Threats, advantages seen in China's shrinking population

BEIJING (AP) — For seven decades, China's Communist Party has ruled the world's most populous country. As the nation's population crests and begins to shrink, experts say, it will face challenges ranging from supporting the elderly to filling the ranks of its military.

Population growth has been slowing for years, but the announcement Tuesday that the country's population fell by about 850,000 in 2022 came sooner than earlier projections.

“Those developments ... may well feed domestic challenges at home and strategic challenges abroad. The Party, in short, may be in for a rough go," said Mike Mazza, an analyst of Chinese military modernization at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

Others are less pessimistic.