Beijing
—
China’s birth rate will hit a record low in 2025 as its population declines for the fourth year in a row, deepening demographic challenges that could drag down the world’s second-largest economy for decades to come.
The birth rate in 2025 will fall to 5.63 per 1,000 people, below the 2023 low of 6.39 per 1,000, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday. This decline suggests that the small increase in births in 2024 was an outlier rather than a reversal of the steady decline since 2016.
Officials also reported that China’s economy will grow by 5% in 2025, in line with the government’s annual target of about 5%.
The year’s economic expansion was supported by a surge in Chinese exports, which offset trade tensions with the United States and weak domestic consumption. China racked up a record trade surplus of $1.2 trillion last year, despite US President Donald Trump’s intermittent trade wars with the world’s second-largest economy.
However, the data also showed an economic slowdown in the fourth quarter, with the country growing at just 4.5% year-on-year, the slowest quarterly growth since the end of 2022.
Officials praised the “remarkable stability” of the economy, with Statistics Bureau chief Kang Yi saying this was achieved despite “a complex and difficult situation characterized by rapid changes in the external environment and increasing domestic challenges.”
“China’s economy in 2025 has withstood pressure, maintained steady progress, and achieved new achievements in high-quality development,” Kang said at a press conference.
The birth numbers are a blow to Beijing’s efforts to persuade more young people to have children, reversing the effects of decades of strict state-enforced birth control under the now-abandoned “one child” policy, even as annual economic growth is on target.
According to the data, 7.92 million babies were born in China last year, the number of deaths exceeded 11.31 million, and the total population decreased by 3.39 million. The country remains the second-largest workforce in the world after India, reaching 1.4 billion in 2025.
China’s changing demographics are seen as a tough challenge for officials, as China’s labor force shrinks and the number of retired adults on pensions increases.
Years of strict population control under the “one child” policy, abolished in 2016, are accelerating trends seen in other countries such as Japan and South Korea, where birth rates are falling as a result of rising education levels, changing attitudes to marriage, rapid urbanization and soaring costs of raising children.
According to the data, the aging of Chinese society will further progress in 2025, with the number of people aged 60 and over reaching 323 million, accounting for 23% of the population, an increase of 1 percentage point from 2024.
According to United Nations projections, an astonishing half of China’s population could be over 60 years old by 2100, a reality with potentially far-reaching implications not only for China’s economy but also for its ambitions to rival the United States as a military power.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has emphasized the need for “population security” and has made “cultivating a high-quality population” a national priority. He has also overseen the country’s manufacturing powerhouse’s automation and upgrade drive, replacing humans with robot workers.
Last year, China’s central government began giving annual cash bonuses to families with children under three, revised rules to streamline marriage registration and launched a plan to make public kindergartens free of charge.
These are in addition to a number of incentives that local governments have tried in recent years to boost birth rates, from tax breaks and financial support for home purchases and rentals to cash transfers and extended maternity leave.
Analysts expect more policies and incentives to support childbirth and marriage over the next year. However, many believe it will be impossible to reverse this decline, especially as young people struggle to find work and face high childcare costs. The uneven burden of childcare is also thought to be preventing many young women from having children.
