China's population decline accelerates in 2023

China's population decline accelerated in 2023, official data showed Wednesday. Beijing's National Bureau of Statistics said the population was 1.409 billion at the end of 2023, a decrease of more than two million from the end of 2022.

Last year's decline was more than double the fall reported for 2022, when the country lost 850,000 people as its population shrank for the first time since 1960. Once the world's most populous country, China was overtaken by India last year, with Beijing now scrambling to boost falling birth rates through subsidies and pro-fertility propaganda.

China ended its strict "one-child policy", imposed in the 1980s amid overpopulation fears, in 2016 and started letting couples have three children in 2021.