The drop, the worst since China’s Great Famine of 1961, also lends weight to predictions India will become the world’s most populous nation this year.

China’s population dropped by roughly 850,000 to 1.41175 billion at the end of 2022, the country’s National Bureau of Statistics said.

Last year’s birth rate was 6.77 births per 1000 people, down from a rate of 7.52 births in 2021 and marking the lowest birth rate on record.

China also logged its highest death rate since 1974, registering 7.37 deaths per 1000 people compared with a rate of 7.18 deaths in 2021.

Long-term, United Nations experts see China’s population shrinking by 109 million by 2050 – more than triple the decline of their previous forecast in 2019.

That’s caused domestic demographers to lament that China will get old before it gets rich, slowing the economy as revenues drop and government debt increases to take care of a rapidly ageing population.

Much of the demographic downturn is the result of China’s one-child policy imposed between 1980 and 2015 and sky-high education costs that have put many Chinese off having more than one child – or any at all.

China’s stringent zero-Covid-19 policies of the past three years caused further damage to the country’s bleak demographic outlook, population experts have said.

Although local governments have since 2021 rolled out measures to encourage people to have more babies, including tax deductions, longer maternity leave and housing subsidies, the steps are not expected to arrest the long-term trend.

Online searches for baby strollers on China’s Baidu search engine dropped 17 per cent in 2022 and are down 41 per cent since 2018, while searches for baby bottles are down more than one third since 2018.

In contrast, searches for elderly care homes surged eight-fold last year.

The reverse is playing out in India, where Google Trends shows a 15 per cent year-on-year increase in searches for baby bottles in 2022, while searches for cribs rose almost five-fold.