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. According to the World Health Organization, the suicide rate in China was 9.7 per 100,000 as of 2016. As a comparison, the suicide rate in the U.S. in 2016 was 15.3. 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.

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. By 2011, China had one of the lowest suicide rates in the world, even less than the USA. Between 1990 and 2016, suicide rates in China fell by 64%, making China the #1 country in the world in suicide reduction. 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. 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.