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China’s population fell for the third straight year last year, its government said on Friday, pointing to further demographic challenges for the world’s second most populous nation, which is now facing both an aging population and a rising shortage of unemployed people.
China’s population stood at 1.408 billion at the end of 2024, a decrease of 1.39 million from the previous year.
The figures announced by the government in Beijing follow trends worldwide, but especially in East Asia, where Japan, South Korea and other nations have seen their birth rates fluctuate. China three years ago joined Japan and most of Eastern Europe among other nations whose population is falling.
The reasons are in many cases similar: Rising costs of living cause young people to put off or exclude marriage and birth of children while pursuing higher education and career. While people are living longer, that is not enough to keep up with the rate of new births.
Countries like China that allow very little immigration are especially at risk.
China has long been among the world’s most populous nations, enduring invasions, floods and other natural disasters to sustain a population that thrived on rice in the south and wheat in the north. After the end of World War II and the rise of the Communist Party to power in 1949, large families reappeared and the population doubled in just three decades, even after tens of millions died in the Great Leap Forward that attempted to revolutionize agriculture and industry. the Cultural Revolution that followed a few years later.
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After the end of the Cultural Revolution and the death of leader Mao Zedong, communist bureaucrats began to worry that the country’s population was outgrowing its ability to feed itself and began implementing a draconian “one child policy.” Although it was never law, women had to apply for permission to have a child and offenders could face forced late-term abortions and birth control procedures, massive fines and the prospect of their children being stripped of an identification number, effectively making them non-citizens .
Rural China, where the preference for male offspring was particularly strong and two children were still apparently allowed, became the focus of government efforts, with women forced to present proof that they were menstruating and buildings decorated with slogans such as “less children, better have children.”
The government sought to stamp out selective abortion of female children, but with abortion legal and readily available, those operating illegal sonogram machines enjoyed a booming business.
That has been the biggest factor in China’s skewed sex ratio, with as many as millions more boys born for every 100 girls, raising the possibility of social instability among China’s army of bachelors. Friday’s report gave the sexual imbalance as 104.34 men for every 100 women, although independent groups give the imbalance as considerably higher.
More disturbing to the government was the drastically falling birth rate, with China’s total population falling for the first time in decades in 2023 and China narrowly overtaking India as the world’s most populous nation in the same year. A rapidly aging population, declining workforce, lack of consumer markets and migration abroad put the system under severe pressure.
While spending on the military and flashy infrastructure projects continues to rise, China’s already fragile social security system is faltering, with increasing numbers of Chinese refusing to pay into the underfunded pension system.
Already, more than one fifth of the population is 60 years or older, with the official figure given as 310.3 million or 22% of the total population. By 2035, this number is expected to exceed 30%, sparking debate about changes to the official retirement age, one of the lowest in the world. With fewer students, some vacant schools and kindergartens are meanwhile being transformed into care facilities for the elderly.
Such developments lend some credence to the aphorism that China, now the world’s second largest economy but facing major headwinds, will “get old before it gets rich.”
Government incentives, including cash payments for having up to three children and financial help with housing costs, have had only temporary effects.
Meanwhile, China continued its transition to an urban society, with 10 million more people moving to cities for an urbanization rate of 67%, up almost a percentage point from the previous year.
& copy 2025 The Canadian Press
