BEIJING -- China is struggling to reverse its declining births, with some estimates expecting drops of more than 10% this year to below 9 million, as young people remain wary of their economic prospects even after the end of the country's stringent zero-COVID restrictions.
"China's newborns have declined by 40% over the past five years, and the number of births in 2023 will be over 7 million or over 8 million at most," Qiao Jie at Peking University's medical school was quoted as saying in August by Chinese media.
