Very thorough post on the age demographics, but I also wish there was more demographic discussion out there on China's linguistic/ethnic/cultural diversity and how that might play out this century. It seems to me that huge countries have problems keeping their very different groups of people united around a common nationality. We see that in the US today and in the past, we saw that in the USSR, and I'm just not sure China's huge size is not also a double-edged sword.
It surprised me, for example, how young people from Shanghai had a different (more negative) take on their government than
young people from Beijing. One Shanghai person told me they are proud to think differently and more freely than other people in China. It's interesting. 🤔
Excellent post. Others believe China can overcome its demographic headwinds by building its human capacity since a relatively small percentage have a high school education and by reforming its Hukou system. Such reforms would be good but we're skeptical they will significantly help China surmount its demographic challenges given the difficulty of providing training to older workers and decreasing number of younger people to enter high school. All that being said, the key for China's future economic success is whether GDP per capita will increase even as its population decreases as Japan has accomplished. As of yet, China's GDP per capita has not gained on the U.S. as much as Japan's, Taiwan's and South Korea's have. Thanks again for the informative post
China’s neighbors are increasingly afraid of its overwhelming national power? The Western nations that recently massacred 20 million Asians allege this. I live and travel in SE Asia and can promise you that no-one here is afraid of China's 'overwhelming national power'. That is a myth.
China's productivity and GDP per capita double every ten years (and will rise 10% in 2021 alone).
Since its current retirement ages are 50/55, and healthy life expectancy is already higher than America's, there is plenty of headroom.
Between 1990 - 2019, GDP per capita increased 32 times. In terms of total GDP, China may become wealthier than the U.S. in 20—and by PPP measures, already is.
As to getting old before getting rich, the intention is to create a moderately prosperous society by 2049 and it could realize that by 2035.
Raising children is less expensive in China than in most Western countries, starting with the best pre-natal care on earth and free high school education that graduates kids three years ahead of ours and ends with free or near-free university education.
Finally, China has grown its economy at a staggering rate while keeping its population unchanged. Its government's management skills can adopt a steady-state model at any time.
Most analysts of the negative impacts of China's one child policy have failed to take into account a very important fallout of this policy which is the male-child preference of most Asian societies. Because of this, China is also facing a serious gender imbalance with there being more Chinese men than Chinese women. This means many Chinese men would fail to acquire a reproductive partner which will have a significant negative bearing on future population growth.
Regarding the immigration route as China's answer to its shrinking and rapidly aging population, you mention India and eventually Africa as sources of population for China, but you forget China's client state Pakistan which has a huge surplus population which is rapidly growing at plus 3 percent. But with Pakistanis the main issue would be that they are too radicalsed with Islamist ideologies which could stir up internal instabilities with China's own Muslim populations in Xinjiang and other Muslim areas, just as Pakstani immigrants have proved themselves to be Islamist troublemakers in other recipient countries like the U S, Canada, UK, France, Belgium and even some middle-eastern countries like Saudi Arabia. To circumvent this, China could bring in only Pakistani women, as they are likely to be less radicalised, and anyway women tend to be of a less aggressive nature.
Already several reports have appeared in newpapers of Chinese men in Pakistan marrying destitute Pakistani women and taking them to China on false promises of a comfortable life there, who then soon discover that they have been taken there as sex slaves or as domestic labour.
In any case, I don't think immigration as a solution will work for China as it is a rabidly racist society which believes in Han superiority, and immigrants from Africa will very soon face extreme racism in Chinese society.
Like Japan, China is extremely xenophobic and nationalistic. They won't solve the population issue through migration..also it takes too much effort to brainwash new immigrants to love the CCP. That is best done from childhood.
What do you think of the argument that looking solely at the Mainland ignores how development is likely to occur in China’s sphere of influence? Just like an understanding of Mexico’s labor market is important to understanding the US Economy & labor market post-NAFTA, might Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and maybe even Vietnam fulfill a similar role offering cheap labor just across the border? Already, the Sino-Thais, Sino-Cambodians, and Sino-Laotians make up a significant percent of those country’s populations, and are often in prominent business & bureaucratic roles.
You are writing absolute shit - which is normal for you.
Population control, to head off as looming Malthusian catastrophe was an urgency back in the 1970s, and the Chinese government, all credit to them, acted swiftly and decisively.
In proportionate terms, China's population has only grown moderately in the past 40 years or so, yet GDP per capita, the only metric that matters, has sky rocketed. This is due to productivity gains. Workers were taken off poorly productive fields and into factories. There is still ample scope for this process to continue, and as China movies further up the value added chain, the productivity of the industrial workforce, and there per capita GDP, will only increase.
I don't think that CCPland is able to get out the trap of population aging and shrinking. Headcounts don't have to be an asset but a burden. When you take a peek at the waiting rooms at hospitals and railway stations, you got to be convinced of being overpopulate even upon recent years. The government has never been really caring about its people. It seems CCP's policies are knockoffs from taobao.com. But the economy of CCPland relies heavily on the size of its population and land. It has gone too far and no way to revamp. The only thing to count on might be AI and robotic manufacturing.
«policies to get people to have more babies are very expensive, and have very modest effects.»
That is another myth of the "woke" persuasion, under which women stop having children when they get educated and thus choose self-realization in careers over bearing children for the oppressive "patriarchy", and this cannot be changed except by patriarchal (or communist, as in this article) oppression.
Actually as even "The Economist" argued some year ago where natality rates have fallen it is because women have acquired state or private pensions, and no longer need to be "tiger moms" who raise sons as pensions assets, and thus the cost of having children switches from being a necessary investment to discretionary consumption, in competition with other forms of discretionary consumption like a nicer car, longer foreign holidays, nicer house furniture.
Therefore natality rates can be easily fixed by the state providing tied subsidies for a large part of the cost of raising children, for example by providing free income replacement during pregnancy and free childcare etc., as it happens in Sweden, which has a much higher natality rate than other countries with women who have old age pensions (or are highly educated).
Note: an affluent guy I know has used a simple technique to persuade his reluctant wife to have children: for every child she bore him up to 3 he has put $100,000 in her pension account. Well, that was indeed "very expensive" but also totally effective :-).
«Fewer workers per retiree It’s not just the number of Chinese workers that will shrink; it’s the percent. The older the country gets, the more old people whose consumption will have to be supported by the young.»
That's the usual amazing misunderstanding (or neolib misdirection) that workers support only older people, while instead they pay for both people too young to work and too old to work. Since the percentage of people too young to work has fallen dramatically because of the fall of natality rates, this largely compensates for the increase in the percentage of people too old to work.
The graph above shows that for many decades the percentage of working-age people over the total population won't fall that much, and will only return in 30-40 years to the around 60% that it had reached in 1990, "ceteris paribus". Nothing dramatic there, and that can be easily partially reverse by higher workforce participation by women, especially if they are childless or have only one child.
... and if China does take in half a billion immigrants from the 3rd world, what happens when THEY reach retiring age? China has it worst of all because their elders are physically worn out, but by that same token, they will probably die soon -- sorry to sound so brutal. Is this article intended to get us Westerners thinking harder about our own demographic decline?
Wanting to raise the Best Kids Ever (like mine!) just seems incompatible with a long and comfortable retirement. I expect to forego the latter.
Very thorough post on the age demographics, but I also wish there was more demographic discussion out there on China's linguistic/ethnic/cultural diversity and how that might play out this century. It seems to me that huge countries have problems keeping their very different groups of people united around a common nationality. We see that in the US today and in the past, we saw that in the USSR, and I'm just not sure China's huge size is not also a double-edged sword.
It surprised me, for example, how young people from Shanghai had a different (more negative) take on their government than
young people from Beijing. One Shanghai person told me they are proud to think differently and more freely than other people in China. It's interesting. 🤔
Now do India!
IDK if you're a Tanner Greer fan but your post reminded me of this one I ran across this week: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-plans-global-order heavy stuff!
Excellent post. Others believe China can overcome its demographic headwinds by building its human capacity since a relatively small percentage have a high school education and by reforming its Hukou system. Such reforms would be good but we're skeptical they will significantly help China surmount its demographic challenges given the difficulty of providing training to older workers and decreasing number of younger people to enter high school. All that being said, the key for China's future economic success is whether GDP per capita will increase even as its population decreases as Japan has accomplished. As of yet, China's GDP per capita has not gained on the U.S. as much as Japan's, Taiwan's and South Korea's have. Thanks again for the informative post
To what extent will automation and artificial intelligence erode the advantage that currently comes with having more working-age people?
Have you read https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FGR6FN2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_d_asin_title_o02?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ? Basically discusses chinese and global demography and its relation to inflation and inequality in western countries. I like the thesis of it, but don't really have the background to evaluate how accurate it is.
Two Things:
- Here’s a good podcast episode on Indian-China relations for anyone interested: https://supchina.com/podcast/china-and-india-pallavi-aiyar-and-ananth-krishnan-on-mutual-misperceptions/
- Idk, everyone seems to think we’ll loose our freedom of speech (and other values) because China is so big. Counterexample: Saudi Arabia (pop 33 mill) effectively censored Hassan Minaj’s show and Brian Fogel’s new film about MBS (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/news/bryan-fogel-on-hollywood-reticence-to-distribute-the-dissident-and-companies-looking-the-other-way-on-human-rights-abuses). Seems like there might be another dynamic other than population size afoot.
China’s neighbors are increasingly afraid of its overwhelming national power? The Western nations that recently massacred 20 million Asians allege this. I live and travel in SE Asia and can promise you that no-one here is afraid of China's 'overwhelming national power'. That is a myth.
China's productivity and GDP per capita double every ten years (and will rise 10% in 2021 alone).
Since its current retirement ages are 50/55, and healthy life expectancy is already higher than America's, there is plenty of headroom.
Between 1990 - 2019, GDP per capita increased 32 times. In terms of total GDP, China may become wealthier than the U.S. in 20—and by PPP measures, already is.
As to getting old before getting rich, the intention is to create a moderately prosperous society by 2049 and it could realize that by 2035.
Raising children is less expensive in China than in most Western countries, starting with the best pre-natal care on earth and free high school education that graduates kids three years ahead of ours and ends with free or near-free university education.
Finally, China has grown its economy at a staggering rate while keeping its population unchanged. Its government's management skills can adopt a steady-state model at any time.
Most analysts of the negative impacts of China's one child policy have failed to take into account a very important fallout of this policy which is the male-child preference of most Asian societies. Because of this, China is also facing a serious gender imbalance with there being more Chinese men than Chinese women. This means many Chinese men would fail to acquire a reproductive partner which will have a significant negative bearing on future population growth.
Regarding the immigration route as China's answer to its shrinking and rapidly aging population, you mention India and eventually Africa as sources of population for China, but you forget China's client state Pakistan which has a huge surplus population which is rapidly growing at plus 3 percent. But with Pakistanis the main issue would be that they are too radicalsed with Islamist ideologies which could stir up internal instabilities with China's own Muslim populations in Xinjiang and other Muslim areas, just as Pakstani immigrants have proved themselves to be Islamist troublemakers in other recipient countries like the U S, Canada, UK, France, Belgium and even some middle-eastern countries like Saudi Arabia. To circumvent this, China could bring in only Pakistani women, as they are likely to be less radicalised, and anyway women tend to be of a less aggressive nature.
Already several reports have appeared in newpapers of Chinese men in Pakistan marrying destitute Pakistani women and taking them to China on false promises of a comfortable life there, who then soon discover that they have been taken there as sex slaves or as domestic labour.
In any case, I don't think immigration as a solution will work for China as it is a rabidly racist society which believes in Han superiority, and immigrants from Africa will very soon face extreme racism in Chinese society.
Like Japan, China is extremely xenophobic and nationalistic. They won't solve the population issue through migration..also it takes too much effort to brainwash new immigrants to love the CCP. That is best done from childhood.
What do you think of the argument that looking solely at the Mainland ignores how development is likely to occur in China’s sphere of influence? Just like an understanding of Mexico’s labor market is important to understanding the US Economy & labor market post-NAFTA, might Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and maybe even Vietnam fulfill a similar role offering cheap labor just across the border? Already, the Sino-Thais, Sino-Cambodians, and Sino-Laotians make up a significant percent of those country’s populations, and are often in prominent business & bureaucratic roles.
You are writing absolute shit - which is normal for you.
Population control, to head off as looming Malthusian catastrophe was an urgency back in the 1970s, and the Chinese government, all credit to them, acted swiftly and decisively.
In proportionate terms, China's population has only grown moderately in the past 40 years or so, yet GDP per capita, the only metric that matters, has sky rocketed. This is due to productivity gains. Workers were taken off poorly productive fields and into factories. There is still ample scope for this process to continue, and as China movies further up the value added chain, the productivity of the industrial workforce, and there per capita GDP, will only increase.
I don't think that CCPland is able to get out the trap of population aging and shrinking. Headcounts don't have to be an asset but a burden. When you take a peek at the waiting rooms at hospitals and railway stations, you got to be convinced of being overpopulate even upon recent years. The government has never been really caring about its people. It seems CCP's policies are knockoffs from taobao.com. But the economy of CCPland relies heavily on the size of its population and land. It has gone too far and no way to revamp. The only thing to count on might be AI and robotic manufacturing.
«policies to get people to have more babies are very expensive, and have very modest effects.»
That is another myth of the "woke" persuasion, under which women stop having children when they get educated and thus choose self-realization in careers over bearing children for the oppressive "patriarchy", and this cannot be changed except by patriarchal (or communist, as in this article) oppression.
Actually as even "The Economist" argued some year ago where natality rates have fallen it is because women have acquired state or private pensions, and no longer need to be "tiger moms" who raise sons as pensions assets, and thus the cost of having children switches from being a necessary investment to discretionary consumption, in competition with other forms of discretionary consumption like a nicer car, longer foreign holidays, nicer house furniture.
Therefore natality rates can be easily fixed by the state providing tied subsidies for a large part of the cost of raising children, for example by providing free income replacement during pregnancy and free childcare etc., as it happens in Sweden, which has a much higher natality rate than other countries with women who have old age pensions (or are highly educated).
Note: an affluent guy I know has used a simple technique to persuade his reluctant wife to have children: for every child she bore him up to 3 he has put $100,000 in her pension account. Well, that was indeed "very expensive" but also totally effective :-).
«Fewer workers per retiree It’s not just the number of Chinese workers that will shrink; it’s the percent. The older the country gets, the more old people whose consumption will have to be supported by the young.»
That's the usual amazing misunderstanding (or neolib misdirection) that workers support only older people, while instead they pay for both people too young to work and too old to work. Since the percentage of people too young to work has fallen dramatically because of the fall of natality rates, this largely compensates for the increase in the percentage of people too old to work.
The graph above shows that for many decades the percentage of working-age people over the total population won't fall that much, and will only return in 30-40 years to the around 60% that it had reached in 1990, "ceteris paribus". Nothing dramatic there, and that can be easily partially reverse by higher workforce participation by women, especially if they are childless or have only one child.
... and if China does take in half a billion immigrants from the 3rd world, what happens when THEY reach retiring age? China has it worst of all because their elders are physically worn out, but by that same token, they will probably die soon -- sorry to sound so brutal. Is this article intended to get us Westerners thinking harder about our own demographic decline?
Wanting to raise the Best Kids Ever (like mine!) just seems incompatible with a long and comfortable retirement. I expect to forego the latter.