The central Chinese city of Tianmen said offering cash handouts to couples led births to jump by 17% last year, as the country seeks to boost its plummeting birth rate.
Officials touted the rewards — as high as $23,000, four times the city’s average per capita disposable income — as leading to the reversal, but The Wall Street Journal pointed to other factors such as an influx of young workers fleeing expensive coastal cities.
Beijing has found little success in boosting birth rates, which have fallen far below the replacement level, a legacy of its one-child policy. “After decades of successfully forcing women to have fewer children, China’s government is finding it cannot force them to have more,” The Economist wrote.
Somebody has to pick up the slack if this is share of global population. I imagine some fast growing African countries like Nigeria will start to take the spotlight when it comes to population growth
el_sandino on
Demographics is destiny. Too bad USA is doing everything it can to keep people out instead of letting as many people in as possible. My local region would be far better off with lots of immigration.
Ok_Construction_8136 on
When was the last time a 75 year forecast came true?
CMDR_omnicognate on
China as a country would probably cease to exist as it does now before then. there just wouldn’t be enough people to hold a country that large together, and the people left would skew heavily towards being elderly.
Though that’s likely going to become an issue for pretty much all countries not just China
Tony_Friendly on
I am going to be downvoted by wumao for this, but honestly, I don’t think we really have a clue what the Chinese population is now. If you Google it, you will probably get 1.4 billion, which is what the CCP would say, but they lie, so you really can’t take their numbers at face value. I am almost positive it’s considerably lower than that, I’ve even heard estimates as low as 400 million. It’s probably not quite that low, but their birth rate has been abysmal even after they ended the one child policy, so I would guess they are roughly about a billion.
The United States has problems, they just aren’t anything like the problems China has.
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From the [Semafor Flagship](https://www.semafor.com/newsletter/04/11/2025/semafor-flagship-stripped-down-ratcheted-up?utm_campaign=semaforreddit) newsletter:
The central Chinese city of Tianmen said offering cash handouts to couples led births to jump by 17% last year, as the country seeks to boost its plummeting birth rate.
Officials touted the rewards — as high as $23,000, four times the city’s average per capita disposable income — as leading to the reversal, but The Wall Street Journal pointed to other factors such as an influx of young workers fleeing expensive coastal cities.
Beijing has found little success in boosting birth rates, which have fallen far below the replacement level, a legacy of its one-child policy. “After decades of successfully forcing women to have fewer children, China’s government is finding it cannot force them to have more,” The Economist wrote.
[Read more here](https://www.semafor.com/newsletter/04/11/2025/semafor-flagship-stripped-down-ratcheted-up?utm_campaign=semaforreddit)
Source: UN via OWID
Tool: Datawrapper
Has UN ever had right population projections?
Somebody has to pick up the slack if this is share of global population. I imagine some fast growing African countries like Nigeria will start to take the spotlight when it comes to population growth
Demographics is destiny. Too bad USA is doing everything it can to keep people out instead of letting as many people in as possible. My local region would be far better off with lots of immigration.
When was the last time a 75 year forecast came true?
China as a country would probably cease to exist as it does now before then. there just wouldn’t be enough people to hold a country that large together, and the people left would skew heavily towards being elderly.
Though that’s likely going to become an issue for pretty much all countries not just China
I am going to be downvoted by wumao for this, but honestly, I don’t think we really have a clue what the Chinese population is now. If you Google it, you will probably get 1.4 billion, which is what the CCP would say, but they lie, so you really can’t take their numbers at face value. I am almost positive it’s considerably lower than that, I’ve even heard estimates as low as 400 million. It’s probably not quite that low, but their birth rate has been abysmal even after they ended the one child policy, so I would guess they are roughly about a billion.
The United States has problems, they just aren’t anything like the problems China has.