2022 was not a good year for the Chinese economy. In 2022, the COVID-19 epidemic, which started in December 2019, caused significant economic disruptions in the second quarter, especially in Shanghai, resulting in a real rate of growth for the Mainland economy of only 3.0% for the year as a whole. This is the second lowest annual rate since economic reform and opening began in 1978,[1] and only slightly more than half of the original target rate of 5.5%. Moreover, the crude birth rate, which has been declining, fell to 6.77 per thousand, below the crude death rate, 7.37 per thousand, for the first time since 1960 (see Figure 1).[2] The total population declined by 850,000 to 1.411 billion. In the near term, it is unlikely that the Chinese crude birth rate will rise significantly. China is likely to be replaced by India as the most populous nation in the world in 2023.
Figure 1: The Crude Birth and Death Rates of Mainland China
