According to a brief communique from that entity, the NBS will inform about the exact figure of the current level of inhabitants when the results of the census, carried out since November 2020, is published.

This is how the Bureau reacted to a material published in US newspaper Financial Times, which spoke about the first decline in the Chinese population in five decades.

According to local experts, the population reduction would start in 2021 and the Government could further tighten policies, make family planning policy more flexible or completely eliminated, and introduce new incentives to encourage more births.

Preliminary calculations by the Ministry of Public Security showed that births in China in 2020 decreased 15 percent, which set off alarms because it represents the fall for the fourth consecutive year.

In 2016, China ended the one-child policy and had 17.086 million babies. But in subsequent years, a permanent decline has been noted and observers have already warned that the demographic issue is crossing the red line.

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