China’s National Bureau of Statistics published the 2026 edition of its yearbook this week, revealing that the national population declined by 3.39 million in 2025 — the fourth decline in a row, and the worst since 2022.
China’s population remains enormous at over 1.4 billion, but the cycle of births and deaths left it 7.71 million people smaller than it was in 2021, the beginning of China’s seemingly inexorable population decline.
Foreign Affairs called it “China’s long twilight,” pointing out that the situation for China was graver than the total population numbers indicated, because a generation of much-needed young workers is not being born:
By the 2040s, if China continues to follow East Asia’s descent to ultralow fertility rates, it will shed around one percent of its population annually—roughly ten million people, more than the population of New York City. At the same time, the proportion of China’s population aged 65 and older will surge, doubling from 15 percent today to around 30 percent in the 2040s, and then rising to well over 40 percent by the late twenty-first century. The size of that cohort in the United States, by contrast, is projected to rise far more gradually, from around 19 percent of the population today to just over 23 percent in 2060.