China's population falls for second straight year

Jan. 17 (UPI) -- China's population declined for a second consecutive year, according to statistics released Wednesday.

The data from Beijing's National Bureau of Statistics states the population was 1.409 billion as of the end of 2023, marking a decline of 2.08 million from a year prior, which was the first decline the Asian nation experienced in six decades.

The decrease is due to a dropping birth rate, which hit a record low of 6.39 births per 1,000 people, a decrease from 6.77 births in 2022. The number of deaths for the year was 11.1 million.

The announcement comes after the United Nations earlier this year said India had surpassed China as the world's most populated nation with some 1.428 billion people.

"It's not a surprise," Prof. Stuart Gietl-Basten, an expert in population policy at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, told the BBC.

China is undergoing a deindustrialization. Other Asian nations, such as South Korea and Japan, which have undergone the same transition, are experiencing a similar population trend.

China is "kind of locked in now," he said. "This is just the next year in this new era of population stagnation or decline for China."

The dropping birth rate comes despite national efforts to bolster the number of babies being born as there are fears that a decrease in the number of working-age people will sap the economy.

President Xi Jinping has called for women in China to return to more traditional homemaker roles, and in November at the opening of the National Women's Congress called for the fostering of "a new type of marriage and childbearing culture," The New York Times reported.