Women push baby strollers as they walk along a street in Beijing on January 4, 2026. A decade since China scrapped its stringent one-child policy and implemented a two-child policy in January 2016, the nation is finding itself dealing with a looming demographic crisis. The country’s population has declined for three consecutive years, with United Nations demography models predicting it could fall from 1.4 billion today to 800 million by 2100.
(Photo by Adek BERRY / AFP) China has always been a fascinating study for those interested in demographics and how populations can – or can’t – be moulded by dictate from a central government. Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the country’s communist rulers were worried that rapid population growth would hinder economic expansion and outstrip the country’s natural resources… so they imposed the controversial “one child” policy, which limited most families to one child. This prevented 400 million births, by some estimates, before it was halted in 2016.
But it also gave the country the demographic breathing space it needed to implement its massive industrialisation and transformation programmes. Now, though, there is the opposite worry. China’s population has declined for three straight years and could fall from 1.4 billion today to 633 million by 2100, according to United Nations predictions.
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Beijing has now made contraceptives more expensive as it tries to boost birth rates. Young Chinese couples, though, are opting to be childless or have small families, so they can enjoy their new-found financial prosperity. China has, in demographic terms, become a victim of its own success.
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