BEIJING: For the first time in six decades, China's population declined last year. This historical turn is anticipated to signal the beginning of a protracted period of decline in its citizen numbers, which will have significant effects on China's economy and the rest of the world.

The drop, the worst since 1961, the last year of China's Great Famine, also lends weight to predictions that India will become the world's most populous nation this year.

By the end of 2022, China's population had decreased by about 850,000, to 1.41175 billion, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Over the long term, according to U.N. experts, China's population will decline by 109 million by 2050, which is more than triple the decline they previously predicted for 2019.

Domestic demographers bemoan the fact that China will age before it becomes wealthy as a result, slowing the economy as revenues decline and government debt rises as a result of skyrocketing health and welfare costs.

"The demographic and economic outlook for China is much worse than anticipated. China's social, economic, defence, and foreign policies will need to be adjusted "said Yi Fuxian, a demographer.

The decline in manufacturing and the country's declining labor force, he continued, would make already high prices and high inflation in the United States and Europe even worse.

According to the national statistics bureau, people shouldn't be concerned about the population decline because "overall labor supply still exceeds demand."

The lowest birth rate ever recorded was 6.77 births per 1,000 people in China in 2017, down from 7.52 births per 1,000 people in 2021.

The death rate was 7.37 per 1,000 people, which was the highest since the Cultural Revolution in 1974 and lower than the rate of 7.18 in 2021.

A significant portion of the demographic decline is attributable to China's one-child policy, which was in place from 1980 to 2015, as well as exorbitantly high education costs, which have discouraged many Chinese from having more than one child or any at all.

After the figures were released on Tuesday, the data quickly became the most popular trending topic on Chinese social media. There were hundreds of millions of hits for the hashtag "#Is it really important to have offspring?"

According to population experts, China's strict zero-COVID policies, which have been in place for three years, have further harmed the country's demographic outlook.

Since 2021, local governments have implemented policies to support more births, such as tax breaks, extended maternity leaves, and housing subsidies. Additionally, President Xi Jinping stated in October that the government would implement additional supportive measures. However, current measures haven't really done much to stop the long-term trend.

Online searches for baby bottles have decreased by more than a third since 2018, while searches for baby strollers dropped by 17% in 2022 on China's Baidu search engine. In contrast, last year saw an eightfold increase in searches for senior care facilities.

The reverse is playing out in India, where Google Trends shows a 15% year-on-year increase in searches for baby bottles in 2022, while searches for cribs rose almost five-fold.