For the fourth year in a row, China’s population decreased as the county’s birthrate hit a record low. At the end of 2025, the population of 1.405 billion was down 3 million from the year before, according to statistics cited by the Wall Street Journal.
Births in 2025 dropped dramatically from 2024, to 7.92 million compared to 9.54 million the year before. Part of this decline was the choice to have children in 2024 so that they could be born in the Year of the Dragon, resulting in families having children earlier. Other than that year, births have been declining since 2017.
China has abandoned the One Child Policy and has recently introduced initiatives like childcare subsidies to increase the birthrate, so far without success.
While many other countries with aging populations can rely on new immigrants, China has extremely low rates of immigration, and naturalization is extraordinarily difficult.
