By Virginia Allen, The Daily Signal | August 05, 2025
China’s birth rate is falling below replacement levels, raising questions over the Asian giant’s economic future.
China’s population fell for the third consecutive year in 2024 as the older generation passes away and fewer babies are being born, despite China having ended its one-child policy in 2016.
Now, Fortune reports that by 2050, China’s output growth could decline to below 2% as the number of workers declines and those dependent on China’s social support systems grows.
“China’s demographic challenges, exacerbated by a shrinking and aging population, has been a long-term, inevitable consequence of China’s one-child policy,” Anthony Kim, a research fellow in economic freedom at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.
In China currently, according to World Population Review, there are 7.4 births per 1,000 people, falling from 20.9 per 1,000 in 1981. China experienced a slight increase in births in 2024, rising to 9.54 million from 9.02 million in 2023, but still not enough to counteract the death rate.
The diminishing workforce could threaten China’s economic growth unless there is a “counterbalance,” Kim says. “This is where and why China’s aggressive [artificial intelligence] drive comes in, particularly in the context of automation that can practically deal with the labor-supply shortage that will become a bigger problem … for the economy, if the current trend continues.”
A study published in the National Library of Medicine in 2022 found that if China did not find a way to address its shrinking population, there would be adverse impacts on “China’s future socio-economic situation.”
“The repercussions may cascade to other spheres of China’s status,” the study found, including “security and global influence.”
“This is a collapse in population,” Gordon Chang, a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, told The Daily Signal. He added that such a “collapse” will “obviously affect the economy.”
Chang holds that China’s shrinking population makes the nation “more dangerous, rather than less.”
Virginia Allen is a senior news producer for The Daily Signal and host of "The Daily Signal Podcast" and "Problematic Women."
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