China attained its lowest birth rate on record in 2025 as its population shrank for the fourth year in a row, deepening a demographic challenge that could drag on the world’s second-largest economy for decades to come.
The rate fell to 5.63 births per 1,000 people in 2025, beneath 2023’s low of 6.39 per 1,000, China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported on Monday. The drop suggests that a slight uptick in births in 2024 was an outlier rather than a reversal of an otherwise steady decline since 2016.
China’s economy grew 5% in 2025, officials also reported, in line with the government’s annual goal of “around 5%.”
The annual expansion was buoyed by a surge in Chinese exports that offset trade tensions with the US and weak consumption at home. China racked up a record $1.2 trillion-dollar trade surplus last year, despite US President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again trade war with the world’s second largest economy.
But the data also showed an economic slowdown in the fourth quarter, with the country recording only 4.5% growth from a year earlier – the slowest quarterly increase since the end of 2022.
Officials hailed the “remarkable stability” of the economy, with statistics bureau chief Kang Yi saying this was achieved despite a “complex and severe situation marked by rapid changes in the external environment and mounting domestic challenges.”
“In 2025, China’s economy withstood pressure and maintained steady progress, achieving new results in high-quality development,” Kang said in a press conference.
Despite the on-target annual economic growth, the birth figures deal a blow to Beijing’s efforts to reverse the impact of decades of stringent, state-enforced birth control under the now-abandoned “one-child” policy, and persuade more young people to have children.
With the 7.92 million babies born in China last year outpaced by 11.31 million deaths, the overall population dropped by 3.39 million, the data shows. The country’s headcount – still the world’s second-largest, behind India’s – stands at 1.4 billion for 2025.
China’s changing demographics are seen as a stark challenge by officials, as the country’s labor force shrinks and its population of pension-drawing retired adults grows.
Years of stringent population control under the “one-child” policy, which was scrapped in 2016, have accelerated trends seen in other countries like Japan and South Korea, where falling birth rates have been seen as a result of rising education levels, changing views on marriage, rapid urbanization, and the higher cost of raising kids.
The aging of China’s society deepened in 2025, with the population of those aged over 60 standing at 323 million and making up 23% of the population, up one percentage point from 2024, the data shows.
A staggering half of the country’s population could be over 60 by 2100, according to United Nations projections – a reality with potentially far-reaching implications, for not only China’s economy but also its ambitions to rival the United States as a military power.
