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Opinion | With China unlikely to see a baby boom, boosting population quality should be the focus
- Policies to encourage couples to have children will have a limited impact, especially now that small family sizes are the norm
- Instead, Beijing should take steps to improve education and skills training, reform the healthcare system and create the conditions for healthy living
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China’s population in 2022 stood at 1.4118 billion, 850,000 less than in 2021, and the first drop in 61 years. There were 9.56 million births last year, or 6.77 per 1,000 people, while the number of deaths was 10.41 million, or 7.37 per 1,000. The resulting rate of natural population growth is minus 0.6 per cent.
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Also, because the number of people moving onto the mainland is much smaller than the number of people leaving, it is very likely that population growth will gradually decrease. This marks a turning point that will have a far-reaching and serious impact on the socioeconomic development of mainland China, and the world.
China will join high-income countries such as Japan and South Korea in facing depopulation and it will be replaced by India as the world’s most populous country this year.
In a resource-constrained global environment, a declining population is not necessarily a bad thing. With fewer consumers, there will be a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, which will benefit the environment.
However, it is not the size but the distribution of the population that matters. The government needs to carefully address the impact of a decline in population growth that is accompanied by a rapidly ageing population.
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In 2022, 280.04 million people in China were aged over 60, 19.8 per cent of the total population. The life expectancy of the population is expected to continue to increase, which will exacerbate the negative impact of the ageing population.
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