Demographics of China


The People's Republic of China is the second most-populous country in the world with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, only surpassed by India. China was the world's most populous country until being surpassed by India in 2023.
In 2025, China's population officially stood at 1.404 billion, which was three million less than the previous year, with the lowest recorded birthrate since at least the proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949. China's population has a relatively small youth component, partially a result of the strict enforcement of China's one-child policy that was in effect from 1979 until 2015, which limited urban families to one child and rural families to two., Chinese state media reported the country's total fertility rate to be 1.09, one of the lowest in the world alongside South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Since 2022, deaths have outstripped births in the country.
According to the 2020 census, 91.11% of the population was Han Chinese, and 8.89% were minorities. China's population growth rate is -0.10%. China conducted its sixth national population census in 2010, and its seventh census was completed in late 2020, with data released in May 2021.
China faces the challenge of an aging population due to increased life expectancy and declining birth rates. This demographic shift has implications for social services and the labor force.

Population

Historical population

During 1960–2015, the population grew to nearly 1.4 billion. Under Mao Zedong, China nearly doubled in population from 540 million in 1949 to 969 million in 1979. This growth slowed because of the one-child policy instituted in 1979. The 2022 data shows a declining population for the first time since 1961.
China's population reached 1 billion in 1982, making it the first country to reach this milestone.

Censuses in China

The People's Republic of China conducted censuses in 1953, 1964, 1982, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020. In 1987, the government announced that the fourth national census would take place in 1990 and that there would be one every ten years thereafter. The 1982 census is generally accepted as significantly more reliable, accurate, and thorough than the previous two. Various international organizations eagerly assisted the Chinese in conducting the 1982 census, including the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, which donated US$100.0 million between 1980 and 1989 for a variety of projects, one of which being the 1982 census.
China was the world's most populous nation until being surpassed by India in 2023.
By the seventh census in 2020, the total population had reached to 1,419,933,142, with the mainland having 1,411,778,724, Hong Kong having 7,474,200, and Macau having 683,218. However, this number is disputed by obstetrics researcher Yi Fuxian, who argues that data related to population growth is inflated by local governments to obtain financial subsidies from the central government.

Population density and distribution

China is the second most populous country in the world and its national population density is very similar to those of countries like Denmark or the Czech Republic. However, the overall population density of China contains major regional variations. In 2002, about 94% of the population lived east of the Heihe–Tengchong Line; although this eastern area comprises only 43% of China's total land area, its population density, at roughly 280/km2, is comparable to that of Japan.
Broadly speaking, the population concentrates east of the Tibetan Plateau and south of the northern steppe. The most densely populated areas included the Yangtze River Valley, Sichuan Basin, North China Plain, Pearl River Delta, and the industrial area around the city of Shenyang in the northeast.
Population is most sparse in the mountainous, desert, and grassland regions of the northwest and southwest. In the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, portions are completely uninhabited, and only a few sections have populations denser than ten people per km2. The Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet autonomous regions and Qinghai and Gansu comprise 55% of the country's land area but in 1985 contained only 5.7% of its population.

Structure of the population

Census population of China by age and sex:
Population by Sex and Age Group. For statistical purposes, the data for China do not include those for Hong Kong and Macau. Data exclude 2.3 million servicemen, 4.65 million persons with permanent resident status difficult to define, and 0.12 per cent undercount based on the post enumeration survey:
Age GroupMaleFemaleTotal%
Total682,329,104650,481,7651,332,810,869
0–441,062,56634,470,04475,532,610
5–938,464,66532,416,88470,881,549
10–1440,267,27734,641,18574,908,462
15–1951,904,83047,984,28499,889,114
20–2464,008,57363,403,945127,412,518
25–2950,837,03850,176,814101,013,852
30–3449,521,82247,616,38197,138,203
35–3960,391,10457,634,855118,025,959
40–4463,608,67861,145,286124,753,964
45–4953,776,41851,818,135105,594,553
50–5440,363,23438,389,93778,753,171
55–5941,082,93840,229,53681,312,474
60–6429,834,42628,832,85658,667,282
65–6920,748,47120,364,81141,113,282
70–7416,403,45316,568,94432,972,397
75–7911,278,85912,573,27423,852,133
80–845,917,5027,455,69613,373,198
85–892,199,8103,432,1185,631,928
90–94530,8721,047,4351,578,307
95–99117,716252,263369,979
100+8,85227,08235,934
Age groupMaleFemaleTotalPercent
0–14119,794,508101,528,113221,322,621
15–64505,329,061487,232,029992,561,090
65+57,205,53561,721,623118,927,158

Urbanization

Population policies

Initially, China's post-1949 leaders were ideologically disposed to view a large population as an asset. But soon afterwards, the leaders changed course. For one year, starting in August 1956, vigorous support was given to the Ministry of Public Health's mass birth control efforts. These efforts, however, had little impact on fertility. After the interval of the Great Leap Forward, Chinese leaders again saw rapid population growth as an obstacle to development, and their interest in birth control revived. In the early 1960s, schemes somewhat more muted than during the first campaign, emphasized the virtues of late marriage. Birth control offices were set up in the central government and some provincial-level governments in 1964. The second campaign was particularly successful in the cities, where the birth rate was cut in half during the 1963–66 period.
The one-child policy enjoyed much greater success in urban than in rural areas. Even without state intervention, there were compelling reasons for urban couples to limit the family to a single child. Raising a child required a significant portion of family income, and in the cities a child did not become an economic asset until he or she entered the work force at age sixteen. Couples with only one child were given preferential treatment in housing allocation. In addition, because city dwellers who were employed in state enterprises received pensions after retirement, the sex of their first child was less important to them than it was to those in rural areas.
Observers suggested that an accurate assessment of the one-child program would not be possible until all women who came of childbearing age in the early 1980s passed their fertile years. As of 1987 the one-child program had achieved mixed results. In general, it was very successful in almost all urban areas but less successful in rural areas.
Rapid fertility reduction associated with the one-child policy has potentially negative results. For instance, in the future the elderly might not be able to rely on their children to care for them as they have in the past, leaving the state to assume the expense, which could be considerable. Based on United Nations and Chinese government statistics, it was estimated in 1987 that by 2000 the population 60 years and older would number 127 million, or 10.1% of the total population; the projection for 2025 was 234 million elderly, or 16.4%. According to projections based on the 1982 census, if the one-child policy were maintained to the year 2000, 25% of China's population would be age 65 or older by 2040. In 2050, the number of people over 60 is expected to increase to 430 million. Even though China has already opened two-child policy since 2016, data shows that the second-child policy cannot stop the problem of an aging population. China needs to find an appropriate birth policy to optimize the demographic dividend, which refers to the proportion of labor-age population. On the other hand, higher house prices plays an important role on the influence of marriage and fertility. The increasing house prices leads to lower marriage rates and cause other serious social problems in China.
In 2024, United Nations researchers forecast China's population to fall to 639 million by 2100. The same year, researchers from Victoria University and the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences forecast that China's population will fall to approximately 525 million by 2100 at current rates. This revision, reducing the population estimate to 525 million from a previous forecast of 597 million by 2100, indicates a sharper decline than previously anticipated.