The data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed that during the period 2015, China's working age population reached to 911 million and the country had close to 222 million senior citizens.

People aged between 16 and 59 will decrease to 896 million in 2020 and to 824 million in 2030. If this trend continues, the country's working-age population is predicted to shrink from last year's 66.3 percent to 56.9 percent by 2030.

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The United Nations predicted that the rise of people over age 65 will have a negative bearing on China's labour availability.

The cheap labor available in China after its reform and opening-up sparked a sustained economic boom, but as the generation of the country's family planning policies came of age, the once inexhaustible supply of laborers began to dry up.

The working age population first declined in 2012, dropping 0.6 percent year-on-year, and it has shrunk annually since. China ended the decades old one-child policy this year and allowed all couples to have two children as the demographic crisis deepened with sharp rise in the population of old people.

China's current demographic structure is severely distorted as the country now faces serious problems such as low fertility, an ageing society and gender imbalance. This may hinder economic development as well as social stability in the long run, labor experts warned. The country is already facing the labor shortages in many of its cities including in manufacturing powerhouse of Guangdong Province.

Tagschina, working population, demographic challenge, United Nations, population, two-child policy, labour