In 2015, nearly 16.5 million babies were born in China. A decade later, that number has more than halved to just under 8 million babies.
It is a stark example of a demographic crisis that is set to have long-term economic and social consequences for the world's second-largest economy, the Financial Times said in an analysis.
While China is not the only country facing an aging population, particularly in East Asia, the pace of aging is being accelerated by the legacy of the one-child policy, a weak economy and a growing gap between the prospects and attitudes of young men and women.
"The shockingly low number" of newborns means that "the total population will shrink much faster and be dominated by older people even more than in recent pessimistic projections", said Hernan Cui, an expert on Chinese demography at consultancy Gavekal Research.
According to her, the UN forecast that China's population will decline from 1.4 billion in 2024 to 1.3 billion in 2050 and fall to 633 million by 2100 will likely need to be "seriously revised" to reflect the faster "deterioration in fertility".
"With this new record low birth rate, China has become the society with the lowest fertility rate among the most populous countries," said Wang Feng, an expert on Chinese demography at the University of California, Berkeley. Irvine.
China's fertility rate - a measure of how many children a woman of reproductive age has - is just 0.98, far below the 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population.
The decline in birth rates is due to fewer people getting married.
Previous birth control policies in China have resulted in a smaller cohort of young people reaching marriageable age. The "one-child policy," introduced in 1980, limited most families to one child until 2016, and restrictions on family size were not fully lifted until 2021.
More and more people are also choosing not to get married or to delay it. About 30% of 30-year-olds were single in 2023, up from 14.5% in 2013, official data show.
"The recent decline in the birth rate is not because couples are having fewer children, but because fewer people are getting married or are getting married later in life, when it is harder to have children," says Cui.
The economy is the "fundamental force" that is causing young people to "postpone or give up marriage altogether," says Wang. While China’s export industries impress the world with cheap and advanced technologies in artificial intelligence and electric vehicles, the domestic economy remains weak and graduates face the toughest job market in modern history.
"China has yet to fully recover from the devastating Covid-0 campaigns, during which many small businesses in the informal sector - the sector that employs the majority of the country’s young workforce - were forced to close," says Wang.
The official urban youth unemployment rate for those aged 16-24 ranged between 14.5% and 18.9% last year, depending on seasonal demand for temporary workers, with experts believing the real rate is significantly higher.
The uncertainty created by the weak job market is also compounded by the "urban housing crisis" a crisis that has wiped out a significant portion of hard-earned household wealth" and "fed the growing pessimism among young people in China," Wang added.
Ma, a 35-year-old video producer from Guangdong province who declined to give her first name, is unequivocal in her pessimism about the economy.
"My friends don't want to spend the little money they have on another person. If they have much love to give, they're much more likely to share it with a pet," she says.
China, like other East Asian countries, has strong gender norms about women's roles in the household. According to an official survey, women spend an average of 87 percent more time on unpaid work, such as cleaning and caring for others, than men. That equates to an average of 209 minutes per day.
"There is a very strong social assumption that women ultimately do most of the caregiving, and that having children will affect a woman's work and career path," says Ma.
At the same time, the average Chinese woman is often significantly more educated than her male counterpart.
Since 2009, women have outnumbered men in undergraduate and graduate programs at Chinese universities. This creates an urban-rural gender imbalance, with women migrating to cities in search of work while men remain in their home villages.
As a result, birth rates are lowest in male-dominated agricultural and industrial provinces such as Liaoning and Heilongjiang.
Meanwhile, Shanghai has the fourth-lowest birth rate - the number of live births per 1,000 people - among Chinese provinces, reflecting a higher concentration of highly educated women, creating a gender imbalance in dating and partnerships.
Men outnumber women nationally in part because of the widespread practice of sex-selective abortions during the one-child policy era.
At the same time, young men often complain that women are too materialistic in their search for a partner - a belief reinforced by social media images of "ideal" relationships in which the boyfriend showers his partner with expensive gifts.
"I'm tired of dating women who expect their partners to buy them designer handbags, pay for expensive dinners and take all the responsibility myself," says a tech worker in his 30s surnamed Zhang in Beijing. Such complaints are widely shared on social media and popular TV shows, often accompanied by warnings to men not to marry "gold diggers".
The rising divorce rate also serves as a warning to many, especially young women. In 2013, about 2.6% of 40-year-olds were divorced. A decade later, that share had reached 5%.
While rising divorce rates are linked to women's greater independence, as they have the financial security to seek a separation, divorced women are still stigmatized, and single mothers often struggle to find a partner.
Beijing has introduced a range of measures to encourage young people to marry and have children, from subsidies for newborns to extended honeymoon leave for civil servants and relaxed marriage registration rules.
So far, these policies have had limited effect, with Cui noting that it is more difficult to design policies that encourage young people to marry than those that help already married couples have more children.
The collapse in the birth rate is compounding economic challenges facing China, which is already struggling with deflation, a weak real estate market and weak consumption. Some see parallels with Japan and warn of long-term economic consequences.
"In Japan, the expectation of an aging population weighed on long-term growth expectations among businesses and households," said Hui Shan, chief China economist at Goldman Sachs. "This created a negative feedback loop, in which companies and households cut back on investment and spending in anticipation of lower growth. The debt burden from the housing bubble further amplified this effect."
Some are already adjusting to the new reality.
Ma says her neighbors used to often press her about marriage and family, but "now they don't ask anymore." They stopped after a young mother in the apartment building developed postpartum depression. "Now there are stories like this everywhere," she says.
For others, the road ahead looks more difficult. Zhao Wenjin, a doctoral student in Beijing in her late twenties, says it is not "easy to find a reliable man".
"Social changes are happening too fast, and it is very difficult to find a suitable partner who shares the same values. Without that, it is even more difficult to move on to the next step," she says.