China enjoys a ‘year of the dragon’ birth rate, but the population has fallen again

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In 2024, China recorded its third consecutive year of population decline, even as the traditionally prosperous country saw its birth rate rise for the first time in a decade.

Figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Friday show that the country will record 9.54mn births in 2024, followed by 10.93mn deaths as Chinese families celebrate the Year of the Dragon in 2024. In 2023, the birth rate hit a record low.

In the year The increase in births was the first since 2016, bringing the country’s total population to 1.408 billion. India in the year By 2023, it will surpass China in terms of population.

China’s population is shrinking for the first time in 2022. Six decadesOriginating from the 1980s policy It ended in 2016 – limiting most couples to having just one child, below the average of 2.1 needed to keep the population stable.

Analysts say the birth rate has also been weighed down by economic pressures as the country grapples with declining growth rates.

A shrinking population has wider implications for the economy, with declining working ages putting pressure on labor productivity. The United Nations predicts that by 2050 China’s population will drop by more than 1.3 billion, while the number of people aged 65 and over will double.

“(The data) reinforces the new demographic situation China has found itself in,” said Stuart Gittel-Baston, a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “Population reduction is not easy, this is the new normal.”

Policymakers are pursuing options such as automation and robotics to maintain high productivity levels, as well as encouraging couples to have more children in the mix. Subsidies, tax breaks and fraud.

With more than a fifth of the country’s population aged 60 and over, according to public figures, a vibrant “silver economy” of products and services aimed at the growing elderly population has emerged.

Beijing unveiled market promotion guidelines last year focused on the development of food and health services worth trillions of renminbi.

The State Council, China’s cabinet, announced in October that it was planning a “birth-friendly society” as part of broader efforts to revive the sagging economy.

“I think adapting to this new demographic situation is a priority[for policymakers],” Guitel-Baston said. Many policies are offered and you will understand that this is a challenge but it is a matter of how far and how fast you can go.

Steve Tang, director of the SOS China Institute in London, says the high cost of raising children has also contributed to China’s demographic decline.

If conditions like these don’t change, “government policies to encourage multiple births are unlikely to have much effect,” he added. “In other words, the expectation is that China’s population will continue to decline for years, indeed for decades to come.