Experts have long suggested that China’s biggest challenge in upcoming years would be a declining population. “The last time China is believed to have experienced a population decline was during the Great Leap Forward, a disastrous drive for collective farming and industrialization launched by then-leader Mao Zedong at the end of the 1950s that produced a massive famine that killed tens of millions of people.” Well, the challenge has arrived sooner than anyone predicted. AP: China records 1st population fall in decades as births drop. Only in the bizarre world of geopolitical economics can having a billion and a half citizens mean you’re too small.