China's Demographic Crisis: How Beijing's Policies Led to Population Decline

• China's population is in decline, with a birth rate of 5.63 per 1,000 people and a death rate of 8.04 per 1,000 people in 2025.
• The death rate is the highest since 1968, indicating a significant demographic shift.
• The one-child policy, scrapped in 2016, was replaced by two-child and then three-child policies to boost births.
• Despite measures like taxing condoms and proposing dating courses, efforts to encourage births have failed.
• China has experienced four consecutive years of population decline, a direct consequence of past and present policies.

Why It Matters: Beijing's past and present policies have inadvertently created a severe demographic crisis in China.