China’s population about to shrink for the first time since the great famine 60 years ago
As per reports released by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the country’s population increased from 1.41212 billion to 1.41260 billion in the year 2021, which is an increase of 480000. A decade ago, this number stood at 8 million people.
World’s most populous country China’s population might start to shrink soon. In the past many decades, the population of China grew from 660 Mn to a whopping 1.4 bn. The country has been the most populous country for many centuries but that might change soon and India shall be taking China’s place.
Mao Zedong ordered China’s citizens to have more kids when he was in power. That soon changed when China’s population increased rapidly which is when they implemented the infamous one child policy. The one child policy helped China to curb its population explosion. The one child policy was scraped few years ago and was replaced by three child policy. However, it was reported that Chinese couples still preferred to have single child, despite the tax incentives and few other benefits.
China’s current fertility rate is 1.15 which is significantly less than 2.1 which is the rate needed to replaced the deaths. US’s and Australia’s birth rate for 2021 stood at 1.6 whereas Japan’s stands at 1.3 per women.
There are many reasons to why Chinese citizens prefer to have a single child, one of them being having used to living in small families, rising living cost, infertility related to delayed births. China reportedly has fewer females of fertile age than previously thought.
China’s sex ratio is quite uneven thanks to couples opting to keep boys in the 1980s as a result of one child policy.
This shrinkage was expected a decade from now however it looks like it is already here. According to studies conducted, China’s population will peak at 1.44 bn people in 2029 and will start to fall. China’s population will start to fall at the rate of 1.1 every year, and at the end of the century, the population will be at 590 million which is half of what is today. Such a shrinkage will heavily impact the Chinese economy. China’s working age peaked in 2014 and will be roughly 33% at the end of the century compared to today.
Due to rapidly ageing population and rising Chinese income, western countries have been looking to shift their manufacturing bases to other Asian countries like Bangladesh Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines and India.
