Allie Song/Reuters
A family strolls through a park in Shanghai last year.
Editor’s note: Sign up for CNN’s newsletter “while in china,” which explores what you need to know about the rise of China and its impact on the world.
Hong Kong
CNN
—
China’s population will decline for the second consecutive year in 2023, exacerbating demographic challenges that are expected to have a significant impact on the world’s second-largest economy.
China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced on Wednesday that the population in 2023 will be 1.49 billion, down about 2.08 million from the previous year.
NBS confirmed that China’s economic growth rate last year was 5.2%, against the government’s target of about 5%. Although this expansion represents a significant recovery compared to his 2022, when China’s economy grew just 3%, the country’s economic performance remains among the worst in more than 30 years.
China’s birth rate also fell to 6.39 births per 1,000 people, down from 6.77 the previous year, the lowest level since the founding of communist China in 1949, and the lowest on record. Approximately 9.02 million babies were born compared to 9.56 million in 2022. .
The country’s labor force, made up of people aged 16 to 59, decreased by 10.75 million from 2022, but the number of seniors aged 60 and over increased by 16.93 million from 2022.
The latest figures come as China’s population fell for the first time in decades in 2022, with analysts saying the country’s population had declined due to former leader Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward. This is the first decline since the 1961 famine. Last year, China overtook India as the world’s most populous country.
The decline in birth rates comes despite decades of birth control policies encouraging more couples to have children.
The Chinese government has recognized that this regulation could lead to a rapidly aging population and shrinking labor force, seriously undermining the country’s economic and social stability, and has been highly controversial for decades. The country abolished its one-child policy in 2015.
This is a developing story and will be updated.