China's population falls again as birthrate drops 17% to record low

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5. China blocks population debate online, Newsweek, 1/20/26

Various excerpts
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-blocks-population-debate-online/ar-AA1Uzpuq

Chinese authorities are blocking searches about the country’s plunging births in an apparent effort to prevent the topic from trending on social media.

While users of Chinese social media platforms such as Weibo are being permitted to post about the newly released population data, searches related to the dire trend have been disabled, Newsweek verified.

A search for the hashtag “birth rate falls below 8 million,” for example, is met with this message: “Sorry, the content for this topic is not displayed.”

In 2025, the statistics bureau recorded 7.92 million births, a decline of 17 percent from 2024 and a return to the country’s seven‑year decline, which was interrupted by a modest uptick that was attributed to the auspicious Year of the Dragon and the effects of China’s post‑pandemic reopening.

Chinese aged 65 and over now make up almost 16 percent of the population, bringing the country closer to joining Japan, South Korea and Taiwan in what the United Nations defines as a “super‑aged society,” where at least one‑fifth of people are 65 or older.