China’s rust belt population plummeted in last decade, exacerbating regional economic divide
- China’s three northeastern rust belt provinces – Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning – lost more than 30 per cent of their population between 2010 and 2020
- Prosperous provinces in China’s east continued to grow, making up nearly 40 per cent of total population in 2020, up 2.5 percentage points from a decade earlier
This is the sixth in a series of stories about China’s once-a-decade census, which was conducted in 2020. The world’s most populous nation released its national demographic data on Tuesday, and the figures will have far-reaching social policy and economic implications.
The exodus of people from China’s central region and north-eastern rust belt accelerated over the past decade, creating greater challenges for the government to boost the economies of the two areas, according to data from the 2020 census.
The proportion of citizens living in the west of the country also rose slightly, but partly due to higher birth rates.
Migration was the main driver of the surge in population in China’s south and east, as people flocked to coastal provinces such as Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu in pursuit of better jobs and living conditions.
The number of internal migrants, who are not living where they are officially registered under the hukou system, expanded by more than 88 per cent to 492 million over the decade, underscoring the rapid pace of population fluctuations.
