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China’s population has declined for a second consecutive year, exacerbating concerns around the future growth of the world’s second-largest economy.
Once the world’s most populous nation, China was overtaken by India last year according to the UN.
National data showed its population stood at 1.409bn , down some 2.08m from the previous year. Comparatively, India’s population stands at 1.425bn.
The decrease is more than double the previous year’s loss of 850,000 people.
That had marked the country’s first downturn in 60 years – the result of decades of falling birth rates and rapid urbanisation.
Beijing says the birth rate is now down to 6.39 per 1,000 people – the lowest on record. This is on par with other advanced East Asian countries with Japan’s birth rate at 6.3 and South Korea’s at 4.9.
After decades of a controversial one-child policy in place from 1980-2015, China has spent the past years trying to slow its plunging childbirth rate with subsidies and other policies to encourage families. In 2021 it allowed couples to have up to three children.
However the changes have borne little impact with young people citing deterrents like the cost of living in cities and career priorities for women.
On Wednesday, Chinese internet users pointed to these problems.
“If you let people live more easily, with more security, of course there will be more people wanting kids,” one user wrote in a top-liked comment on Weibo.
However, one analyst said China still has “plenty of manpower” and “a lot of lead time” to manage the demographic challenge.
“They are not in a doomsday scenario right away,” Paul Cheung, Singapore’s former chief statistician had earlier told the BBC.
Last year it battled through a widespread property crisis, falling consumer consumption and record youth joblessness.
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