People walk out on the Bund promenade along the Huangpu River in Shanghai on January 16, 2023.
Hector Retamal Afp | Getty Images
BEIJING – China’s population will decline in 2022, the National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday.
The decline is the first since the early 1960s, according to Yi Fuxian, a critic of China’s one-child policy and author of the book “A Big Country With an Empty Nest.”
China’s mainland population, excluding foreigners, will drop by 850,000 people in 2022 to 1.41 billion, the statistics bureau said. The country reports 9.56 million births and 10.41 million deaths in 2022.
By 2021, China’s population will grow at the slowest rate on record. China’s mainland population, excluding foreigners, will increase by 480,000 to 1.41 billion people by 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 decreased by 22%, according to the data.
Separately over the weekend, Chinese health authorities announced nearly 60,000 Covid-related deaths in Chinese hospitals between December 8, 2022, and January 12, 2023. The majority were senior citizens, and the average age of death was 80.3 years, authorities said. .
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