China’s population is shrinking due to corona and declining birth rate: “Pension system without money in 2035” | Abroad

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the total number of inhabitants will have fallen by more than two million to more than 1.4 billion in 2023. That is a faster decline than in 2022, when the population shrank by 850,000 people compared to 2021. That was the first time the population had declined since 1961. But in the early 1960s there was a famine in the Asian country after the “Great Leap” industrialization campaign Forward”.

However, last year it was the Covid pandemic that struck: China was hit by a significant wave of infections at the beginning of 2023, after the authorities lifted the strict corona rules that had been in force for three years at the end of 2022. The death rate increased by 6.6 percent.

Moreover, the birth rate has been declining for decades due to the ‘one-child policy’ that applied from 1980 to 2015. During that period, each couple was only allowed to have one child, to combat overpopulation. Parents who did not follow the rules could even be forced to have an abortion. The relaxation of the controversial birth control policy in 2016 only temporarily led to a slight increase in the birth rate.

Since 2021, every couple can even have three children. Yet the birth rate continues to decline. According to experts, this is also because large populations from the Chinese countryside moved to the city, where having a child is more expensive.

Many blame the 5.7 percent decline in the birth rate last year on rising costs of living and a growing number of women working or attending college. Youth unemployment also rose to record levels in 2023, wages for white-collar workers fell and the real estate sector (in which two-thirds of household wealth is invested) was hit by a crisis.

According to the Chinese Statistics Bureau, the national economy will grow by 5.2 percent in 2023. That is also one of the lowest growth levels in three decades, excluding the corona period. In 2022, the economy grew by 3 percent, despite the corona measures. The growth forecast for 2024 will be announced at the annual meeting of the People’s Congress in March.

The bad news cocktail dampens long-term expectations for the world’s second-largest economy, which will face a decline in the number of workers and consumers, while rising costs of elderly care and pensions put pressure on the finances of indebted (local) governments .

The Chinese Academy of Sciences, meanwhile, expects the pension system to run out of money by 2035. In that year, more than 400 million Chinese aged 60 and over will be entitled to pension. That’s almost as many people as the entire population of the United States and Mexico combined.

In China, 6.39 children were born per 1,000 people last year. That is down from the figure of 6.77 births in 2022 and the lowest birth rate ever recorded. For comparison: in that year, about 9.4 births per 1,000 inhabitants were counted in the Flemish Region. Figures for 2023 are not yet available.

China’s mortality rate in 2023 was 7.87 deaths per 1,000 people, compared to a figure of 7.37 deaths in 2022. In the Flemish Region, around 10 deaths per 1,000 people were counted that year.