China’s population rate shrinks for 1st time over 60 years

China’s population has declined last year for in first time for six decades to reach 1.41175 billion people, compared with 1.41260 billion in 2021, according to officials in National Bureau of Statistics revealed on Tuesday.

The figures show decrease of about 850,000, as it revealed that there were 9.56 million births a record low birth rate of 6.77 per thousand and 10.41 million deaths.

China’s 9.56 million births are a decrease of almost 10 percent from 2021, when about 10.6 million babies were born. While, the death rate of 7.37 per 1,000 people was up from 7.18 in 2021, when China recorded 10.14 million deaths.

This could be a start of what is expected to be a long decline in China’s population, which the U.N. says could reach 800 million by the end of the century.

The announcement came as a part of a larger release of economic data for 2022, a year when President Xi Jinping’s strict zero-Covid policies weighed heavily on growth.