China recorded 11.1 million deaths, some 690,000 higher than the previous year’s 10.41 million, according to data released by the National Statistics Bureau on Wednesday. The increase is likely due to a swell in Covid-related fatalities in the months after authorities abandoned their Covid Zero strategy in December 2022 and led to an explosion of infections.

The government didn’t say how many people died from Covid and related causes. An independent study published in August estimated the unexpected Covid exit caused 1.9 million excess deaths in two months.

The number of people in the world’s second-largest economy fell for a second year by 2.08 million to 1.41 billion in 2023. The Chinese population started shrinking in 2022 for the first time since 1961, the final year of the Great Famine under former leader Mao Zedong.

A total of 9.02 million babies were born in 2023, a new low on record. The number of newborns has been declining steadily since the 1960s barring a brief uptick in 2016, when the government relaxed the one-child policy to allow families nationwide to have two kids.

China is among East Asian countries struggling to reverse a drop in birth rates, which could reduce the size of the workforce that drives growth and funds pension systems. 

South Korea’s total fertility rate — the number of babies expected per woman — fell to 0.72 in 2023, the world’s lowest, and could plunge further to 0.65 next year. 

North Korea’s Kim Jong Un made a rare admission last month that the hermit country faces a population crisis as he pleaded mothers to produce more children. In Japan, about 42% of adult women may end up never having a baby, as the island country posted the fewest births since record began in 1899. 

For China, a rapidly aging society would bring further headwinds to its flagging economy, in part by hurting long-term demand for housing. The government may also struggle to pay for its underfunded national pension system.

In response to its aging population, Beijing on Monday announced a plan for a so-called “silver economy” estimated to be worth trillions of dollars, catering to older people who needing services ranging from meal delivery to nursing homes and entertainment options. 

One in five of the mainland’s 1.4 billion people were 60 or older at the end of 2022 — with the ratio set to exceed 30% in a decade, China’s National Health Commission previously said.