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BEIJING, January 16 (TMTPOST) —— China"s national population reached 1.41175 billion at the end of 2022, a decrease of 850,000 from the end of 2021, with the natural population growth rate of -0.60‰, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics of China on Tuesday.

This is also the first time since the founding of New China that China has seen a trend of negative population growth except in 1960 and 1961.

It has long been predicted that China will enter a stage of negative population growth.  China"s total population growth rate has slowed down significantly, and it is expected to enter negative growth during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), according to population experts.

China"s rapidly declining birth numbers and fertility rate in recent years also indicate this trend. Chen Wei, a professor at the Population Development Studies Center of Renmin University of China, said that according to the data of the seventh national census, the number of births in China in 2017 was more than 18 million, but just a few years later, the number of births dived to 10.62 million in 2021, and dropped to less than 10 million in 2022.

Factors that contribute to negative population growth emerged about 30 years ago. The average fertility rate of the Chinese population was lower than 2.1 in 1992, which implied the impending negative growth. In the following 30 years, the total population has continued to rise by inertia, and when the positive growth inertia was exhausted, negative growth would be inevitable.

China introduced the third-child policy in May 2021 and took a number of stimulus measures to boost population growth. A number of cities or provinces across the country have rolled out incentive policies such as issuing subsidies to families with a second or third child.