China’s fertility rate has fallen below one birth per woman, signaling a demographic crisis ahead.<\/b>
\n\u00ab\u00a0Imploded\u00a0\u00bb might be too strong a word, but Communist China just entered the growing ranks of nations with a fertility rate below a single birth per woman \u2014 less than half the replacement level.
The implosion might not be here quite yet, but it is coming.
\u00ab\u00a0Last week, Beijing\u2019s release of China\u2019s national birth count for 2025 left demographers stunned\u00a0\u00bb, Nicholas Eberstadt wrote for the New York Post on Saturday. \u00ab\u00a0The national birth total plummeted by over 17% from 2024 to 2025\u00a0\u00bb, a drop that is \u00ab\u00a0almost never seen in stable modern societies.\u00a0\u00bb
Stick a pin in that last part. I’ll come back to it shortly.
Eberstadt called the figures \u00ab\u00a0only the latest readings from the astonishing birth crash that\u2019s commenced under Xi Jinping\u2019s rule: a drop by over half in just eight years that shows no sign as yet of abating.\u00a0\u00bb
\u00ab\u00a0The new birth figures imply that the total fertility rate [TFR] has finally fallen below one birth per woman\u00a0\u00bb, 10 ironic years after Xi ended China’s notorious One Child Policy.
It’s a short list of countries with a TFR of less than one: South Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine, Singapore, Thailand, and now China.
Demographics move slowly, but absent a swift turnaround, the movement is inexorably toward decline.
Women must bear an average of 2.1 children for a population to remain steady. Anything above that, and a population grows. Anything less, and it slowly shrinks. At a TFR of 1.3, some experts hypothesize a nation enters the Low Fertility Trap, where each generation is roughly 50% smaller than the preceding generation \u2014 and that there’s little hope of escape.
When a nation \u2014 like China in 2025 \u2014 goes under 1 TFR, they’re in what some demographers call the Ultra-Low Crisis. That’s when \u00ab\u00a0Shrinkanomics\u00a0\u00bb starts to kick in as the tax base grows ever smaller, schools close, and the healthcare system is overwhelmed by a massive elderly population supported by a tiny, dwindling workforce.
China isn’t there yet, but absent one of those nearly impossible turnarounds, the country will lose roughly 200 million people by 2050 \u2014 a loss over-represented by children and the working-age population. By 2100, China’s population (currently best-estimated at about 1.25 billion by Dr. Yi Fuxian of the University of Wisconsin-Madison) could drop to between 390 and 440 million souls.
Economically, Beijing seems to believe that AI will allow it to automate its way to continued prosperity, even with a population that will shrink rapidly over the next 25 years, and radically in the half-century after that.
And \u2014 who knows? \u2014 maybe it’ll do just that.
Before going any further, let me remind you that nobody really knows what goes on in China. The official numbers are most often lies reported up the chain and faithfully repeated further up the chain as wishful thinking-as-fact. So when I say \u00ab\u00a0nobody really knows what goes on in China\u00a0\u00bb, that includes the Party members in charge of keeping track of what’s really going on in China, right up to and including Comrade Xi.
Even the country’s export figures \u2014 which had previously been largely reliable \u2014 are suspect. Last year’s record $1.2 trillion surplus has yet to show up in banking figures or foreign currency reserves. Yet flat imports suggest that even if China did send $1.2 trillion worth of goods overseas, consumer demand remains in a slump. We just don’t know which is true, both, or neither. Which is my entire point.
So I include this next item, not because I necessarily think there is or was some kind of coup attempt going on in China, but because Jennifer Zeng’s analysis at least appears to dovetail with Eberstadt’s comment about birthrates and \u00ab\u00a0stable modern societies.\u00a0\u00bb
Here you go:
???? Breaking: It is NOT over yet.
Latest first-hand information: Zhang Youxia case is far from settled.
Both sides (Xi and Zhang) are currently locked in a dispute over the legality of the arrest. Zhang\u2019s family members and some of his subordinates have publicly expressed\u2026 https:\/\/t.co\/wbG2DMEUma pic.twitter.com\/jqLGJFFYTF\u2014 Inconvenient Truths \u2014 Jennifer Zeng Reports (@jenniferzeng97) January 25, 2026
Fascinating reading, even if it proves mostly fiction.
But we do know as a matter of record that Comrade Xi certainly is on another purge-binge of senior military commanders. And as PJ Media’s own Richard Fernandez posted this weekend, \u00ab\u00a0Any armed force mentally and operationally agile enough to challenge the United States is also an intolerable threat to Chinese Communist Party.\u00a0\u00bb
It’s impossible to say for sure what’s really going on in China, but that’s hardly indicative of a society confident enough in itself to start making babies again.
Like what you\u2019re reading? There\u2019s a lot more where that came from.
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