After showing the lowest population growth rate since the 1950s, China announced this Monday (1st) that its population will begin to decline from 2025. The announcement is unprecedented in the country, according to information from the state-run newspaper Global Times.
Today the most populous country in the world, with around 1.4 billion inhabitants, according to updated UN projections, the Asian nation is facing a demographic crisis in the face of a rapidly aging population and a declining fertility rate.
The number of children per family has fallen below 1.3 in recent years, the National Health Commission said in a text published in Qiushi, a magazine linked to the Chinese Communist Party. Beijing relaxed its strict one-child policy in 2016 and last year allowed each couple to have up to three children, but the measures have had no effect.
The country is expected to enter a phase of severe population aging from 2035, when people over 60 are expected to make up more than 30% of the national population. According to the report, the average Chinese household size has declined to around 2.6 people in 2020, nearly 0.5 fewer than a decade earlier.
“In the past, we focused on population control, but now we must focus on establishing adequate levels of fertility, improving quality of life and optimizing population distribution, promoting balanced long-term development,” the report said.
The country has introduced financial support policies for families with more than one child. The city of Nanchan, capital of Jiangxi Province, in the eastern part of the country, announced last Saturday (30), according to the Global Times, that families with two or three children under the age of 18 will receive a subsidy ranging from 300 to 500 yuan. (R$230 to R$384).
A recent report published by the UN with projections of the global population suggests that the Chinese population is already decreasing. The material calculates that the country had 1,425,838,000 inhabitants last year. This year, it would be 1,425,887,000 — down from 6,000.
According to the data, the growth rate of the Chinese population would have already reached zero last year. For the global average, in turn, the projection is that the population will stop growing only in 2086. In the case of Brazil, the population peak should be reached in 2046 and, from then on, the national population would begin to decrease.
The same material showed that India is expected to overtake China as the world’s most populous country in 2023 — four years earlier than previously predicted, in the pre-pandemic report that was released.
