Beijing: China's population dropped for the first time in decades in 2022, official data released by the country on Monday revealed.

China is the world's most populous nation.

On Tuesday, the National Bureau of Statistics announced that the total population fell by 850,000 in 2022 to 1.41175bn, the first decline in 60 years, reports Financial Times.

  “This is a truly historic turning point, an onset of a long-term and irreversible population decline,”Wang Feng, an expert on Chinese demographic change at the University of California, Irvine, told the newspaper.

China has been making headlines in recent times over the spike in COVID-19 cases.