Officials Report China’s 1st Annual Population Fall in Decades, Economic Crisis Accompanied by COVID-19

A patient with COVID-19 lays on a bed in a hallway at Tangshan Gongren Hospital in China's northeastern city of Tangshan on Dec. 30, 2022. Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images

China’s population fell last year for the first time since the 1960s, according to Chinese officials, because of fewer births and an increase in deaths, strengthening fears about a long-term economic decline.

The decline, by roughly 850,000 people to a total of 1.41175 billion in 2022, according to the country’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), is the first drop officially reported by China since 1961—the last year of the country’s Great Famine.