China's population grows at slowest pace to 1.41 billion, shows data

Number of births fell to 12 mn in 2020: Census

China’s births fell to their lowest in almost six decades amid the pandemic last year, putting the country’s population on course to peak within the next five years and adding pressure on Beijing to step up reforms to maintain economic growth as the workforce shrinks.
 
There were 1.412 billion people in China last year, according to the results of a once-a-decade census, up 5.38 per cent from a decade before, but slightly below previous official projections. The annual average population growth of 0.53 per cent in the past decade was the slowest since the 1950s.
 
China’s population has become much more urbanised and educated over the past decade, trends which should allow the world’s second-largest economy to continue expanding even after its population peaks. In order to remain an engine of world growth, China will require a large increase in spending on pensions and health care and more investment in education and infrastructure to boost productivity.
 

Slower growth in the population means it could peak before 2025, according to estimates from Bloomberg Economics. The number of children born in the country last year fell to 12 million, the National Bureau of Statistics said — down from 14.65 million in 2019 and the lowest number since 1961 when the country was struggling in the aftermath of a famine that killed tens of millions of people.
 
Even though China rapidly contained the coronavirus outbreak and the economy returned to growth last year, its fertility mirrored other major nations such as the US, which saw births slump as economic and social dislocation undercut people’s desire to have children.
 
The share of the working population —those in the ages of 15 and 59 —slumped to 63.4 per cent in 2020 from more than 70 per cent a decade ago.