From the Japan Times:
China has just announced that births in 2025 plunged to 7.92 million, from 9.54 million the previous year — and almost half of what was projected (14.33 million) when the one-child policy was repealed in 2016. In fact, China’s births have fallen to a level comparable to that of 1738, when the country’s total population was only about 150 million.
Having finally acknowledged the country’s grim demographic reality, Chinese authorities introduced new pro-natalist policies last year, expecting the number of births to rebound. But the decline in the fertility rate was inevitable, like a boulder rolling down a hill. Even if it can be pushed back uphill, it will not happen quickly.
After all, the downward trend in marriages will be difficult to reverse, since the number of women aged 20 to 34 — the group responsible for 85% of Chinese births — is expected to drop from 105 million in 2025 to 58 million by 2050. Compounding the problem, China’s marriage market suffers from a pronounced mismatch. Decades of sex-selective abortion have created a severe shortage of women of childbearing age and women’s higher educational attainment has created a “leftover women” phenomenon, with female students outnumbering males.
This colors so many global trends for the years to come. Can the world really concentrate more industrial production in a country shrinking this rapidly? How will the global economy grow if China is acting as such a powerful population sink and drain? How does this now somewhat-acknowledged reality change the calculations among China’s leadership about its window of opportunity to become the major global power?