Suicide in China

China's suicide rates were one of the highest in the world in the 1990s. However, by 2011, China had one of the lowest suicide rates in the world.[1][2] According to the World Health Organization, the suicide rate in China was 9.7 per 100,000[3][obsolete source] as of 2016. As a comparison, the suicide rate in the U.S. in 2016 was 15.3.[3] Generally speaking, China seems to have a lower suicide rate than neighboring Korea, Russia and Japan, and it is more common among women than men and more common in the Yangtze Basin than elsewhere.[4][citation needed]

A 2014 overview pointed at the economic crisis years (2007–2008) as a period from which suicide rates surged globally. The study was about China's suicide rates which have been declining instead: in the 1990s China was among the countries with the highest suicide rates in the world (above 20 per 100,000), but by the global economic crisis they kept dropping as significantly (as they were by the end of 1990s) with the main force having been migration from rural to urban areas.[5] By 2011, China had one of the lowest suicide rates in the world, even less than the USA.[1][6] Between 1990 and 2016, suicide rates in China fell by 64%, making China the #1 country in the world in suicide reduction.[7][8] According to the WHO, in 2016, the suicide rate in China was 9.7, while the suicide rate in the U.S. was 15.3.[3] Among men, the suicide rate in the U.S. was more than 2.5 times the suicide rate in China—23.6 for American men versus 9.1 for Chinese men, as of 2016.[3]

  1. ^ a b Follett, Chelsea (2018-05-17). "The Remarkable Fall in China's Suicide Rate". Cato Institute. Retrieved 2019-06-22.
  2. ^ Zhang, Jie; Sun, Long; Liu, Yuxin; Zhang, Jianwei (2014). "The Change in Suicide Rates between 2002 and 2011 in China". Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior. 44 (5): 560–568. doi:10.1111/sltb.12090. ISSN 1943-278X. PMID 24690079.
  3. ^ a b c d "GHO | By category | Suicide rate estimates, crude - Estimates by country". WHO. Retrieved 2019-06-22.
  4. ^ Follett, Chelsea (2018-05-17). "The remarkable fall in China's suicide rate". CapX. Retrieved 2023-04-14.
  5. ^ "Back from the edge - A dramatic decline in suicides". The Economist. 28 June 2014.
  6. ^ Zhang, Jie; Sun, Long; Liu, Yuxin; Zhang, Jianwei (2014). "The Change in Suicide Rates between 2002 and 2011 in China". Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior. 44 (5): 560–568. doi:10.1111/sltb.12090. ISSN 1943-278X. PMID 24690079.
  7. ^ Gulland, Anne (8 June 2019). "Drop in suicide rate in China fuels global fall in deaths". The Telegraph. Retrieved 2019-06-22.
  8. ^ Naghavi, Mohsen (2019-02-06). "Global, regional, and national burden of suicide mortality 1990 to 2016: systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016". BMJ. 364: l94. doi:10.1136/bmj.l94. ISSN 0959-8138. PMC 6598639. PMID 31339847.