For the longest time, China has been known as one of the countries with the highest population in the world. However, this could change, and possibly as soon as 2025.

According to 2021 statistics from the Chinese government, birth rates have fallen for the fifth consecutive year.

A record low of just 7.52 birth per 1000 people, making the number of children a person will have in their lifetime one of the lowest in the world at 1.15.

The government released birth data for 2021 on July 24, showing the lowest birth rates in the country in decades.

According to the Global Times, births fell below 500,000 in the southern province of Hunan for the first time in sixty years.

In addition, only one province, Guangdong, had more than one million new babies in 2021.

Global Times reported that Yang Wenzhuang, the head of population and family affairs at the National Health Commission, said things won't be getting better any time soon.

Wenzhuang said, "The growth rate of China's total population has slowed significantly and is expected to enter a negative growth during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25)."

Simply put, China's population is decreasing and expected to shrink in the following years. And the Chinese government is not happy about it.

In an attempt to boost birth rates, in May 2021, the Chinese government passed a law allowing women to have up to three children, along with reducing childbirth and education costs.

The Global Times reported that the city of Panzhihua announced in July of 2021 that couples who had more than one child would receive a monetary baby bonus of sorts.

This was the first time an incentive of this kind was offered in China. The Chinese government seems desperate to combat China's demographic decline.

Chinese citizens must find the idea of receiving money for having children odd, given that from 1980 -2016, parents were fined if they had more than one child.

Science Magazine spoke to Yong Cai, a demographer at the University of North Carolina, about why young couples choose not to have more children.

Cai told Science that few young couples "put starting a family, or having another child, as their biggest priority."

Many Chinese women say that the changes are too little too late and that they lack gender equality and job security.

In addition, The New York Times reports that many women are angry that the benefits given for having children only apply if they are married, single mothers cannot apply for them.

The statistics from the Chinese government also show that almost 65% of the population now live in urban areas, which is another factor that influences the number of children couples are willing to have.

Demographer Wei Ggo from Nanjing University told Science that the conditions of city living: the high cost of living, expensive schools, and crowded living conditions "reduce people's willingness to have a second child, let alone a third child."

Yong Cai told Science that "despite all the new initiatives and propaganda to promote childbearing," couples simply are against having more children. Cai predicts that "China's population decline will be rapid."

China's working-age population (those between 15-64 years of age) of almost one billion has been the key to the country's economic rise.

A massive working age population is how China essentially became "the workshop of the world," as reported by Bloomberg.

However, as the country ages, and if population projections by the United Nations are to be believed, by the 2030s, China's economic situation may look quite different.

Nonetheless, not all demographers agree that China faces a looming demographic crisis. Stuart Gietel-Basten from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology is one of them.

Gietel-Basten told Science Magazine, "... China's population is also getting healthier, better educated and skilled, and more adaptable to technology."