Official figures show China’s population shrank by 850,000 people in 2022 — the first such decline since 1961. The tipping point comes a decade earlier than the government and the United Nations predicted.
Yi Fuxian, an expert on Chinese population, said the “real demographic crisis is beyond imagination and that all of China’s past economic, social, defense and foreign policies were based on faulty demographic data.”
Since abandoning its one-child policy in 2016, China’s been trying to encourage bigger families — with scant success. Yi predicted severe economic consequences: “China has become older before it has become rich,” he said. (Sources: AP, Reuters)