China’s demographic time bomb quickly ticking down
China’s declining demographics are gloomier than previously estimated, a life and death challenge for the world’s second-largest economy policymakers have so far failed to address.
Preliminary provincial findings of a nationwide census now underway indicate that population growth in 2019 plunged to a 60-year low, despite Beijing’s move in 2016 to abandon its notorious “one-child” policy.
The 14.65 million newborns recorded across China last year were a third lower than the annual average throughout the 1990s and 2000s when the strict population control policy was still in place, initial nationwide census findings show.
China Business News recently reported that China had 142 million fewer births between 1990 and 2019 compared with the proceeding 30 years of population growth, based on National Statistics Bureau population database statistics.
During the 1960s, nearly 240 million Chinese were born with a gross birth rate of 43.6%. The sharp demographic decline since 1990 comes despite the fact that the enforcement of the “one-child” birth control policy, in place since 1979, slackened off during the period before being scrapped altogether in 2016.
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