China’s Demographic Time Bomb: Population Could Plummet to 390 Million by 2100

I call it karma for decades of China’s one-child policy and the millions of abortions that prevented children from ever existing. Critic Yi Fuxian warns that fudged data and plunging birth rates could see the population fall from 1.4 billion today to just 390 million by 2100. He says Beijing has suppressed his research and masked the true scale of the crisis for years. With a median age around 40 and only one birth per woman—far below the replacement rate—China recorded its lowest birth total since 1939 in 2024. Policy shifts to allow two or three children have failed to reverse the decline. Experts say avoiding collapse requires sweeping social, economic, cultural, and political reforms to tackle the ageing population and low fertility at its roots.

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