In 2023, China’s population declined for a second year in a row due to a record low birth rate and a wave of COVID-19 deaths that coincided with the lifting of strict lockdowns. These factors will have a significant long-term impact on the country’s prospects for economic growth.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China’s population fell by 2.08 million, or 0.15%, to 1.409 billion in 2023.
That was significantly more than the 850,000 population decline in 2022—the first since 1961, during the Great Famine of the Mao Zedong regime.
After three years of strict screening and quarantine measures that kept the virus mostly controlled until authorities abruptly relaxed limitations in December 2022, China saw a massive countrywide COVID surge early last year.
With 11.1 million fatalities overall last year, a 6.6% increase in the death rate brought the death rate to its highest point since the Cultural Revolution in 1974. Moreover, 9.02 million babies were born, a 5.7% decrease from 2022. The birth rate also dropped to a historic low of 6.39 per 1,000 inhabitants.
Due to the country’s growing urbanization during the 1980–2015 one-child policy and its implementation, birth rates have been falling for decades. Similar to previous economic booms in South Korea and Japan, China saw a large-scale population shift from rural fields to cities, where raising a family is more expensive.
In 2022, South Korea had a birth rate of 4.9 per 1,000 people, while Japan had 6.3 per 1,000.
In 2023, China’s desire to have more children was further stifled as youth unemployment reached all-time highs, earnings for many white-collar workers declined, and a crisis in the property sector—where more than two-thirds of household wealth is held—grew worse.
