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Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
China and 
Taiwan, side by side
China in 2026: half the people are older than 42. Taiwan: half are older than 46.
UN estimates for mid-2023: China 1,422,584,932 people · Taiwan 23,317,145
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 × TWN · 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
- 68
- Aged 65 and over
- 21
CHN × TWN · families and lifetimes
Children, and how long lives last
China is at about 1.0 children for each woman, at this year's rates; Taiwan is at about 0.9. Babies born this year can expect about 79 years of life in China and about 81 in Taiwan.
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 × TWN · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
China is the larger of the two, with about 60 times as many people as Taiwan: 1.41 billion to 23.0 million.
Set each against its own 1950 self and China's population is 2.6 times what it was in 1950, Taiwan's population is 3.0 times what it was in 1950.
China's population peaked in 2021; Taiwan's population peaked in 2019. In 2100: 633 million in China, 10.0 million in Taiwan (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | China: people | Taiwan: people | China: half older than | Taiwan: half older than | China: children per woman | Taiwan: children per woman | China: life expectancy | Taiwan: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 544.044 million | 7.59653 million | 23.3 | 18.7 | 5.81 | 6.48 | 43.8 | 56.6 |
| 1960 | 654.802 million | 11.0463 million | 20.9 | 17.9 | 4.45 | 5.79 | 33.4 | 62.5 |
| 1970 | 823.309 million | 14.8157 million | 19.0 | 18.7 | 6.08 | 3.98 | 56.8 | 69.0 |
| 1980 | 983.164 million | 18.0865 million | 21.9 | 22.6 | 2.74 | 2.53 | 64.2 | 72.0 |
| 1990 | 1.15358 billion | 20.5949 million | 24.7 | 27.1 | 2.51 | 1.79 | 68.2 | 73.9 |
| 2000 | 1.26958 billion | 22.3329 million | 30.0 | 32.1 | 1.63 | 1.47 | 72.3 | 76.1 |
| 2010 | 1.35156 billion | 23.2240 million | 35.1 | 37.5 | 1.69 | 0.92 | 75.7 | 79.0 |
| 2023 | 1.42258 billion | 23.3172 million | 40.1 | 44.5 | 1.00 | 0.87 | 78.0 | 80.6 |
| 2030* | 1.39815 billion | 22.5900 million | 43.9 | 48.8 | 1.06 | 0.89 | 79.8 | 81.9 |
| 2040* | 1.34282 billion | 21.2571 million | 49.6 | 54.0 | 1.13 | 0.99 | 81.7 | 83.5 |
| 2050* | 1.26029 billion | 19.4346 million | 53.1 | 57.3 | 1.18 | 1.07 | 83.4 | 84.9 |
| 2060* | 1.13513 billion | 17.3026 million | 55.7 | 59.1 | 1.23 | 1.14 | 84.9 | 86.2 |
| 2070* | 998.784 million | 15.0464 million | 58.7 | 59.5 | 1.27 | 1.20 | 86.3 | 87.5 |
| 2080* | 870.252 million | 12.9862 million | 62.4 | 60.6 | 1.29 | 1.25 | 87.5 | 88.6 |
| 2090* | 744.903 million | 11.3379 million | 62.4 | 59.0 | 1.32 | 1.30 | 88.7 | 89.8 |
| 2100* | 633.368 million | 10.0170 million | 61.7 | 57.8 | 1.34 | 1.33 | 89.8 | 90.9 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
CHN − TWN · 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 Taiwan, 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 Taiwan in open orange squares, so you can see whether each is ahead of the crowd, behind it or in the middle.
Apparatus
Sources and method
Both sides of this comparison come from the UN Population Division's World Population Prospects 2024 — the same release, the same tables, counted to 2023 and projected beyond it on the medium variant. That shared origin is what a comparison rests on.
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