From ... in Literature Environmental Research History Lifestyle Science Managed Decline — May 8, 2025

China’s cities and villages stand eerily empty; where has China’s population gone?

China’s population has gone into reverse, with deaths overtaking births and the total population decreasing by 1.5 million between 2021 and 2025. The country’s birth rate has dropped to one child per woman and researchers predict the popula

China’s population has gone into reverse, with deaths overtaking births and the total population decreasing by 1.5 million between 2021 and 2025.

The country’s birth rate has dropped to one child per woman and researchers predict the population will halve by the end of the century to 525 million. But with China’s cities standing empty, is that the whole story?

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A couple of weeks ago, Reinette Senum highlighted China’s vanishing population. “China’s population has mysteriously and dramatically collapsed. Cities and villages stand eerily empty – streets, malls, homes and stores abandoned. What happened?” she asked and shared the video below.

The description under the video on YouTube states: “In recent times, netizens on Chinese social platforms have pointed out that the number of people in shopping malls and on the streets has obviously decreased, and everywhere is deserted. Only in hospitals are there many people, and many crematoriums are packed with people. Some netizens said that it felt like many people around them had died, including many young people.

“People in mainland China believe that the authorities’ forced vaccination has led to the deaths of a large number of young and middle-aged people, among which the sudden death of people born in the 1980s has become the norm.”

In the following, Niall McCrae offers his thoughts on China’s population decline.

Cities Stand Empty as the Chinese Population Goes Into Reverse

By Niall McCrae as published by The Conservative Woman on 8 May 2025

You can have your own opinions, but not your own facts. Certain types of information are accepted, such as the tallest mountain or the names of countries and capital cities. But what about population figures? The total living in the UK, for example, depends on whether illegal immigrants and visa over-stayers are included in the estimate. Demographic data are political.

Recently, India overtook China as the most populous country in the world. The Chinese roll almost doubled in three decades after the People’s Republic was founded in 1949, rising from 540 million to 969 million in 1979, three years after Chairman Mao’s death. The Chinese Communist Party boasted of the strength of its army, the largest workforce in the world, as a bulwark against American imperialism.

It is easy to forget that China had, until recently, a largely impoverished and illiterate populace, living off the fields or fishing in dhows. The 1988 edition of the Economist’s guide to doing business in China, as Deng Xiaoping was opening the economy to foreign investment, stated that over 70 per cent still lived in the countryside, and that the population was young (ominously, the book mentioned an active student movement, which was quashed at Tiananmen Square a year later). The birth rate rose from 1.8 per cent to 2.1 per cent in 1986 alone. How China has changed!

As China passed the billion mark, a one-child policy was imposed. The average offspring per woman was 1.66 throughout the period of official restriction, below the replacement level of 2.1, thus slowing population growth. But now the birth rate is down to one per woman. The ageing society has fewer entrants, with the 9 million births in 2023 being half the total in 2017. Deaths overtook births three years ago, and the Chinese population has gone into reverse. According to Macrotrends, the total in 2021 was 1,425,887,337, and the latest count for 2025 is down to 1,424,381,924 – a drop of one-and-a-half million.

India’s annual increase has slowed to less than 1 per cent, and its population level is expected to peak around 2060. Meanwhile, over half of European countries are now in negative growth, although the UK and other large economies continue upwards due to mass immigration. Researchers at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences predict that China’s population will halve by the end of the century, falling to 525 million.

Controversially, some analysts believe that China never surpassed a billion, and that the communist state has persistently exaggerated the number of people. How so?

In the 1990s, China was establishing itself as the workshop of the world and millions of people were drawn to eastern cities from the rural hinterlands. Many villages were abandoned and, as farming discontinues, desertification is changing the landscape. Megacities have been built, with citizens living in high-rise apartment blocks, near the factories that export all kinds of goods to the West, from electronics to MAGA baseball caps.

A major fault in the official population figure is duplicate registration. Hundreds of millions may have been counted twice, due to their rural identity remaining after they moved to an urban area. Financial incentives and social security qualification encourage people to retain a particular status such as “student.” Deaths are not always recorded. For various reasons, researchers such as Li Fuxian of Wisconsin-Madison University and author of ‘Big Country with an Empty Nest’, speculate that the real population of China is hundreds of millions lower than the official figure.

[Note from The Exposé: One of the reasons that countries would intentionally inflate population estimates is for the allocation of international aid. The World Bank uses Gross National Income (“GNI”) per capita to determine the status and classification of each nation, which in turn influences the allocation of aid. GNI per capita is calculated by dividing the total income of a country’s residents, including income earned abroad, by the population. The World Bank classifies countries into four income groups: low, lower-middle, upper-middle and high based on their GNI per capita. The bigger the population, the smaller the GNI per capita and, potentially, the more foreign aid a country will receive. You may also find it interesting to read our previous article, ‘Conspiracy theorists, you were right: The climate change agenda is the depopulation agenda, even though no one knows what the global population is’, which explains that population numbers are estimates and in some cases guesses.]

I cannot verify such assertions, but the rulers in Peking are not averse to propaganda. Whatever the truth, undoubtedly China is facing serious demographic challenges, exacerbated by a looming economic downturn. Donald Trump’s 145 per cent tariffs on Chinese imports will bite hard. Already, protests are sweeping across China’s industrial cities as workers are denied pay and factories suddenly close. Goldman Sachs predicts up to 20 million job losses.

China is becoming a pressure cooker, with multitudes from a rural background left jobless and unable to make ends meet. This is a big test for the communist regime. Potential uprising is likely to be brutally suppressed.

Some major new cities are deserted, with swathes of empty housing projects built on speculation. Precincts and dual carriageways have an apocalyptic atmosphere. Indicators such as domestic salt consumption suggest a rapidly declining population. The change is dramatic, and recent. Where have all the people gone? Perhaps the Chinese coronavirus vaccine is a factor.

Why would the Chinese state continue to claim 1.4 billion inhabitants? In my book ‘Green in Tooth and Claw’, I explain the population paradox of people and power. Since the 1960s, “green” ideology has cast humans as polluters of the planet and the depopulation agenda is sometimes overtly expressed. At the same time, Western nations have opened their borders to Asians and Africans, causing overcrowding in countries where the population would otherwise be stable or falling. How is building bigger cities and covering green land in concrete “green”?

The paradoxical strategy of the globalists is to get ordinary people to feel and suffer from the effects of overpopulation. Only then will they support dystopian interventions to control the number. In China, as unemployment soars, people will conclude that 1.4 billion is too many. Commentators on the new world order suggest that communist China was established as a laboratory for technocracy. It was first with the social credit system. Will it also be the first to tackle what Yuval Noah Harari of the World Economic Forum would describe as the “useless eaters”?

About the Author

Dr Niall McCrae is an officer of the Workers of England Union, a position he has held since at least 2024. He was previously a senior lecturer in mental health nursing at King’s College London. He writes on various topics including mental health, Brexit, and democracy. He is also known for his contributions to Unity News Network, The Conservative Woman and The Light newspaper.

McCrae has authored several books including ‘The Moon and Madness’ (2011), ‘Echoes from the Corridors’ (with Peter Nolan, 2016) and ‘Moralitis: a Cultural Virus’ (with Robert Oulds, 2020). In 2024, he published his book ‘Green in Tooth and Claw: The Misanthropic Mission of Climate Alarm’.

Featured image: China’s city streets; once overcrowded are being reported as being empty. Source: Reinette Senum

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