In 2021, China’s birth rate was 0.752% versus a death rate of 0.718%
The latest population data from China is out but there is no good news for its ageing population. In 2021, China’s population grew by only 0.034 per cent. This is the lowest since the early 1960s when Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward killed over 30 million people.
The population growth rate is the difference between the birth rate and the death rate. In 2021, China’s birth rate was 0.752 per cent versus a death rate of 0.718 per cent.
China recorded only 10.61 million births in 2021 compared to 12 million births in 2020. The population growth rate has been below one per cent since 1998 and in 2020, it was only marginally higher at 0.145 per cent.
China’s population has drastically come down after it adopted the one-child policy in 1979. In 2016, China introduced a two-child policy and in 2020, a three-child policy under a five-year economic plan.
But allowing people to have more children has not helped to stabilise the population. China also introduced a ‘common prosperity’ drive to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor and stopped tutoring schools from making a profit. But the effects of these are yet to be seen.
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