Growth rate of China's population slowing

China's once-in-a-decade census showed that the country's population ages rapidly while the overall growth rate slows, which may lead to a further relaxation of the family planning policy, Chinese demographers said. They predict that India with its much higher fertility rate will overtake China as the world's most populous country by 2023 or 2024, earlier than the last UN prediction of 2019 that this would happen by 2027. Over the past decade, China's population has continued to grow and China is still the most populous country in the world with 1.412 billion people in 2020, up from 1.4 billion at the end of 2019, according to the results of the seventh population census, which was released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) last week. The figures show that China's population is growing more slowly than in the past. From 2010 to 2020, the Chinese mainland's population grew by 5.38%, compared to an increase from 1.26 billion to 1.34 billion, up 5.84%, from 2000 to 2010.

Lu Jiehua, Professor of Sociology at Peking University, believes the Chinese population may peak around 2027 and start its decline thereafter. Some demographers believe the peak may come as soon as 2022. According to the census results, the average number of years of schooling for people aged 15 and over rose to 9.91 years from 9.08 years in 2010, and the gender ratio of the Chinese mainland's population reached 105.07 males to 100 females, slightly down from 105.2 in 2010. China's permanent urban population continues to increase, with the urban population on the mainland totaling 901.99 million, representing 63.89% of the total. Meanwhile, the country's ethnic population increased steadily to 125 million in 2020, accounting for 8.89% of the total population, up 0.4 percentage points compared with 2010. The number of people aged between 15 and 59 was 894 million, down by 6.79 percentage points from that in the 2010 census. The number of people aged 60 and above grew to 264 million, up from 177.6 million in the 2010 census, and the number of people aged 65 and above grew to 190 million, up from 118.8 million in the 2010 census. The number of seniors for the first time exceeded the number of children in the population census. The past decade has also seen the fastest growth in the number of seniors in China, said Du Peng, Professor at the School of Sociology and Population Studies at Renmin University of China. This could lead to China raising the retirement age. According to the Outline of the 14th Five Year Plan (2021-2025) for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035, China will take small steps to raise the retirement age.

China is also facing the risk of falling into the trap of low fertility, as it recorded 12 million births in 2020, marking a drop for the fourth consecutive year. China's fertility rate was 1.3, a relatively low level. Liang Jianzhang, Economics Professor at Peking University, told the Global Times that China's fertility rate will continue to drop in the coming years, and may become the world's lowest. “According to existing data, in the next 10 years, the number of women aged 22 to 35, which is the childbearing period, will drop by more than 30%. Without strong policy intervention, China's newborn population is likely to fall below 10 million in the next few years, and its fertility rate will be lower than Japan's, perhaps the lowest in the world,” Liang predicted. According to the World Bank, the birth rate of South Korea, Japan, the U.S., and the EU in 2018 was 0.98, 1.42, 1.73, and 1.6 respectively. Demographer He Yafu told the Global Times that there is no doubt that China will fully lift the family planning policy in the near future, as early as this autumn.

Western media have been predicting how China's growing gray population will cause a looming economic crisis. According to them, the China's economy is at the verge of collapse, with a shrinking labor force undermining core competitiveness, disrupting the social structure and pushing away foreign investment, the Global Times writes, but the paper adds that observers have painted a drastically different picture as the sheer size of the market will keep expanding with the rise of disposable incomes. As generations become richer, better educated and more tech-savvy, this will speed up the shift from low-end manufacturing to digital and high-tech industries and high value-added services such as luxury, healthcare and travel, according to analysts consulted by the Global Times.

China's per capita disposable income reached CNY32,189 in 2020, more than double the level in 2010 and above the average level of middle-income countries, according to the NBS.