In January, China’s National Bureau of Statistics confirmed what scholars and economists had expected — that China’s population declined in 2022, plummeting by 850,000 to 1.412 billion.
The last time China’s population fell from year to year was in 1961, when Mao Zedong’s failed economic policies, known as the Great Leap Forward, killed millions, though that enforced lull in population growth proved to be temporary.
