Deaths outnumbered births in China last year by almost 1.5m [1], while the number of marriages has almost halved since 2016.
The country’s just released population figures for 2024 show 9.54 million births and 10.93 million deaths, a decrease of 1.39 million.
The 530,000 additional births in 2024 births in 2023 were due to a 12% increase in marriages in 2023 after the end of the three-year Zero-Covid policy, but it is not arrested the sharp decline in the marriage rate.
But since then, marriages fell 16.6% in the first three quarters of 2024, including a 25.3% drop in the third quarter. The full year is projected to see a fall of 18.8%, meaning births will plummet in 2025, with little over 7 million expected.
There was an increase in the number of births in China by 5.8% to 9.54 million in 2024.
This put the total fertility rate at 1.10 children per woman [2] about half what is needed for a population to simply replace itself.