A demographic crisis threatens the largest country in the world in terms of population

China's population is declining for the first time in more than 60 years

Some Chinese women choose not to have children because of the high cost of raising a child despite government inducements.

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China's population declined last year for the first time in more than six decades, official data showed yesterday, at a time of a looming demographic crisis threatening the world's most populous country.

The country of 1.4 billion people has seen its birth rate drop to record levels as its workforce ages, a rapid decline that analysts warn could stifle economic growth and pile pressure on stretched public coffers.

The population of mainland China will reach 1,411,750,000 billion by the end of 2022, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, down 850,000 from the previous year.

The country recorded 9.56 million births and 10.41 million deaths in 2022, according to the Statistics Office.

The last time a population decline was recorded in China was in the early 1960s, when the country faced the worst famine in its modern history due to Mao Zedong's disastrous agricultural policy known as the "Great Leap Forward."

And in 2016, China ended the “one-child policy” that it imposed in the eighties due to fears of a massive population increase, and in 2021 it began allowing couples to have three children.

However, this measure did not succeed in reversing the demographic decline in a country that has often relied on its labor force as an engine of economic growth.

"China cannot rely on the demographic dividend as a structural driver of economic growth," said Jiuyi Zhang of Binpont Asset Management.

"Economic growth should depend more on productivity growth driven by government policies," he added.

The news of the population decline spread quickly on China's closely monitored internet, and some expressed fears about the country's future.

"Without children, there is no future for the state and the homeland," wrote one of the commentators on the "Weibo" social networking platform, which is synonymous with "Twitter".

One well-known "patriotic" influencer wrote, "Having children is also a social responsibility."

But others point to the very high cost of living and the difficulties associated with raising children in modern China.

She wrote, "I love my mother, I will not become a mother."

Another wrote, "No one thinks about the reasons why we don't want to have children and get married."

Many local authorities have initiated measures to encourage couples to have children.

For example, the large city of Schengen, located in the south, now provides a birth allowance and pays allowances until the child reaches the third year.

When a couple has their first child, they automatically get 3,000 yuan ($444), and the amount rises to 10,000 with the birth of the third child.

In the east of the country, since January 1, the city of Jinan has been paying a monthly sum of 600 yuan to couples who have a second child.

"The Chinese are getting used to the small family because of the decades-old one-child policy," Xujian Ping, a researcher at the Australian University of Victoria, told AFP.

"The Chinese government must find effective policies that encourage childbirth, otherwise fertility rates will drop further," she added.

And China's population may decline each year at a rate of 1.1%, according to a study by the Academy of Social Sciences in Shanghai, which was updated last year and sent to "Agence France Presse".

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