China population to begin shrinking by 2025: officials
Gulf Times
Children play next to adults at a park in Beijing, China June 1, 2021.
China's population will begin to shrink by 2025, officials have said, as family sizes grow smaller and citizens age.
The world's most-populous country has been grappling with a looming demographic crisis as it faces a rapidly ageing workforce, slowing economy and its weakest population growth in decades.
And although officials relaxed the nation's strict "one-child policy" in 2016 and last year allowed couples to have three children, the birth rate has plunged to a record low.
"The growth rate of the total population has slowed down significantly, and it will enter a stage of negative growth in the '14th Five-Year Plan' period," the National Health Commission said Monday, referring to the period between 2021 and 2025.
