China's Population Decline Is Higher, Demographic Expert Reveals

China’s population decline, which the Chinese government officially confirmed in January, has led many observers to wonder if the country’s current demographic trends threaten its stability, Dr. Yi Fuxian wrote for Project Syndicate.

Photo Insert: The fertility rate (births per woman) fell to 1.0-1.1, well below the official forecast of 1.8. Notably, the number of births dropped sharply to 9.56 million, the fewest since 1790.

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said China’s population shrank last year for the first time in 60 years, nine years earlier than government projections had anticipated.

The fertility rate (births per woman) fell to 1.0-1.1, well below the official forecast of 1.8. Notably, the number of births dropped sharply to 9.56 million, the fewest since 1790, despite China’s shift to a two-child policy in 2016, Yi insisted.

The physician said China’s population decline started five years ago.

The sharp drop in the number of births is an illusion caused by a gross exaggeration of pre-2020 numbers. A sample survey from 2016 showed a fertility rate of 1.25 and only 13 million births, which was later inflated to 18.83 million.

Similarly, the United Nations’ World Population Prospects (WPP) report, regarded as a reliable source for estimates and projections of Chinese demographic trends, is wrong every time, without exception, Yi said. Yi, a senior scientist in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, authored “Big Country with an Empty Nest” in 2013.

“The 2022 WPP suggests that China’s population began to decline last year (10 years earlier than its 2019 projection), whereas I estimate that the decline began in 2018. The latest WPP also predicted that China’s population would fall to 767 million in 2100, far below its earlier forecast of 1.065 billion,” Yi argued.

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