Stephan: I have closely followed with great interest China's population policies since the country began its one-child policy in 1980 because there is no other country in the world that has literally tried to shape its population through political policies. The one child policy ran until 2016 and had a massive and disruptive effect on the country. Because of the cultural bias for boy babies, and an open abortion policy, families that could only have one child overwhelmingly chose boys, to the point where today there are millions of Chinese men who will never marry. As a result it has also given women power to choose their husbands, which has had a significant effect on pressuring men to be successful, financially secure, and pleasant in their marriage. Another unintended consequence of the one-child policy is that women in China today are not interested in having large families, and that has strongly affected population growth, as this report from the Pew Research Center spells out.
A woman pushes a child in a stroller past a mural of a giraffe in Chengdu, China, on June 5, 2022. Credit: He Haiyang/Sichuan Daily/VCG / Getty
Next year, China will no longer be the most populous country in the world, ceding the title to India, according to projections by the United Nations
✎ EditSign. China has had the largest population in the world since at least 1950, when the UN started keeping records. But it is now projected to experience an absolute decline in its population beginning as early as 2023.
How we did this
Here are key facts about China’s population and its projected changes in the coming decades, based on data from the UN and other sources:
Although China will lose its title as the world’s most populous country, the UN still estimates its population at 1.426 billion people in 2022. This is larger than the entire population of Europe (744 million) and the Americas (1.04 billion). It’s also roughly equivalent to the population of all the nations in Africa (1.427 billion).
