China’s population drop quickened in 2023, official data revealed Wednesday, extending a downward trend after more than six decades of development as the country grapples with a looming demographic crisis.
China, formerly the world’s most populated country, was surpassed by India last year, and Beijing is now scrambling to improve plummeting birth rates through subsidies and fertility propaganda.
“By the end of 2023, the national population was 1,409.67 million… a 2.08 million decrease over that at the end of 2022”, Beijing’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported Wednesday.
Last year’s decrease was more than double that of 2022 when the country lost 850,000 people as its population fell for the first time since 1960.
“In 2023, the number of births was 9.02 million with a birth rate of 6.39 per thousand”, the NBS stated Wednesday, a decrease from 9.56 million in 2022.
China lifted its rigorous ‘one-child policy’, enacted in the 1980s due to overpopulation concerns, in 2016 and began allowing couples to have three children in 2021.
However, this has not reversed the country’s demographic loss, which has historically relied on its large workforce to generate economic growth.
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