The Chinese government has published updated population numbers showing that in 2022, 1 million fewer children were born than the previous year. While it is the first time that China has published negative population growth since the late 1950’s, some experts believe that the population has actually been falling for a few years and approximately a decade sooner than Chinese officials thought it would. Yi Fuxian, demographer and expert on Chinese population trends at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that the unexpected drop shows that “all of China’s past economic, social, defense and foreign policies were based on faulty demographic data” and that the looming “demographic crisis is beyond imagination.”
