Births in China fell sharply last year as the coronavirus pandemic intensified the scale of the demographic challenge facing the world’s most populous nation.
They dropped 15 per cent from 2019, according to data from the country’s Ministry of Public Security, with 10.04m births in the country last year compared with 11.79m a year earlier based on household registrations.
The steep decline is the latest evidence of the demographic challenges facing China, where urbanisation and the historic one-child policy has resulted in a rapidly ageing population that will put pressure on public finances over coming decades.
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