China’s government just announced its population has declined for the second straight year. Once the world’s most populous country, India officially surpassed China in 2023. Experts say the future of China’s workforce and economy are at stake.

China’s population dropped by 2.08 million in 2023, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. In 2022, China’s population declined by 850,000.

Experts said the accelerated decline is due to the record-low birth rate in the country, along with a surge in COVID-19 deaths after lockdowns lifted at the end of 2022. But the downward trend is expected to continue for decades, leading some to suggest the economy will face serious struggles with its shrinking labor force.

“This is a country that is in the advanced stages of demographic collapse, and this is going to be the final decade that China can exist as a modern industrialized nation-state because it simply is not going to have the people to even try,” geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan said.