Population Declining for the First Time! What's Wrong with China's Second Largest Province

The battle for population is becoming increasingly intense.

The second-largest economic province has experienced its first population decline.

According to official statistics, by the end of 2025, Jiangsu’s resident population will be 85.18 million, a decrease of 80,000 from the previous year.

This marks Jiangsu’s first negative population growth since 1978, making it the latest major economic province to fall into negative growth, after Shandong, Henan, and Sichuan.

The difference is that Jiangsu’s decline is not due to net outflow of population but is driven by low birth rates.

Population changes in a region mainly come from natural growth and mechanical growth. The former is “births minus deaths,” and the latter is measured by “inflows minus outflows.”

In 2025, Jiangsu’s birth population will be only 358,000, while deaths will reach 665,000. With one increasing and one decreasing, natural population will sharply decline by 307,000.

If natural population decreases by over 300,000, why does total population only decrease by 80,000?

This is mainly due to net population inflow, which contributed a mechanical growth of 227,000 last year.

However, this buffer is becoming increasingly fragile.

Birth rates continue to decline, and the burden of natural negative growth grows heavier. Net population inflow is struggling to offset this, making overall population decline inevitable.

Several years ago, Jiangsu’s birth rate approached the level of Northeast China, and by 2025, it further dropped to 4.2‰, well below the national average.

In contrast, Guangdong, another major economic province, has a birth rate of 7.82‰, with 1.03 million births last year—nearly three times that of Jiangsu.

The severe decline in Jiangsu’s fertility rate is not due to a widespread decrease in fertility willingness but is rooted in a significant shrinkage of women of childbearing age.

From 2000 to 2020, the number of women aged 20-39 in Jiangsu fell sharply from 13.05 million to 11.26 million, and has continued to decline over the past five years.

This trend can be traced back to fertility policies from three or four decades ago.

At that time, Jiangsu was one of the provinces with the strictest birth control policies nationwide, leading to a dramatic drop in birth rates.

Population has an intergenerational transmission effect. The number of births in that era forms the main force of current fertility; the number of births this year will determine the fertility landscape over the next 20+ years.

Therefore, reversing the fertility pattern is not just about the present but also about the future.

Why is Jiangsu’s population less attractive than Guangdong and Zhejiang?

In 2025, Guangdong’s population will have grown by 790,000, and Zhejiang by 310,000.

Excluding natural growth, Guangdong’s net inflow is 500,000, and Zhejiang’s is 390,000.

While Jiangsu’s net inflow is only 220,000, which seems inconsistent with its economic strength, the issue lies in industrial structure.

Jiangsu’s industries are mostly B2B, focusing on intermediate goods, parts, and equipment manufacturing, not directly serving consumers.

These industries are typically capital- and technology-intensive, with higher energy and machinery demands than labor.

The most typical examples are chemicals, steel, and equipment manufacturing—large-scale industries that can boost GDP quickly but do not generate many jobs.

Because they are not directly targeting end markets, Jiangsu has many leading enterprises but few nationally renowned star companies.

Among Jiangsu’s three Fortune Global 500 companies—Hengli, Shenghong, and Shagang—mainly involved in refining, energy, and steel, their visibility is relatively low.

In contrast, Guangdong has numerous well-known brands like Huawei, Tencent, BYD, DJI, OPPO, and Xpeng; Zhejiang also hosts Alibaba, Geely, FOTILE, and countless small commodities.

Compared to them, Guangdong and Zhejiang’s industries are more consumer-oriented, with a relatively developed private sector, numerous small and medium-sized enterprises, and more diverse service industries. These are the largest employment pools.

The Fifth National Economic Census confirms this.

In terms of employed persons in secondary and tertiary industries, Guangdong had 52.86 million in 2023, Jiangsu 38.82 million, and Zhejiang 32 million—Guangdong surpasses Jiangsu by nearly one-third.

More notably, Jiangsu’s employed population has not increased but decreased.

From 2018 to 2023, Guangdong added 6.75 million employed persons, while Jiangsu saw a reduction of 476,000, mainly due to contraction in secondary industry employment.

The Pearl River Delta at age 20, the Yangtze River Delta at age 40.

A few years ago, there was talk online of the “Yangtze River Delta Northeast-ification,” referring not to the economy but to population decline and aging.

Regarding declining birth rates, as Zhejiang’s birth rate fell below the death rate, the entire Yangtze River Delta experienced natural population decline, with Shanghai and Jiangsu catching up with Northeast China.

As China’s most prolific birth province, Guangdong’s birth rate will still reach 7.82‰ in 2025, with over a million births for eight consecutive years—unique among major economic provinces.

On aging, the Yangtze River Delta is one of the most “aged” regions, with the most “old” city being Nantong, not in the Northeast.

By the end of 2024, the population aged 60 and above in the three provinces and one city reached 56.37 million, with an aging rate of 23.7%, above the national average of 22%, indicating moderate aging.

Meanwhile, Guangdong’s population over 60 accounts for only 14.86%, with Shenzhen and Dongguan below 10%, ranking among the lowest nationwide.

Although population aging in the Yangtze River Delta is an established fact, the situations in the two regions are quite different.

The Yangtze River Delta’s decline is mainly due to natural population decrease, with inflow still ongoing; Northeast China faces both natural decline and population loss.

In the short term, natural growth will remain low, and population changes will depend more on who can win the “battle for people.”

The population contest will only intensify.