{"id":35980,"date":"2026-01-19T16:34:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T08:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/multimetro.hk\/plus\/2026\/01\/19\/chinas-population-drops-for-fourth-year-as-fewer-babies-born\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T16:34:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T08:34:00","slug":"chinas-population-drops-for-fourth-year-as-fewer-babies-born","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/multimetro.hk\/plus\/2026\/01\/19\/chinas-population-drops-for-fourth-year-as-fewer-babies-born\/","title":{"rendered":"China&#8217;s population drops for fourth year as fewer babies born"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>China&#8217;s population fell for a fourth consecutive year in 2025, dropping by 3.39 million to 1.405 billion, a faster decline than \u200c2024, official data showed on Monday.<br \/>The total number of births in China dropped to 7.92 million in 2025, its lowest in decades, from 9.54 million in 2024. The number of deaths rose to 11.31 million from 10.93 million in 2024, figures from China&#8217;s National Bureau of Statistics showed.<br \/>China&#8217;s population has been shrinking since 2022 and is ageing rapidly, and has complicated Beijing&#8217;s plan to boost domestic consumption and rein in debt, with hundreds of millions of people set to leave the workforce at a time when pension budgets are already stretched.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>China&#8217;s population fell for a fourth consecutive year in 2025, dropping by 3.39 million to 1.405 billion, a faster decline than \u200c2024, official data showed on Monday.The total number of births in China dropped to 7.92 million in 2025, its lowest in decades, from 9.54 million in 2024. The number of deaths rose to 11.31 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>China&#039;s population drops for fourth year as fewer babies born - Metro Plus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/multimetro.hk\/plus\/2026\/01\/19\/chinas-population-drops-for-fourth-year-as-fewer-babies-born\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"China&#039;s population drops for fourth year as fewer babies born - Metro Plus\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"China&#8217;s population fell for a fourth consecutive year in 2025, dropping by 3.39 million to 1.405 billion, a faster decline than \u200c2024, official data showed on Monday.The total number of births in China dropped to 7.92 million in 2025, its lowest in decades, from 9.54 million in 2024. 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