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Birth in China...17% drop year on year, 29.8% in two years

Yesterday, China's Mother and Infant Daily published a statement that live births for 2023 were 7.88 million.  A drop from 9.76 million in 2022.  This is a 17.3% drop in birth.  It gets worse, 2022 was a year where nearly 300 million Chinese were in full or partial lockdown.  It was 10.62 in 2021.  The article was swiftly removed.

In two years, total births in China dropped by nearly 30%.  For comparison sake, the UK also saw a drop in the birth rate.  Sufficient for it to be discussed in UK policy circles.  The drop for the period was 0.9% (the UK saw drops of 0.5% in each of 2023 and 2022).

How do policymakers address such birth collapse?  Assuming that 10.41 million people died in 2023 -- the same number as in 2022 (unlikely because of Covid), the 2023 population fell by nearly 3 million.  

There are rumors that more than 2 million Chinese lost their lives to Covid in Q1/23 so the population fall could be five million.  Granted they still have 1.3 billion.  



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