China's population has slowed dramatically and is expected to start declining before 2025, a senior health official said, reported the state-backed Global Times.
Birth data released late on Sunday showed that the number of newborns in 2021 was the lowest in decades in several provinces.
The number of births in central Hunan province fell below 500,000 for the first time in nearly 60 years, the Global Times said.
The newspaper added that the southern province of Guangdong is the only one that has seen more than one million newborns.
China is struggling to stem a rapid contraction in natural population growth, with many young people choosing not to have children due to factors including high costs and work pressures.
The newspaper, quoting Yang Wenchuang, head of population and family affairs at the National Health Commission, said that the population of China is expected to start declining in the period from 2021 to 2025.
A change in China's laws last year to allow women to have three children did not help, with many women declaring that the change came too late and did not have enough job security and gender equality.
