China seeks to quash reports of shrinking population

Beijing

CHINA'S population grew last year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Thursday in an apparent bid to quash reports that it had fallen, but authorities stopped short of saying from which year numbers had grown.

On Tuesday, the Financial Times said China was set to report that its population fell below 1.4 billion last year from 2019 in the first decrease in five decades, citing people familiar with the matter.

The NBS has delayed publishing the results of last year's once-in-a-decade census, with no explanation apart from saying more preparatory work was needed. It had been due to announce the results in early April.

"According to our understanding, in 2020, our country's population continued to grow," the bureau said in a statement, adding that detailed figures would be disclosed when the census results were published.

Births in China have continued to fall despite a two-child policy that replaced a decades-old one-child limit scrapped in 2016 in hopes of boosting the number of babies. Last year, births plunged 15 per cent to

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10.035 million from 2019, the Ministry of Public Security has said. The 2010 census showed the mainland population was 1.34 billion. By 2019, this had increased to 1.4005 billion, the NBS said in February last year.

On Thursday, the bureau did not say if the 2020 growth was being measured from 2019 or from 2010, which means the population could have still risen from the last decade but fallen from a year earlier.

"The census is very accurate, but the reason for the delay in publishing it may be that some of the speculation is correct," said Liu Kaiming, a labour expert in the city of Shenzhen.

"The number of newborns released by the Ministry of Public Security is close to falling below 10 million. Therefore, the population of 2020 may be less than 1.4 billion."

The population number is very sensitive, and will not be released until government departments reach a consensus on the data and its implications, said the Financial Times. An unexpected drop in population would pile pressure on Beijing to quickly come up with measures to encourage people to have more children and avoid an irreversible decline.

In recent months, state media have said the population might start to shrink in the next few years. In 2016, Beijing set a target to increase the population to about 1.42 billion by 2020. The last time the Chinese population fell was in 1959 to 1961, during Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward campaign. During the period, the population shrank 13.48 million, data from the NBS shows, amid a famine caused by the disastrous economic policy.

Posts on China's microblogging platform Weibo with the hashtag on the bureau's announcement garnered over 56 million views, with many expressing disbelief. "Really? I don't believe it," one netizen said. Another made fun of the delay: "Don't rush (them), be more considerate - it takes time to make things up." REUTERS