China: overall population falls for the first time since Mao's devastating Great Leap Forward programme

China, which followed a strict one-child policy for decades, has reported its first overall population decline in recent years.

China had 8.5 lakh fewer people at the end of 2022 as compared to 2021, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The count excluded the populations of Hong Kong, Macao, foreign residents, and Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory.

That left a total of 1.411.75 billion, with 9.56 million births against 10.41 million deaths, the bureau said at a briefing on 17 January 2023.

Men also continued to outnumber women by 722.06 million to 689.69 million, the bureau said, a result of the now-abandoned one-child policy and a traditional preference for male offspring to carry on the family name.

China has long been the world's most populous nation, but is expected to soon be overtaken by India.

The last time China is believed to have recorded a population decline was during the Great Leap Forward at the end of the 1950s, Mao Zedon'g disastrous drive for collective farming and industrialization that produced a massive famine killing tens of millions of people.

(With agency inputs)

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