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China population to shrink for 1st time in 60 yrs: What it means for world

After four decades in which China's population has swelled from 660 million to 1.4 billion, its population is on track to turn down this year, for the first time since the great famine of 1959-1961

Photo: Bloomberg
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Photo: Bloomberg

Xiujian Peng | The Conversation
The world’s biggest nation is about to shrink.

China accounts for more than one sixth of the world’s population.

Yet after four extraordinary decades in which China’s population has swelled from 660 million to 1.4 billion, its population is on track to turn down this year, for the first time since the great famine of 1959-1961.

According to the latest figures from China’s National Bureau of Statistics, China’s population grew from 1.41212 billion to just 1.41260 billion in 2021 – a record low increase of just 480,000, a mere fraction of the annual growth of eight million