Big picture: China's births might hit a record low this year, deepening its demographic crisis. Academics admit births could fall to 7 million, with profound implications for the world's second-largest economy.
By the numbers:
* Estimated births in 2023: 6 million to 8 million.
* Drop in births over the past five
7 million new humans in a single country per year is A LOT of goddamn people.
Imagine a major city's worth of people suddenly appearing every single year. It's completely unsustainable.
It's not unsustainable, it's below the replacement rate. Even if it were slightly above, China has proven to be more than capable of increasing everyone's quality of life while managing a rising population.
That's about 0.5% growth of the national population, or 5 births per thousand people. Less than a third of the global average of 18 births per thousand. Put into that perspective, it's really quite small.
Well, they also could be having 90% of a major city's worth of people dying every year, but I haven't looked up the exact number.
Someone said around 10 million die per year. But old people die. Everywhere.
But they are “replaced” by 7 million+ babies.
Let's not forget that China STILL limits the number of children you can have, and limited families to one child for decades before the limit was raised to two, then three. They don't really want more people.