China affected by a drop in its population for the second year in a row

In China, the trend of a decline in the population is confirmed after the publication, Wednesday January 17, of official figures for the year 2023.

“At the end of 2023, the national population was 1.40967 billion people” either “a drop of 2.08 million compared to that at the end of 2022”, announced the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The figure only includes people of Chinese nationality residing in mainland China. It does not include the inhabitants of the semi-autonomous Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macao, nor those of Taiwan (island of 23 million inhabitants claimed by Beijing).

Last year’s decline was more than double that of 2022, when the country lost 850,000 people and its population declined for the first time since the 1960s. During 2023, China has also lost its title of “most populous country in the world” for the benefit of India, according to the UN.

The number of deaths more than doubled in 2023, and the number of births decreased for the seventh year in a row. Around 9 million babies will be born in 2023 – compared to 9.5 million in 2022 – half the 2016 total.

Attempts to stem the decline

The demographic decline can be explained by several reasons, including the high cost of education, the lack of confidence in the economic future and the growing distrust of the institution of marriage – a necessary step in China before having children. . The increasing number of women pursuing higher education is also delaying the age of first pregnancy.

The Chinese government is trying to limit the decline through family allowances, which remain modest, abundant communication in favor of the birth rate or even by allowing, since 2021, all couples to have three children.

China, which once sought to control population growth through its one-child policy, now faces the opposite problem. The population is steadily aging, which could slow economic growth and challenge the country’s ability to support a larger older population with fewer workers.

The burden of tradition

Another problem is social. Tradition requires in China to take care of elderly parents, to an even greater degree than in Western societies. But since most couples in China today are made up of two adults who are only children, they have a lot to do in having to take care of their four elderly parents. A burden that becomes very important.

To try to compensate for this phenomenon, China presented this week a major seniors plan, which could amount to thousands of billions of euros, to cope with the growing need for services in the sector (retirement homes, entertainment, home care or even meal delivery).

What about, moreover, the use of immigration as a solution to demographic decline? “It’s not sustainable” because “over the coming decades, China’s population will decline by several hundred million people”, estimates independent demographer He Yafu to Agence France-Presse. This means that we would have to bring “hundreds of millions of people”gold “the vast majority of Chinese today oppose immigration and the authorities are very restrictive in this matter”he emphasizes.

According to him, “China’s population decline trend is fundamentally impossible to reverse” because the younger generations “are generally no longer willing to have many children.”