(Yicai) Nov. 21 -- China’s birth rate reached a new low last year, with the number of newborns falling to 9.6 million, the first reading below 10 million since 1950.

The birth rate sank to 6.77 per 1,000 people in 2022, according to the China Statistical Yearbook 2023 published by the National Bureau of Statistics on Nov. 19. Newborns declined by 1.1 million from the previous year, equaling about 56 percent of the level in 2016.

Fourteen of China's 31 provincial-level regions had a birth rate higher than the national average. The figures for Tibet Autonomous Region, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, and the provinces of Guizhou and Qinghai surpassed 10 per 1,000, while those for Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and the provinces of Hainan, Gansu, Guangdong, and Yunnan stood at between 8 and 9 per 1,000.

All of the provincial-level regions with high birth rates had low urbanization rates except for Guangdong, China's most economically developed province and its fourth-ranked for urbanization rate. The southern coastal province’s birth rate was 8.3 per 1,000, the eighth highest in the country, and with 1.1 million births, it was the only province with more than 1 million newborns for the third straight year.

Guangdong has the most residents in China, with a large population inflow and a high proportion of migrants at a marriage and childbearing age, Peng Peng, executive president of the Guangdong Institutional Reform Research Association, told Yicai.

Although people in the Chaoshan region in eastern Guangdong and Zhanjiang city in western Guangdong have been less willing to have children in recent years, their propensity is still higher than people in other places due to the influence of their traditional childbearing culture, Peng noted.

Eleven provincial-level regions saw more births than deaths in 2022, with Tibet, Ningxia, Guizhou, Qinghai, and Guangdong having the highest population growth rates, the official figures showed. Of the regions with population declines, seven had growth in 2021.

Henan, the province with the largest household registration population, logged its natural growth rate at -0.008% last year.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev