global economy.
China’s birth rate decreased from 7.52 births per 1,000 people in 2021 to 6.77 births per 1,000 people in 2022, the lowest birth rate on record.
The demographic drop is largely attributable to China’s 35-year-long one-child policy and the high cost of raising children.
It also supports forecasts that India could become the most populated nation in the world.
“The outlook is worse than expected”
Yi Fuxian, a demographer, stated that the country’s diminishing labor force and decline in industrial heft would worsen high prices and inflation in the United States and Europe.
“The demographic and economic picture for China is significantly worse than anticipated. China must modify its social, economic, defense, and diplomatic policies “he added.
However, according to Kang Yi, the head of China’s National Bureau of Statistics. The country’s overall labor supply still surpasses demand.
India is anticipated to surpass China as the world’s most populated nation if it has not already.
According to Statista, in 2022, Africa had a total population of 1,4 billion people. India’s population is estimated to be greater than 1,4 billion.
Last year, the United Nations projected that India will surpass China as the world’s most populous nation in 2023.
According to projections by the US Census Bureau, the United States has a population of over 333 million people. Whilst the Office for National Statistics projects the population of the United Kingdom to be 67.1 million in 2020.
Effects of the one-child policy
From 1980 until 2015, the Chinese government enforced the one-child policy in response to worries about fast population growth.
It was tightly enforced and limited families to one child; women were frequently forced to undergo abortions. Many of which were gender-selective because of the historical and cultural tendency for families to have males.
Since 2021, however, local governments have introduced incentives such as tax discounts and extended maternity leave to promote more births.
It is believed that China’s previous population fall occurred at the end of the 1950s when Mao Zedong’s push for collective farming and industrialization resulted in a severe famine that killed tens of millions of people.
