Spell-binding animated charts track how quickly world's most populated countries will grow or shrink by 2100 - with number of citizens living in China expected to HALVE by end of century

China's population will more than halve by 2100, dramatic UN forecasts show.

Startling projections suggest the economic superpower will be home to 634million people by the end of the century, compared to 1.42billion now. 

China's unfolding population 'disaster' has sparked panic worldwide, with much of the world dependent on its huge manufacturing output.

Birth rates have plunged to their lowest level on record, fuelled by its decades long one-child policy. Beijing's efforts in recent years to encourage women to have more children have failed.

MailOnline has today created a spellbinding chart showcasing the UN's projections for every country's population between now and 2100.

As well as capturing China's decline, it showcases how African nations such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola are both projected to quadruple in size.

Our mesmerising time-lapse graph also reveals how each country's population has changed since 1950, including the exact moment India overtook China to claim the title of world's most populated country (1.44b).

Between the two, they are home to more than a third of the world.

Forecasts from the UN show that while India and China will likely keep the top spots for the next 76 years, the latter's population is is set to plummet to below 1billion by the late 2060s.

This is the equivalent of the Asian nation losing more than the current population of the US in around 35 years.

By 2100 China is forecast to have lost more 55 per cent – nearly 790m – of its current population, leaving it standing at about 630m.

Last year marked the second in a row that China's population fell, due to record-low birth rates fuelled by the one-child policy which had been in place for decades.

While the limit was raised to two in 2015, and scrapped entirely in 2021, Beijing has failed to encourage women to have more children.

Experts have also blamed the rising cost of childcare and low wages for the failure to reverse the trend, despite extending maternity leave, offering tax breaks the big families and a clamp-down on 'non-medical' abortions — a move experts previously warned could endanger women's lives.

President Xi Jinping's eventual lifting of Covid restrictions was also partly blamed for death rates jumping to a 50-year high.

India, on the other hand, will see its population grow until the early 2060s, reaching a peak of around 1.7b, before starting to gradually fall (1.5b in 2100).

Within the next two decades, Pakistan will overtake the US and Indonesia to become the world's third-most populated country.

Its population is forecast to hit 385m in 2053, compared to the US' 383m. By 2100, Pakistan will be home to 511m people.

The UK, which currently ranks 21st with 67m, is forecast to drop from the top 25 list in the late 2040s, being replaced by nations such as Kenya, Afghanistan and Sudan.

However, the population is still forecast to reach 74million by 2100, ranking 61st.

The US, meanwhile, will drop from third to sixth place, with a population of 421m by the turn of the century

Falling fertility rates are behind the 'underpopulation' crisis, which Tesla billionaire Elon Musk has been seriously concerned about.

He has warned in 2017 that the population is 'accelerating towards collapse but few seem to notice or care' and in 2021 that civilisation would 'crumble' if people did not have more children.

Fertility rates are forecast to continue to fall in developed nations such as Britain and the US, and will force them to rely more so on immigration to support an ageing population.

Musk has claimed that Japan – which is seeing its population shrink – could 'flat-out disappear' if its low birth rates continue to decline and that Italy 'will have no people' if the current trends persist.

All the top ten countries set to see the highest percentage population growth are in sub-Saharan Africa, which will contribute nearly 1billion to the population growth between them.

The least populated countries in the world – many of which are island nations – are forecast to remain fairly stagnant.

The tiny Polynesian island of Niue has a population of less than 2,000 as of 2023, the least of any nation in the world.

The UN forecasts Niue's population will grow to a little less than 2,400 by 2100.