China population: Beijing urged to act in face of ‘brutal’ facts of slower birth rate, declining workforce

Name: China birth rate at 60-year low as new census shows population grew slightly to 1.412 billion
Uploaded: 2021-05-11T14:30:15.000Z
Duration: 2 min 33 s
Description: China birth rate at 60-year low as new census shows population grew slightly to 1.412 billion

New census data confirms China’s workforce will decline over the next decade, a trend that could weaken long-term productivity, consumer demand and innovation

Experts warn if China does not address its low birth rate it could see a fate similar to Japan, where economic growth slowed as the population declined

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China birth rate at 60-year low as new census shows population grew slightly to 1.412 billion

Amanda LeeandOrange Wang

Published: 10:30pm, 11 May 2021Updated: 10:02am, 13 May 2021

China’s population has grown to 1.412 billion over the past decade, the slowest pace since the 1950s, in a continuing demographic shift to a declining labour force and rapidly ageing society that is expected to weigh on the country’s economic progress in the years ahead.

While the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said the population would stay above 1.4 billion “for a certain period of time” as it unveiled the results of a once-in-a-decade census on Tuesday, experts warned that strong steps would have to be taken to tackle the country’s falling birth rate to avoid the same fate as Japan, which has seen weak economic growth under the same trend.

The population of mainland China grew 5.38 per cent in 2020 from 10 years earlier, the smallest rate of expansion since the census began in 1953, according to the survey results.

The number of new births last year stood at 12 million, down from 14.65 million in 2019, the NBS said, marking an 18 per cent decline year on year and approaching a near six-decade low.

The fertility rate – the number of children per woman of child-bearing age – fell to 1.3, below the level of 2.1 that experts say is needed to maintain a stable population.

“China’s population will reach its peak in the future, but the specific timing remains uncertain. It is expected that the total population will remain above 1.4 billion in the next period of time,” NBS chief Ning Jizhe said at a press conference on Tuesday.

While China’s labour force resources “are still abundant,” its ageing society has become a “basic reality”, Ning said.