With the lowest birth rate since 1949 and a serious aging population, it lost 850,000 inhabitants last year and will be surpassed by India as the most populous country.
In a historic change that will affect the entire planet, China, the most populous country, is already losing its population. It is doing this for the first time since 1961, when it suffered the Great Leap Forward famine due to Mao Zedong’s disastrous statist and agrarian collectivist mistakes. Although the current moment is very different, this change in demographic trend will affect the global economy in the future with consequences that are yet to be felt. The first, as predicted by the UN, is that India will overtake China as the world’s most populous country this year.
According to data released Tuesday by the National Bureau of Statistics, deaths outnumbered births last year in China, which lost 850,000 residents. From 1,412,600 million in 2021, it went to 1,411,800 in 2022 as the birth rate continued to fall, which fell by almost 10%. Last year, Chinese mothers gave birth to 9.5 million babies, in 2021 there will be 10.6. With this data, the birth rate marked an all-time low of 6.77 births per 1,000 people, much lower than the 7.52 in 2021 and the lowest rate since records began in 1949. In comparison, India presents 16.42 births per thousand people and even highly developed countries, such as the United States or the United Kingdom, show a higher birth rate: 11.06 and 10.08 respectively.
With the largest increase since 1976, the national mortality average was 7.37 per thousand inhabitants, which means an increase compared to the 7.18 deaths in 2021 and a demographic reduction of 0.6 per thousand inhabitants. An even higher mortality is expected for this year due to the deaths caused by the covid after the end of restrictions in December, which has already officially claimed almost 60,000 lives in just one month. And this only counts those who died in hospitals and not at home, so the actual number is even higher. 90% of the deceased are older than 65 years.
Adding to this demographic crisis is the aging of China’s population, which already numbers 280 million people over the age of 60. That is 13 million more than in 2021, when they accounted for 18.9% of the census. For their part, the over-65s have gone from 200 to 209.7 million, 14.85% of the population.
With fewer children and more elderly people, the consequences will be paid for by the labor force, which remains around 875.56 million people. With ages between 16 and 59, they make up 62% of the population, half a point less than in 2021. This reduction in the labor force, which has been crucial to China’s economic growth since opening up to capitalism, will put pressure on the meager pension system in place in the country. To make matters worse, the unemployment rate among young people between the ages of 16 and 24 is around 17%, a very high figure that prevents them from thinking about starting a family.
In just four decades, China has moved from the invasive “one-child policy” to curb its overpopulation to a serious demographic problem, as often happens in other advanced countries, not only in the West, but also in Asia, such as Japan and South Korea South. The UN estimates that the population will drop to 1,313 million by 2050 and to less than 800 million by 2100, complicating its plans to dethrone the US as the leading economic power.
Due to the high cost of raising a child, and even more so in a society as competitive as China’s, today’s couples no longer form large families like their parents. In the past, they faced fines and dismissals for having more than one child or forced to abort and even kill the girls born, resulting in more men than women due to the preference for boys. In fact, even the end of the one-child policy in 2016 did not trigger the expected ‘baby boom’. In some cities, local authorities offer incentives such as tax credits and employment benefits, and even checks of up to 19,000 yuan (2,600 euros), such as in Shenzhen. Few couples want more than one child and China, the world’s most populous country to date, continues to slide demographically.
Source: La Verdad
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