SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
Singapore: China’s population shrank for a third year in a row in 2024, even as the country saw an increase in births, the decline representing a major long-term challenge to the country’s economic growth.
With the number of deaths outpacing births, China’s population slid back by 1.39 million in 2024 to hit a total of 1.408 billion at the year’s end, official figures released by the Chinese government on Friday showed.
About 9.54 million babies were born, about 520,000 more than the year before.
China’s population shrank for a third consecutive year in 2024, even as the country saw a modest increase in birthsCredit: AP
The population figures were released by the National Bureau of Statistics alongside the country’s economic data, which showed China hit its annual growth target of 5 per cent last year, fuelled by a boom in exports. It came after a year of intense anxiety among policymakers over its slowing expansion.
Beijing rolled out a series of measures in the second half of the year, including a stimulus package worth about $US1 trillion, but many economists have remained sceptical about the country’s longer-term economic outlook as it continues to be weighed down by the property market collapse.
“To make sure they’re in a strong position to weather the uncertainty around US tariffs, and to make sure consumers don’t get stuck, they need to do more with policy through February and March,” Westpac senior economist Elliot Clarke said.
A boy and a woman shop at a market in Beijing, Credit: AP
Population decline has been a major concern for the Chinese government as it grapples with the myriad economic consequences of a rapidly ageing population, including a shrinking worker base to drive innovation and growth and the dedication of more welfare spending to aged care.
China’s fertility rate is hovering around one birth per woman, well below the 2.1 replacement rate needed for population growth, leading experts to forecast that its decline will continue for many decades.
Dr Xiujian Peng, a senior research fellow specialising in China’s demography at Victoria University, said once the fertility rate dipped below 2.1 it was very difficult for countries to reverse the trend.
“Even if China could magically increase the fertility rate in a very short period of time to 2.1, in our calculation it would still take between 50 [and] 70 years to change this decline to the positive,” she said.
“That’s why we can say that for many years we will see the population decline in China.”
The Chinese government has rolled out a series of measures aimed at encouraging women to have babies since officially abandoning the one-child policy almost a decade ago. In 2021, it embraced a three-child policy and more recently it has rolled out cash incentives for women having a second or third child, as well as childcare subsidies.
Dr Fuxian Yi, a demographer and an obstetrician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the increase in births in 2024 was temporary and could be attributed to the long tail of the Chinese government’s Zero-COVID policy that led some people to delay marriage and childbearing.
“The end of the policy in December 2022 led to a 12 per cent increase in marriages in 2023, which means there was a temporary rebound in births in 2024 compared to 2023,” he said.
But 2024 also saw a sharp drop in marriages, suggesting that the number of births in 2025 would also plummet, he said.
Many of China’s neighbours are also facing a demographic crisis, with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all experiencing shrinking populations. Women’s expectations around career goals, as well as the cost of raising children and poor support structures, are commonly attributed as key reasons for the declining fertility rate.
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