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Almost forty years after the first reforms that enabled China to become the second largest economy in the world, its economic growth is slowing down. This trend, which coincides with the end of the demographic dividend and accelerated ageing, leads China to rethink its economic model. At the same time, the country has to implement measures to deal with the upheavals of its population's age structure. This article uses the United Nations latest population projections to describe the main transformations of China's population by midcentury. This serves as a basis for a reflection on the main challenges that China will face to achieve the goal of “harmonious society” by 2020 and a central objective of its 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), which is to become a high-income country.