Population decline is accelerating: more than two million fewer people in China According to the media, Signa owes millions to Swiss creditors

China’s population decline has accelerated in the past year. As the statistics bureau in Beijing announced on Wednesday, about 1.41 billion people lived in the People’s Republic at the end of December, 2.08 million fewer than a year earlier.

By 2022, China’s population had shrunk for the first time in sixty years. However, the decline of approximately 850,000 people was smaller than last year.

As a sign of the difficult demographic development, the number of births continued to decline. 9.02 million babies have been born in China. In 2022 there were still 9.56 million. At the same time, the number of deaths rose from 10.41 million to 11.1 million, probably against the background of the corona pandemic.

China has long suffered from a sharp decline in birth rates and an aging population. The effects of the decades-long ‘one-child policy’ are becoming increasingly clear. The relaxation of the controversial contraceptive regime has only led to a slight increase in the number of births since 2016.

Experts see the high costs of housing, education and health care in China, as well as the declining willingness to marry, as the real reasons for the worrying development.

The population last shrank in 1960 and 1961 – as a result of the severe famines that followed the devastating industrialization campaign of the “Great Leap Forward”. In 2021, the population grew for the last time by 450,000 people. (sda/dpa)