Photo: CFP

China's birth rate fell below 1 percent last year, marking a new low in 43 years. 

The birth rate in 2020 was recorded as 8.52 per thousand people, breaking a new low since 1978, according to the recently published China Statistical Yearbook 2020 compiled by the National Bureau of Statistics, noting that natural growth rate of the population accounts for 1.45 per thousand, also a new low in 43 years.

Demographers contributed the sharp decline to the falling number of women of childbearing age, and the impact of COVID-19. 

An article published in May this year in a professional journal Population Research, affiliated with China Population and Development Research Center, found out that the monthly decline of birth rate has nosedived in 2020 compared with the same period of 2015, with November and December declining above 45 percent respectively. 

Meanwhile, the statistics from the Ministry of Civil Affairs show that there were 5.88 million registered marriages during the first three quarters this year, a fall of 17.5 percent compared with last year. There were 966,000 couples registered for divorce in the first half of this year, a decline of 50 percent compared with the same period last year. 

China in May announced to further lift its family planning policy to allow each couple to have up to three children after the number of the country's newborns declined for four years straight, a major policy shift from the current second-child policy.