Journalism of Courage
China’s population shrank for the first time in decades last year as its birthrate plunged, official figures showed Tuesday. Despite the official numbers, some experts believe China's population has been in decline for a few years — a dramatic turn in a country that once sought to control such growth through a one-child policy. (AP)
The world’s most populous country has reached a pivotal moment: experts say that this steady, years-long decline in China's birthrate will be irreversible. (Reuters)
China has worried for years about an aging population's effect on the economy and society, but the population was not expected to go into decline for almost a decade. (Reuters)
Earlier this week, the Chinese government said that 9.56 million people were born in China in 2022, while 10.41 million people died. (Reuters)
It was the first time deaths had outnumbered births in China since the early 1960s, when the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong’s failed economic experiment, led to widespread famine and death. (Reuters)
That decline, coupled with a long-running rise in life expectancy, is thrusting China into a demographic crisis that will have consequences in this century, not just for China and its economy but for the world, experts said. (Reuters)
The news comes at a challenging time for the government in Beijing, which is dealing with the fallout from the sudden reversal last month of its zero-tolerance policy toward Covid. (Reuters)
That trend is hastening another worrying event: the day when China will not have enough people of working age to fuel the high-speed growth that made it an engine of the global economy. (Reuters)
