China has lost its demographic dividend. What does this mean for its economy?

The decline in the population of CHINA threatens to undermine the plans of the state to break into the leaders of the list of largest economies. The labor market, the real estate sector (providing up to 25% of GDP),

The moment that the Chinese authorities have been delaying for so long has come: the population in 2022 began to decline. Mainland China 's population , excluding foreigners, fell by 850,000 in 2022 to 1.41 billion, the National Bureau of Statistics said. Last year, 9.56 million people were born in China and 10.41 million died.

Given the emerging trend, China may soon cede the status of the country with the largest number of inhabitants to India.

The number of deaths exceeded the number of births in China for the first time since the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong's failed economic experiment that led to mass starvation in the 1960s.

Chinese officials have tried for years to delay the onset of population decline by offering various incentives to encourage citizens to have children. However, none of these incentives brought the desired result.

Now the country, whose economic success has been driven largely by an abundance of labor, is facing a declining birth rate coupled with a steady rise in life expectancy. it is expected that the looming demographic crisis will have serious consequences not only for China itself, but for the entire global economy.