China's Population Drops For the First Time In Decades

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: China's population declined in 2022, the National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday. The drop was the first since the early 1960s, according to Yi Fuxian, a critic of China's one-child policy and author of the book "Big Country With an Empty Nest." Mainland China's population, excluding foreigners, fell by 850,000 people in 2022 to 1.41 billion, the statistics bureau said. The country reported 9.56 million births and 10.41 million deaths for 2022. In 2021, China's population grew by the slowest increase on record. The mainland China population, excluding foreigners, rose by 480,000 to 1.41 billion people at the end of 2021, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. New births on the mainland fell by 13% in 2021 to 10.62 million babies, the data showed. In 2020, new births fell by 22%, according to the data. "The population will likely trend down from here in coming years," said Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management. "This is very important, with implications for potential growth and domestic demand." The National Bureau of Statistics also reported that China's economy expanded by 3% in 2022, far below the government's target. "It also marks one of the worst performances in nearly half a century," reports CNN. This is a developing story...

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