China’s population fell last year for the first time in 60 years. This is a historic turning point that is expected to mark the beginning of a long period of population decline that will severely impact the Chinese economy and the world.
The country’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that about 850,000 of her population of 1,417.5 million will decline in 2022. This is her first decline since 1961, the last year of China’s Great Famine. “China’s demographic and economic outlook is much darker than expected.
China will have to adjust its social, economic, defense and foreign policies,” said demographer Yi Fuxian”.
He added that the country’s shrinking labor force and lower manufacturing output, will exacerbate high prices and high inflation in the United States and Europe. “Economic growth will have to rely more on productivity growth,” added Zhiwei Zhang, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.
Kang Yi( Director of the National Bureau of Statistics) dismissed concerns about the declining population and told reporters that “total labor supply is still outstripping demand.”
China’s fertility rate was just 6.77 per 1,000 people last year, and in 2021 it will be 7.52, the lowest on record. The number of Chinese women of childbearing age, defined by the government as ages 25 to 35, has dropped by about 4 million, Kang said.
China’s highest death rate since 1974 during the Cultural Revolution was 7.37 deaths per 1,000, compared to her 7.18 death rate in 2021.
Longer term, UN experts expect China’s population to fall by 109 million by 2050. That’s more than three times he’s down from his previous forecast for 2019.
That leaves domestic demographers to lament that China will get older before it gets richer, and the economy will slow as revenues fall and public debt rises against the backdrop of rising health and welfare costs.
