China's Population Falls For Fourth Year Amid Economic Woes

“China's population still exceeds the combined population of existing developed countries, providing an ultra-large market with strong production and consumption potential,” she said.

She added that China's urbanization and policy support will help cushion demographic pressures. At the end of 2025, China's urban population reached 954 million, lifting the urbanization rate to 67.9%. She said authorities are expanding childcare subsidies, childcare services and education supply to support families.

Provincial-level population statistics for 2025 have yet to be released, but figures for 2024, announced last October, still provide a clear picture of regional demographic trends.

In the three northeastern provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang, natural population growth rates were among the weakest nationwide last year, with deaths far exceeding births. Liaoning (-5.3%) and Heilongjiang (-6.3%) both recorded some of the country's steepest natural declines, while Jilin (-4.9%) continued to see a rapid contraction driven by low fertility, an aging population and sustained out-migration of younger workers.

Negative natural population growth is no longer confined to the rust belt. Several major provinces and cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, also reported natural declines in 2024, reflecting delayed marriage, falling fertility rates and rising living costs in China's most developed urban centers.

By contrast, some southern provinces continued to record relatively higher birth rates. Guangdong, China's most populous province, stood out in 2024 thanks to its large migrant population, younger demographic profile and a stronger tradition of family formation, even as its natural growth rate continued to slow.

Several less-developed western provinces also posted comparatively strong population growth in 2024. Tibet, Ningxia, Xinjiang, Yunnan, Guangxi, Guizhou and Qinghai stood out for positive natural growth, supported by higher fertility norms and younger age structures.

“From its population peak in 2010, the Northeast region lost 14.56 million people in 14 years,” says Gao Jian, a Zhejiang-based columnist.“That is equivalent to about 1.4 Hainan provinces, or more than, for example, the combined populations of major cities Wuhan, Zhengzhou and Suzhou.”

He adds:“What is even more sobering is that this decline includes cities that were once the pride of the region, such as Shenyang and Dalian. The total population of northeastern China has now fallen back to levels last seen in the 1980s.”

He points out that Heilongjiang's birth rate stood at just 2.92 per thousand in 2023, the lowest in China and even lower than Japan and South Korea.

“Heilongjiang shoulders national responsibilities for food and energy security, but its pillar industries, such as petrochemicals, energy, equipment manufacturing and food processing, are becoming less attractive to young workers,” he says.“While the province has a foothold in high-tech sectors such as aviation manufacturing and biomedicine, the scale is still too small with limited job creation.”

China's persistently low birth rate is increasingly linked to a loss of interest in marriage among young people, as economic pressure and uncertain prospects reshape life choices, said some analysts.

In China, the pool of eligible marriage partners is shrinking rapidly. Data show that people aged 20 to 39, the core marriage-age cohort, accounted for 26.93% of the population in 2024, down from 31.49% a decade earlier, while the absolute size of this group fell by more than 60 million over the decade.