China’s population growing at its slowest rate in 67 years

One simple question has kept China-watchers scratching their heads for years: Will the country get old before it gets rich? The metaphorical needle between both those two words has just shifted hard toward “old.”

China’s National Bureau of Statistics released data on Tuesday from its once-a-decade national census, which was conducted in late 2020.

“The population problem has always been an overall, long-term and strategic problem facing our country,” bureau director Ning Jizhe told journalists at a morning news conference.

The data show China’s population grew at its slowest pace since at least 1953 when modern-day census-taking started. There was an increase of just 5.4% from 2010. In absolute numbers, China added about 73 million people over the last decade. That’s still more than the populations of California and Texas, combined.

In total, China now has more than 1.411 billion people, up from 1.340 billion as counted in 2010.

But the population isn’t just getting older, it’s getting older, faster.

“First, the size of the elderly population is huge,” said Ning. “There are 260 million people aged 60 and over in the country.” For a frame of reference, the entire population of the United States is about 330 million.

“Second, the aging process has accelerated significantly,” he continued. “From 2010 to 2020, the proportion of the population aged 60 and above increased by 5.4%.” That represented a more than doubling in percentage terms from the 2.5% growth in the decade-spanning 2000 to 2010.

“Aging has become the basic national condition of our country for some time to come,” Ning said.

That remark, however, along with a question-and-answer session he held with 10 reporters, only appeared in the government’s official Chinese-language transcript. The English-language version ended after Ning’s prepared remarks.

In an effort to draw a silver lining around the cloud of China’s population concerns, Ning added: “At the same time, the increase in the elderly population will also bring wisdom.”

China is facing a problem of population replacement: Not enough people are being born to replace those who die. According to the census data, China recorded only 12 million births in 2020 — the lowest number in 49 years.

In 2015, China changed its controversial, decades-old one-child policy and decided to allow every household two children, with the hope of avoiding precisely the aging population problem the census data revealed this week.

But as more Chinese citizens get higher education, more women enter the workforce and people enjoy higher standards of living, more couples are choosing to either hold off on having children, having fewer of them, or remaining child-free.

The country joins other Asian nations (and some of its own territories) that are seeing similar, dire demographic shifts, including Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, and Taiwan, which have the lowest birth rate in the world.

For China, the shifting demographics could have serious ramifications for economic growth, and that could have a domino effect on social and political stability in the tightly-controlled communist state.

China’s people are its batteries for economic growth, and given the fact that China’s political and economic ties with the U.S. are currently as strained as they’ve been in decades, Beijing has been on a drive to increase domestic consumption. Right now, only about 39% of China’s economy is powered by domestic consumption, according to S&P. For comparison, the U.S. has domestic consumption to thank for about 70% of its economy.

When China’s population starts to shrink — and it will — the country’s economic growth will slow, and likely contract.

In 2018, the Global Times (a mouthpiece for the ruling Communist Party) warned that by 2050, China’s population would only be equivalent to about 65% of India’s, currently the world’s second-most populous country, and 32% by 2100.

The British medical journal The Lancet has predicted that China’s population will fall to 730 million by 2100, and the University of Wisconsin’s estimates are even more pronounced, showing China’s population will fall to just 350 to 450 million by 2100.

CBS