(TibetanReview.net, Nov13’24) –As China continues a grim, so far futile effort to boost its population growth by encouraging more marriages and births, the China Statistical Yearbook 2024 recently released by the National Bureau of Statistics, shows that the country’s total population dropped for the second consecutive year in 2023. Only eight provincial-level regions recorded a positive natural population growth rate last year, topped, apparently, by Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), according to China’s official chinadaily.com.cn Nov 13.
The big worry raised by this revelation is that China’s policy to encourage mainland Chinese to immigrate to the region to dilute its ethnic Tibetan population continues under President Xi Jinping’s Sinicization policy.
While the report did not say in so many words that the TAR topped the provincial-level population growth rate, it cited the yearbook as saying the top three regions in terms of natural population growth rates last year were the TAR, the Ningxia Hui autonomous region and Guizhou province, citing them in that order.
Bemoaning the overall decline in the country’s population, given its adverse implications for the country’s economic future, the report said Fujian, Jiangxi and Zhejiang provinces had shifted from positive to negative population growth.
China’s total population dropped for the second consecutive year in 2023, decreasing by roughly 2.08 million to 1.41 billion. The total number of newborns in the country for the year was 9.02 million, with a birth rate of 6.39 per thousand, the report cited the yearbook as saying.
The five provincial-level regions with the lowest birth rates last year were stated to be Tianjin, Shanghai and the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang. Heilongjiang had the lowest birth rate at only 2.92 per thousand.
Nationwide, the country’s current total fertility rate — the average number of babies born to each woman of reproductive age — has fallen to a concerning level of around 1, the report cited the latest government statistics as showing.
The PRC’s total fertility rate fell below the replacement level of 2.1 to 2.08 in 1992, and the low fertility trend has continued over the past three decades, Yuan Xin, a professor at Nankai University and vice-president of the China Population Association, has noted.
He has said the challenge to raise fertility rates is a long process and comes with extremely high costs.
Guangdong province registered just over 1 million newborns last year, the highest in the country for the sixth consecutive year, according to the yearbook. But this was partly because of Guangdong’s relatively developed economy which, in Yuan’s view, attracts a significant number of people from other provinces, especially young people.
In the case of the TAR, it is a slew of government incentives designed to implement President Xi’s call for its Sinicization which attracts a significant number of people from mainland China.