Chinese president, Xi Jinping, claps during the closing meeting of the Two Sessions annual parliamentary meetings.
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China is facing many economic obstacles, but Beijing remains optimistic about growth.
China has an ageing population.
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A higher proportion of China’s population is elderly, and this will have knock-on effects on the rest of the world via their economy.
Too few children means China needs to look outside the country for new blood.
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Chinese politicians have looked toward policies to encourage couples to have more children to offset population decline. It hasn’t worked.
Chinese families can now have more than one child, but the population is still in decline.
EPA-EFE/Alex Plavevsky
China’s birth rate hit a record low in 2022.
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One scenario has China’s population halving by the end of the century, another has it falling by two-thirds.
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Stricter population controls in India could have disastrous consequences for women and minority communities.
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For all the talk of ‘the Chinese century’, population trends suggest influence might move elsewhere – including to neighbouring India, whose population looks set to overtake China in the next decade.