Infant mortality in China 1950-2020
The infant mortality rate in China, for children under the age of one year old, was approximately 195 deaths per thousand births in 1950. This means that for all babies born in 1950, almost one in five did not survive past their first birthday. This rate fell to just under 130 deaths in 1955, before increasing slightly in the next decade, as Chairman Mao Zedong's 'Great Leap Forward' failed to industrialize the country and created a famine that killed millions of people. Over the past half century, China's infant mortality rate has decreased gradually to just ten deaths per thousand births today.