Beijing: By 2035, the number of elderly people in the population of China will cross 400 million. In this way, China will enter a serious phase in terms of the number of elderly, which can pose many challenges to the most populous country. A top health official gave this information on Tuesday. Wang Haidong, director of the Department of Population and Health under the National Health Commission, said China is aging rapidly, with the number of people aged 60 and overreaching 267 million by the end of last year, which is the largest proportion of the population. The total is 18.9 percent.
The newspaper ‘China Daily’ quoted official Wang as saying that according to estimates, the population of elderly people will be 300 million by 2025 and 400 million by 2035. Wang said the size of China’s elderly population and the proportion of the total population are projected to peak around 2050, posing major challenges to the provision of public services and the national social security system. China’s population rose by less than half a million last year to 1.41 billion, as the birth rate fell for the fifth year in a row, raising fears of an imminent demographic crisis and its adverse effects on the world’s second-largest economy.
Earlier this month, official data showed that the registration of married couples in China fell by 8 million in 2021, the lowest since 1986. This registration is compounded by concerns of declining birth rates and declining population which could lead to negative growth by 2025. According to the latest Statistical Bulletin on Civil Affairs last year, only 7.6 million Chinese married couples registered their marriage in 2021, the lowest since 1986.
The government-controlled newspaper ‘Global Times’ quoted Chinese experts as saying that late marriages have become a trend in China, it will also affect the policy of allowing three children, which will further pose a challenge to the dwindling population. Is. The demographic crisis was mainly attributed to the decades-old ‘one child policy’ that was abolished in 2016 after China allowed all couples to have two children. Last year, China passed a revised population and family planning law allowing Chinese couples to have three children and announced a number of incentives to have more children.
