On October 30, the official Bilibili account of China News Service reposted a People's Daily video commentary on pensions regarding young people being unable to afford to support the elderly. A large number of netizens refuted this through comments and bullet comments, stating that they can barely support themselves and questioning whether state media is manufacturing or avoiding anxiety about retirement.
According to the China Statistical Yearbook 2026, China's population aged 65 and above reached 224 million in 2025, accounting for 15.9%, exceeding for the first time the share of the 0-to-14 age group at 15.1%; the old-age dependency ratio of 23.1% surpassed the child dependency ratio of 22% for the first time.
On October 25, Yicai reported that as the number of children declines, kindergartens in many places are being converted into nursing homes, and preschool teachers are changing careers to care for the elderly. In 2025, China's old-age dependency ratio exceeded the child dependency ratio for the first time, with the population aged 65 and above exceeding the 0–14 age group by 10.89 million.
On October 23, Chinese Premier Li Qiang presided over the State Council executive meeting, calling for accelerating the building of a fertility-friendly society, improving policies on marriage, childbirth, child-rearing and education, optimizing family support measures such as fiscal and tax, social security and housing policies, and striving to stabilize the scale of the newborn population.
On October 20, Gelonghui released data on sex ratios by birth order for 31 provinces (municipalities) based on the 2020 China Census Yearbook: nationally, the sex ratio for first births was 113.17, for second births 106.78, and for third births it rose to 132.93, with Hubei's third-birth sex ratio reaching as high as 177.42, Anhui at 165.95, and Fujian at 164.49.
Research by Yi Fuxian, a demographer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, suggests that China's actual population may be close to 1.27 billion, with the officially announced figure of 1.4 billion overstated by 130 million.
On October 13, The Wall Street Journal published a report citing research by Yi Fuxian, a scholar at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, saying that China's actual population may be around 1.27 billion, about 130 million fewer than the officially announced 1.4 billion, based on evidence including vaccine dosages, census data, and discrepancies in school-age population records, and noting that overestimating the population could exacerbate strategic miscalculations between China and the United States.
On October 13, the YuWa Population Think Tank released the World Expected Population Report 2026, stating that China's "expected population" fell from 1.070 billion in 2016 to 264 million in 2025, a decline of 75.3%, already below the 285 million of the United States, and pointing out that current support for childbirth is so insufficient that it is difficult even to keep the indicator from weakening further.
On October 10, Gelonghui published an article estimating from population birth data that from 2026 to 2050 a cumulative total of about 570 million people in China will turn 60, with an average of about 63,000 people entering retirement age each day, and pressure on pension payouts continuing to grow.
Data from Hong Kong's Census and Statistics Department show that births from mid-2025 to mid-2026 totaled 29,700, falling below the 30,000 mark for the first time and hitting a new low since records began in the 1960s.
Shih Wing-ching, founder of am730, published an article in a Hong Kong newspaper claiming that the appearance of condoms is the main cause of declining birth rates, and suggesting that the government mandate that a certain proportion of condom products be leaky defective goods, in order to fine-tune the birth rate.
China's births in 2025 totaled only 7.92 million, a decrease of 1.62 million from 9.54 million in 2024, hitting the lowest level in decades.
On September 19, population expert Huang Wenzheng published an article refuting National Health Commission Director Lei Haichao's statement that the labor force is sufficient. He pointed out that 8-million annual births cannot sustain long-term scale and warned of a demographic collapse in 20 years without substantial improvements in fertility support. The article was subsequently deleted.
The World Economic Forum released the 2026 Global Gender Gap Report, ranking China 96th overall, with the sex ratio at birth indicator ranking third from the bottom globally.
On September 14, Lei Haichao, Director of the National Health Commission, stated that in the face of negative population growth, the fundamentals of China's total population remain unchanged. He proposed actively promoting views on marriage and childbearing, resisting negative views on marriage and childbearing, and simultaneously promoting the integration of childcare and preschool education while reducing the costs of giving birth and raising children.