Weekend Long Read: How to Stop Northeast China’s Population From Shrinking
By Zhang Can
With the release of Heilongjiang’s 2024 Statistical Communique on National Economic and Social Development, the province became the last part of Northeast China to report that its population shrank last year.
According to a sample survey on population change, Heilongjiang’s total resident population at the end of 2024 fell to 30.29 million, down by 330,000 people from the previous year.
Of the 30 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions that have disclosed resident population data for 2024, Heilongjiang’s decrease was second only to Shandong province, which lost 428,000 people last year. The other two northeastern provinces, Liaoning and Jilin, saw their resident populations fall 270,000 and 221,000 respectively from the previous year.
In total, the population of Northeast China shrank by 817,000 people in a single year — continuing a trend. Over the past 10 years, the region’s residential population has fallen by more than 11 million.
Shifting causes
Before 2021, population loss in the Northeast was primarily caused by a net population outflow characterized by educated young people moving to regions with better health care and education systems.
However, in recent years, as net population outflow has slowed, natural population decline has gradually become the main driver of the contraction in the region’s resident population. Huang Wenzheng, executive director and chief researcher at the YuWa Population Research think tank, stated that there is still a misconception that the main reason for Northeast China’s shrinking population is an outflow of residents. In reality, the population would be still shrinking at the roughly the same pace without anyone leaving.
National Bureau of Statistics data showed that in 2023, Liaoning’s natural population growth rate was -5.63‰. The figure was -5.41‰ for Jilin and -6.92‰ for Heilongjiang. These are the lowest natural growth rates of any of China’s provinces.
The natural population growth rate is the difference between the birth rate and the death rate. Persistently low fertility levels and an increasingly aging population have both contributed to the problem.
In 2023, the birth rates of the three provinces ranged from 2.92‰ to 4.06‰ — far below the national rate of birth rate of 6.39‰ that year. In 2024, both Liaoning and Jilin’s birth rates increased. Heilongjiang’s communique did not release more granular information such as the number of births and deaths, or the natural growth rate.
‘Strong provincial capital’
Economic powerhouses like Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces remained population magnets in 2024, according to a Caixin review of the relevant data. The populations of much of central and western China have continued to shrink in recent years, but some provinces have managed to keep growing by drawing locals to their capitals. Hefei in Anhui province, and Xi’an in Shaanxi province single-handedly kept their provinces’ populations growing last year by attracting people from elsewhere in the province.
Among major northeastern cities, Shenyang and Dalian managed to keep their population growing in 2024.
Shenyang’s resident population increased by 39,000 people to 9.243 million. Dalian’s grew by 5,000 people to 7.544 million.
Shenyang drew 170,700 university graduates to the city by introducing policies to support recruitment in 2024. That’s a 6.26% increase. The city ended up adding 146,000 new urban jobs for the year.
By comparison, Jilin’s capital Changchun lost 16,800 people last year as its population shrank to 9.0851 million. Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang, has not yet disclosed its 2024 resident population data, but its population shrank to 9.7763 million in 2023.
Regions suffering population outflows should pursue a “strong provincial capital” strategy that aims to draw more local people to the capital, said Lu Ming, a professor at Antai College of Economics and Management and executive dean of the China Development Institute at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Small cities with limited manufacturing and service industries, especially those in more remote areas, will likely see more of their people move to large cities and surrounding areas.
How to escape
In recent years, China’s northeastern provinces have introduced a series of measures improve fertility, elderly care and employment in an effort to keep their populations growing. Although these efforts have achieved some success, they remain insufficient to solve the region’s demographic problems. The declining birth rates, aging populations and outflows of talent now pose systemic challenges to the local education, health care and elderly care systems.
Low birth rates hurt the basic education system, with more and more schools suffering from drops in enrollment. From 2013 to 2022, Heilongjiang closed more than 1,900 of its elementary schools, accounting for nearly 60% of the total, according to a Caixin analysis. Jilin and Liaoning each lost about half of their elementary schools. Jilin closed more than 2,600, and Liaoning closed nearly 2,200.
Falling birth rates contribute to an ever more aging population. In 2020, Northeast China was home to 16% of the country’s population aged 65 and older. The proportion of the population aged 65 and above in all prefecture-level cities in the region exceeded 14%, not only higher than the national average of 13.5%, but also meeting the international standard for a deeply aging society.
This burdens the health care and elderly care systems in the three provinces, while weighing on their finances. In 2023, Heilongjiang’s basic pension insurance fund for employees had a deficit of 10.2 billion yuan.
These trends will be difficult to fix in the short term, according to Zhao Jianguo, president and professor at Bohai University’s School of Economics. Retaining and attracting more talented people are effective ways to alleviate the imbalance in the labor market and remove the demographic constraints on economic growth.
The China Development Institute’s Lu believes that provinces can no longer retain people by holding onto industry as the manufacturing sector’s contribution to China’s economy is shrinking. As the economy embarks on a new stage of economic development, it is crucial to ensure a high quality of life for residents. Going forward, not just the Northeast, but the whole country needs to make improving quality of life a higher priority. To accomplish that, local governments must boost the quality of public services and create a better environment for doing business to help meet residents’ aspirations for a better life.
caixinglobal.com is the English-language online news portal of Chinese financial and business news media group Caixin. Global Neighbours is authorized to reprint this article.
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