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Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
China and 
Japan, side by side
China in 2026: half the people are older than 42. Japan: half are older than 51.
UN estimates for mid-2023: China 1,422,584,932 people · Japan 124,370,946
How to read this: each pyramid stacks a place’s people by age — babies at the bottom, the oldest at the top, men on the left and women on the right. A wide bottom means many children; a wide top means many older people.
Each bar is a share of its own place’s people, so a small country and a large one can be read side by side.
men women projected
CHN × JPN · 2026 · age groups
If each place were 100 people
Shrink each population to 100 people and count them. Dots are children under 15, filled squares are people aged 15 to 64, and open squares are people 65 and over. The picture follows the year slider above.
- Children, under 15
- 15
- Aged 15 to 64
- 70
- Aged 65 and over
- 15
- Children, under 15
- 11
- Aged 15 to 64
- 59
- Aged 65 and over
- 30
CHN × JPN · families and lifetimes
Children, and how long lives last
At today's rates, a woman in China would have about 1.0 children in her lifetime. In Japan, about 1.2. Babies born this year can expect about 79 years of life in China and about 85 in Japan.
Children per woman, 2026
Each figure is one child: how many children a woman would have in her lifetime at that year’s rates.
The dashed line at 2.1 is about what it takes for each generation to replace the one before it, leaving migration aside.
How long a newborn can expect to live, 2026
Each block is ten years of life, if the death rates of that year stayed the same all life long.
Hatched marks are UN projections (medium variant), not measurements.
CHN × JPN · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
China has about 12 times as many people as Japan: 1.41 billion against 122 million.
Set each against its own 1950 self and China's population is 2.6 times what it was in 1950, Japan's population is 1.4 times what it was in 1950.
China's population peaked in 2021; Japan's population peaked in 2009. In 2100: 633 million in China, 76.8 million in Japan (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | China: people | Japan: people | China: half older than | Japan: half older than | China: children per woman | Japan: children per woman | China: life expectancy | Japan: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 544.044 million | 86.4433 million | 23.3 | 22.3 | 5.81 | 3.62 | 43.8 | 59.3 |
| 1960 | 654.802 million | 96.3997 million | 20.9 | 25.7 | 4.45 | 1.98 | 33.4 | 67.7 |
| 1970 | 823.309 million | 106.712 million | 19.0 | 29.3 | 6.08 | 2.04 | 56.8 | 72.0 |
| 1980 | 983.164 million | 118.359 million | 21.9 | 32.7 | 2.74 | 1.74 | 64.2 | 76.1 |
| 1990 | 1.15358 billion | 123.400 million | 24.7 | 37.9 | 2.51 | 1.51 | 68.2 | 79.0 |
| 2000 | 1.26958 billion | 127.028 million | 30.0 | 41.8 | 1.63 | 1.35 | 72.3 | 81.2 |
| 2010 | 1.35156 billion | 128.185 million | 35.1 | 45.2 | 1.69 | 1.36 | 75.7 | 82.9 |
| 2023 | 1.42258 billion | 124.371 million | 40.1 | 50.0 | 1.00 | 1.21 | 78.0 | 84.7 |
| 2030* | 1.39815 billion | 119.584 million | 43.9 | 52.5 | 1.06 | 1.26 | 79.8 | 85.7 |
| 2040* | 1.34282 billion | 112.158 million | 49.6 | 54.1 | 1.13 | 1.31 | 81.7 | 87.1 |
| 2050* | 1.26029 billion | 105.123 million | 53.1 | 53.8 | 1.18 | 1.35 | 83.4 | 88.4 |
| 2060* | 1.13513 billion | 98.1032 million | 55.7 | 54.1 | 1.23 | 1.39 | 84.9 | 89.7 |
| 2070* | 998.784 million | 90.6118 million | 58.7 | 54.6 | 1.27 | 1.42 | 86.3 | 90.9 |
| 2080* | 870.252 million | 84.7300 million | 62.4 | 53.7 | 1.29 | 1.44 | 87.5 | 92.1 |
| 2090* | 744.903 million | 80.6344 million | 62.4 | 53.4 | 1.32 | 1.46 | 88.7 | 93.2 |
| 2100* | 633.368 million | 76.8460 million | 61.7 | 54.0 | 1.34 | 1.47 | 89.8 | 94.4 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
CHN − JPN · 1950–2100 · every age
Which ages each place has more of
Each column is a year and each row an age, from babies at the bottom to 100 at the top. The shade of a cell shows which place has more of its people at that age — the key beside the picture tells you which shade is China and which is Japan, and the in-between shade means the same. Because it compares shares, a small place and a large one can be compared fairly.
236 countries · 1950–2100
Where they sit among all countries
Every country in the world, every year from 1950 to 2100. The grey cloud shows where most countries are; China is drawn in solid blue squares and Japan in open orange squares, so you can see whether each is ahead of the crowd, behind it or in the middle.
More comparisons
Keep exploring
Each place on its own: China · Japan. Or pick any two places with the boxes at the top of this page.
Other comparisons
- Africa and China
- Brazil and China
- China and India
- China and Nigeria
- China and Russia
- China and Taiwan
- China and United States
- Democratic Republic of the Congo and Japan
- Egypt and Japan
- Germany and Japan
- India and Japan
- Iran and Japan
- Italy and Japan
- Japan and Nigeria
- Japan and Philippines
- Japan and Qatar
- Japan and South Korea
- Japan and United States
- Japan and Vietnam
- China and Eastern Asia
- Japan and Eastern Asia
Apparatus
Sources and method
Every figure for China and Japan is the United Nations Population Division's, from World Population Prospects 2024: counted to 2023, and the medium projection for each year after that. Both places are taken from the same release and the same tables, which is what makes them comparable at all.
The working behind the median age, the rounding in the “100 people” pictures and the reason the regions are kept out of the all-country views are all set out in the method.
This is one of 250 pairs with a page. The boxes at the top will take any other two places you want to see side by side.
Sources: UN WPP 2024 · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries