Li said the number of first-child births last year was 7.2 million, a fall of 2.5 million compared with 2016.
Yuan Xin, a professor of population studies at Nankai University in Tianjin, believes the decline in the number of births will become more pronounced in the next few years, with the number of women of childbearing age－those between 15 and 49－falling by about 5.2 million per year.
In addition many people, especially among the younger generation, are less willing to have children for reasons that have little to do with financial pressures.
They include dwindling adherence to traditional values, such as maintaining the family line, and less need to have children to look after them in old age, Yuan said.
Stability
Huang Kuangshi, a researcher at the China Population and Development Research Center, said factors such as longer life expectancy will narrow the gap produced by the lower birth rate, although that will mean a larger number of older people in society.
Even in the worst-case scenario, which assumes that the population will start to decline in 2022, the biggest fall would occur in 2062, which would see a decline of 13.5 million from the previous year, he said.
However, he added that would only account for 1.2 percent of the total population at the time.
It is inevitable that the population will start to shrink in about 2030, but it is possible to improve the birth rate by abolishing restrictions and establishing a social environment that encourages birth, he said.
"Given the total number of births in China every year, which stands at about 17 million, even a fall of 1 million per year is normal and would not affect population stability," he said.
Numbers to peak
By contrast, Yang Wenzhuang, from the National Health and Family Planning Commission, does not believe the population will decline drastically. Instead, he believes it will rise and then stabilize
In his opinion, the population will peak at 1.45 billion in about 2030, before falling back to about 1.38 billion by 2050, and about 1 billion by the end of the century.
"It has been estimated that it would take 40 years (1981-2021) for China's population to rise to 1.4 billion from 1 billion, and about another 70 years or so for it to fall to 1 billion again," he said.
