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What happens to a society when fewer and fewer children are born?
For decades, China has been associated with one word: growth.
More people, more cities, more factories, more consumption, more infrastructure.
Today, however, another transformation is slowly changing the face of the country.
Fewer children are being born.
In 2025, China recorded 7.92 million births, 1.62 million fewer than the previous year. During the same year, 11.31 million people died and the total population decreased by 3.39 million.
It is not simply a matter of numbers.
When fewer children are born, schools, families, work, housing, consumption and even the way a city is designed slowly begin to change.
The real question, therefore, is not only how many children will be born.
It is: how does China change when children become a smaller presence in society?
A generation that is shrinking
The change can already be seen in the numbers.
At the end of 2025, children and young people up to the age of 15 represented 16.4% of China's population. People aged 60 and over, meanwhile, accounted for 23%, or more than 323 million people.
The relationship between these two age groups tells the story of a profound transformation.
For a long time, China had a relatively young population and an enormous supply of workers.
Now the country is facing a different demographic structure: fewer young people approaching working age and more older people.
This does not mean that China is suddenly becoming a country of elderly people.
It means that the composition of the population is changing.
And this change will continue to make itself felt in the years ahead.
The one-child policy no longer explains everything
When talking about China's demographics, it is almost inevitable to think of the one-child policy.
And it is certainly an important part of the story.
But stopping there would mean telling only the past.
The one-child policy was gradually abandoned: in 2016, the possibility of having two children was introduced, and in 2021 the three-child policy was adopted.
Yet the number of births remains low.
In 2024, there was a temporary increase, with 9.54 million births compared with 9.02 million in 2023. China's National Bureau of Statistics attributed part of that increase to the larger number of women in childbearing age, birth-support policies and the preference for the Year of the Dragon, which is traditionally considered particularly auspicious in Chinese culture.
In 2025, however, births fell again.
This shows just how complex the phenomenon is.
Changing a law is not enough to change a society.
Why having children has become different
Behind the numbers are private decisions.
Getting married.
Having a child.
Having a second child.
Waiting.
Or choosing not to have children.
Contemporary China is very different from the country of a few decades ago.
Millions of people live in large cities, where housing, education and childcare can represent significant costs.
Work has also changed.
For younger generations, the decision to have a child is weighed against a more expensive urban life, longer career paths and expectations that are different from those of their parents.
The decline in births, therefore, cannot be attributed to a single cause.
It is the result of the interaction between demographics, economics, social transformation and changing individual choices.
And what about marriage?
There is another figure that helps explain the phenomenon.
In China, marriage remains closely connected to family formation and having children. In the first quarter of 2026, marriage registrations fell by 6.2% compared with the same period of the previous year, according to data reported by Reuters.
This has led several local governments to experiment with initiatives designed to make marriage and parenthood more accessible, from financial incentives to childcare services.
The problem, however, is that encouraging people to get married does not automatically mean encouraging them to have children.
The two decisions are connected, but they are not the same.
And this is precisely where demographic change also becomes a cultural transformation.
A China with fewer schools?
If fewer children are born in a neighbourhood, the city eventually notices.
Fewer places are needed in nurseries.
Then the number of students in schools may decline.
Shops change.
Services change.
Families' needs change.
It is a slow process, but it has very concrete consequences.
Demographics are not something that concerns only statistical offices.
It is a force that physically changes the places where we live.
A school built for a certain number of children may eventually serve a much smaller population.
A neighbourhood designed for young families may have completely different needs twenty years later.
And a city that once had to keep building new facilities to accommodate a growing population may find itself facing an entirely different demand.
Who will take care of an ageing China?
The other side of the picture is clear.
In 2025, more than 323 million people in China were aged 60 or over, while more than 223 million were aged 65 or over.
This means that China will have to organise a society in which a growing share of the population will need different services, healthcare, housing solutions and forms of support.
And this is where demographics meet technology.
The same China that is developing industrial robots, artificial intelligence, digital services and automation is also seeking to apply these technologies to the needs of an ageing population.
It is no coincidence that Beijing is increasingly talking about the “silver economy”, meaning the products and services aimed at the elderly population. The Chinese government has identified elderly care and the development of this economy among the priorities connected with population ageing.
Technology, therefore, is not only about building the future.
It may also help manage a society that is growing older.
A new idea of family
But there is another, even more interesting aspect.
For decades, the Chinese family model was built around the idea of a family large enough to support successive generations economically and socially.
Today, that model has to confront smaller families.
Fewer brothers and sisters.
Fewer cousins.
Fewer children.
And, at the same time, longer lives.
This means that an adult may find themselves, over the course of their life, having to think simultaneously about their children and their ageing parents.
The so-called “sandwich generation” — the generation caught between responsibilities towards children and parents — may therefore face a growing burden.
It is not simply an economic problem.
It is a transformation of family relationships.
The country is trying to reverse the trend
The Chinese authorities are aware of the problem.
In 2026, the government identified the creation of a more birth-friendly society among its objectives for the coming years, with measures involving childcare, housing, healthcare, financial support and family services.
Specific economic measures have also been introduced.
But the issue remains complex.
Because public policy can make having a child easier.
It can help reduce some costs.
It can increase the services available.
But it cannot decide for people when to get married, when to have a child or how many children they want.
And this is perhaps one of the most difficult challenges facing contemporary China.
A transformation that will last for decades
Demographics have a particular characteristic: they move slowly.
A new train can be built in a few years.
A new subway system can transform a city within a decade.
A new technology can become popular within a few months.
But a generation cannot be accelerated.
A child who is not born today will not be a young worker twenty years from now.
And a smaller generation inevitably means a smaller generation in the future.
That is why the demographic problem cannot be solved simply by increasing births in a single year.
It requires a much longer transformation.
China after growth
For decades, we have looked at China as a country of demographic and economic growth.
Now we have to learn to look at it through a different word:
transition.
China is not simply becoming “a country with fewer children”.
It is entering a phase in which the shortage of young people, population ageing and the transformation of families will influence the way the country works, consumes, builds its cities and uses technology.
And perhaps this is one of the great contradictions of contemporary China.
While the country is building robots, smart cities and increasingly advanced infrastructure, it must face a much older question:
who will live in those cities twenty or thirty years from now?
The answer will not depend only on technology.
It will depend on people.
And on the choices a new generation of Chinese people makes about its future.
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