China's births fall to 7.92 million in 2025, halved in a decade, as population shrinks by 3.39 million and the TFR hits a record low of 1.0

Summary

China's National Bureau of Statistics confirmed in January 2026 that the country recorded 7.92 million births in 2025, less than half the number from a decade earlier, at a birth rate of 5.63 per 1,000 population, a record low. Deaths of 11.31 million produced a net population loss of 3.39 million, the largest single-year absolute population decline in modern Chinese history. The total fertility rate fell to approximately 1.0 children per woman, the lowest of any major economy and well below the 2.1 replacement rate. China's population of people aged over 60 reached 323 million, or 23% of the total, up one percentage point from 2024. Rhodium Group and other analysts estimated that China will lose approximately 60 million people in the next decade. China's 2025 GDP growth still met its target, but demographic projections indicate the workforce will shrink by approximately 200 million by 2050.

The split

The Chinese government's public framing focused on the economic achievement of meeting GDP growth targets despite the US trade war, and avoided dwelling on the demographic figures in official communiques. State media coverage of the birth data was restrained compared to the GDP statistics, reflecting an awareness that the demographic contraction contradicts the government's public pro-natalist posture since the three-child policy was introduced in 2021. Chinese economic researchers, including some publishing within China, have been more explicit about the structural challenge: a contracting workforce cannot sustain the investment, export, and consumption growth model that produced China's 40-year development miracle. International analysts focused on the geopolitical implications: a China with a rapidly aging and shrinking workforce may have a narrower window of economic and military peak capacity than projections from the 2010s assumed.

By the numbers

• 7.92 million births in 2025 (less than half of births a decade earlier)
• 5.63 per 1,000: 2025 birth rate (record low)
• 11.31 million deaths in 2025
• 3.39 million: net population loss in 2025 (largest single-year decline in modern history)
• ~1.0: total fertility rate in 2024/2025 (lowest of any major economy)
• 323 million: population aged 60+ (23% of total, up 1pp from 2024)
• ~60 million: projected population loss in the next decade
• ~200 million: projected workforce shrinkage by 2050 (Rhodium Group)

Why it matters

China's China Demography data in 2025 marks a structural inflection: the world's second-largest economy is contracting in population at the same time as it carries the world's largest manufacturing base, a population debt profile built on the expectation of continued economic growth, and a pension system calibrated to a demographic structure that no longer exists. The demographic contraction is arriving simultaneously with a trade war with the United States that is restructuring China's export markets, compounding the economic adjustment. For global supply chains, an aging and shrinking Chinese workforce increases the cost and reduces the capacity of China-based manufacturing over the medium term.

What to watch

• 2026 NBS vital statistics for births, deaths, and net population change
• Whether China's pro-natalist subsidies, which range from regional cash payments to housing benefits, produce any measurable change in the TFR
• China's policy posture on immigration and foreign workers as the domestic workforce shrinks
• How China's demographic trajectory affects its capacity to sustain military modernisation spending at current ratios of GDP