Although it is sometimes hard to get one's head around, given China is the world's most populous nation with 1.3 billion people and remains the world's factory, despite falling exports, China's workforce is shrinking. And fast.

The size of China’s workforce shrank for a second straight year in 2013, and the United Nations estimates the labour force decline will total almost 30 million in the next decade.

The country's working age population fell by 2.44 million to 919.54 million last year, marking the second consecutive year of decline, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said earlier this month. The working age population, which is defined as those from 15 to 59 years, accounted for 67.6 per cent of the country's population – down 1.6 percentage points from the previous year.

Lower productivity
A shrinking labour force generally translates into less investment and productivity, and the data raised the spectre of Japan's problems at dealing with a rapidly ageing society.

This puts pressure on economic growth, forcing president Xi Jinping and premier Li Keqiang to find ways of growing the economy in imaginative ways, and not just by measures such as easing of the one-child policy.