China’s population creeps over 1.4 billion as birth rate falls

Rather than a country of 1.3 billion people, you can now start calling China one of 1.4.
China’s National Bureau of Statistics has announced that the total population of the Chinese mainland reached 1.40005 billion at the end of 2019. This figure does not include Hong Kong and Macau (or Taiwan).
Hitting the milestone is not exactly a happy occasion, however, with the latest population statistics only furthering worries about China’s demographics as the country’s working-age pop (16 to 59) continues to shrink, by nearly a million over the past year.
Those aged 60 or above now account for 18.1 percent of the population.
Meanwhile, the scrapping of China’s long-time one-child policy in 2016 continues not to pay dividends. For the third consecutive year, the number of babies born in mainland China decreased, this time around shrinking by 580,000 compared with the previous year, down to the lowest birth rate since 1949.
In a dramatic reversal from decades past, the Chinese government has launched various propaganda campaigns aimed at inspiring families to have more than one kid. However, appeals to citizens’ patriotism have failed to triumph over the cost of raising children in China.

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