China: Population data released by certain provinces hint decline in newborn birth rates in 2020

Births are steadily falling in China and experts say they will only shrink further, putting pressure on Beijing’s lofty development goals, “unless miraculous achievements” are made in increasing the number of newborns in the future, reports South China Morning Post.

Annual population and birth figures for 2020 were not released as part of a series of economic indicators last month, mainly because China finished a once-in-a-decade population census at the end of last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The bureau said preliminary results of the census were expected to be published in April, the newspaper reported.

Some Chinese provinces have revealed their own birth data through government and state media reports which showed in certain cases birth rates declined more than 30 per cent in 2020 from a year earlier.

“While we cannot draw a nationwide conclusion based on the declining births in those regions, we believe that there is no doubt that the national births will fall significantly in 2020 from 2019, considering the dwindling number of women of childbearing age and other factors,” Huang Wenzhen, a senior researcher from the Centre for China and Globalisation, a government-backed think tank, told the newspaper.

“We can say that even though the number of births in 2020 might be the lowest in recent decades, it is likely to be the highest in the next few decades, unless miraculous achievements were made via encouraging births in the future,”  Huang Wenzhen said.