The number of kindergartens in China has fallen by a staggering 25 percent over the past four years, reflecting the nation’s deepening demographic crisis and the severe impact of a collapsing birthrate on its education system. According to a Financial Times report, enrolments in kindergartens across China dropped by 12 million children between 2020 and 2024, falling from a peak of 48 million to 36 million, based on figures from China’s Ministry of Education.
The rapid decline has led to the closure of more than 41,000 kindergartens since 2021, when the number of such institutions peaked at nearly 295,000. The affected kindergartens primarily served children aged three to five. Experts warn this is just the beginning of a much broader restructuring of the country’s education and social services infrastructure as China faces what is likely to become one of the fastest demographic declines in modern history.
“This trend is baked into the system and that’s not going to change,” said Stuart Gietel-Basten, director of the Center for Aging Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, speaking to the Financial Times. He added that the decline in births over the past decade has been “huge” compared to the previous era. China’s birthrate has nearly halved since it hit a peak of 17.9 million births in 2017, and despite a slight rebound in 2024, with 9.3 million births reported—up from a record low in 2023—deaths have consistently outpaced births for three straight years.
The demographic collapse is already reshaping local communities and business models. Zhuang Yanfang, a long-time educator and owner of three private kindergartens in Jinhua, Zhejiang province, told the Financial Times that she converted one of her schools into a 42-bed nursing home in 2023 after enrolments plummeted. “With the birth rate dropping, enrolments had declined,” she said, estimating that “90 percent of private kindergartens” in her community have already shut their doors.
Even after modifying her remaining two kindergartens to accommodate infants from just 10 months old, Zhuang said she now has only 150 children across both facilities, a dramatic fall from over 1,000 a few years ago. She acknowledged the switch to elder care is far from easy, noting that her new nursing home currently houses just 16 residents. Although it offers services such as meals and social activities to about 200 retirees in the community, most elderly people in China still prefer to live with younger relatives, only considering institutional care as a last resort.
While the closures paint a grim picture, some experts see a chance for long-overdue reform. Gietel-Basten suggested that Beijing could use the resources freed up by falling student numbers to upgrade the quality of education across all levels—from expanding infant care to improving universities. He also proposed overhauling systems such as the gaokao, the famously rigorous college entrance exam, in an effort to prepare a smaller, older but more educated and skilled workforce for the future.
However, he warned that repurposing China’s extensive educational infrastructure—such as buildings and properties—will pose a major challenge. “All of these aspects have to be reformed in order to allow this smaller, older but more educated, more skilled and healthier population to really thrive,” Gietel-Basten said.
As China confronts the social and economic consequences of its shrinking population, the swift collapse of its kindergarten system may be just the first visible signal of a demographic shift that will reshape the nation for decades to come.
