China demographics thread.

[FairAndUnbiased]

The bold part is the key, IMO. China is able to achieve what she has because there are more engineering & STEM graduates in China than anywhere else. Sure, it is nice to have a youthful population, but far more important is what they will be contributing to society. A large talent pool with limited top-tier job positions means that whomever fills those spots would be the cream of the crop when it comes to their discipline. You can bet that engineering careers in CAC or the Chinese space program or large Chinese AI startups are extremely tough to get precisely because there is more competition for those jobs.

Of course, there is also the challenge of retaining the brightest as well as re-attracting educated folk from abroad.

You need young talent to carry out plans, do applied research and come up with the small innovations that build big innovations. Yes, you need them to be talent, but youth can't be underestimated. 40-50 year olds are generally not going to quit a stable middle manager job to go to a startup or do an astronomy PhD at CNSA.

I don't think attracting overseas established talent is a high return on investment and think that the emphasis on doing this is a mistake and a sign of ossification of leadership. Established means they're typically not actually doing lab work or coding, they're managers. But you really can't manage your way into innovation.

It is not only STEM, art and media is that way too. I used to by mystified by how Americans were still listening to Beatles, Guns and Roses, etc and find superhero movies interesting after like 10 Marvel remakes. Then I realized they're all like 60 years old and basically only consume media from when they were 30 or younger. It takes a ton of active effort to maintain the attitude of a lifelong learner. And I can tell you now that everywhere, people will just not do it. It is simply easier to not innovate anymore. That is OK, as long as someone else is going to do it.

 

[GiantPanda]

Instead of worrying about this Western-led gloom and doom on demographics about China, let's look at the demographics that will turn China's Western rivals into partially developing countries far faster than we can imagine:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1891012060990816570

None of the developed nations from the UK to Japan lost their positions because of a declining native population.

But they will lose them when their population and culture are replaced by imported people in a fruitless attempt to maintain or grow the population.

Indians won't allow the West to compete with China whether imported to the West or in India itself. They will turn wherever they are into varying versions of their home country.

 

[AndrewS]

The bold part is the key, IMO. China is able to achieve what she has because there are more engineering & STEM graduates in China than anywhere else. Sure, it is nice to have a youthful population, but far more important is what they will be contributing to society. A large talent pool with limited top-tier job positions means that whomever fills those spots would be the cream of the crop when it comes to their discipline. You can bet that engineering careers in CAC or the Chinese space program or large Chinese AI startups are extremely tough to get precisely because there is more competition for those jobs.

Of course, there is also the challenge of retaining the brightest as well as re-attracting educated folk from abroad.

In terms of annual STEM graduates, there is literally a 10x difference between the US and China

 

[Xiongmao]

@Eventine

I think that the idea of demographics driving ideology and innovation, rather than production, is quite underrated. It is well known that people are resistant to new idea after age 40 or so.

Last post I referred to US presidents when I said the US froze in time in 2000 or so, because their youngest president was born in 1961. But the population isn't much better. The modal white American age was 58 in 2018.

Ever wonder why their policies and beliefs, even at the lowest levels, look like they're straight out of the 1970's? Because they are! The modal cohort's formative experience was in the late 1970's, early 1980's. They kept improving at a slower rate in the 1990's and 2000's as this cohort entered mid-career, but at this point, their beliefs are set in stone.

The median age is only holding steady (but at a high value) because the US is importing adult immigrants. And those adult immigrants aren't having kids either.

Just in case you think this is limited to the US, ever wonder how come Japan or Lithuania is behaving like its still the 1980's, trying to push China around and threatening China, even when its hard power is nowhere near enough to do so?

In contrast, look at the population pyramid for China.

The big spikes at age 30-35 and 50-55? Correspond to China's baby boom in 1965-1970 and their children born in 1985-1990. When was China developing fastest? When the baby boom demographic matured in the workforce at around age 30-35 for the first round of reform in the mid 1990's and then when their kids entered the workforce around 2010.

It is no wonder that China is outmaneuvering these guys. It is literally putting 35 year olds against 58 year old grandpas. And while the 58 year old grandpas laughed at the 35 year old's parents for being uneducated, these 35 year olds are just as educated as the grandpas.

In the late 2020's and 2030's China will shine bright. The wave of youth in their 20's and 30's will drive huge innovation, while a flexible leadership concentrated in the 1980's generation raised in an era of great change will be able to respond readily to challenges.

But then, the situation gets dark. The huge cutoff in the age 0 category (those born in 2020) and the further decline afterwards means that China's population will no longer be replenishing the baby boomers, while China's leadership will have ossified at the 1980's generation, kind of like how the US is ossifying its leadership around the 1960's Baby Boomer cohort.

Immigration will not solve this problem as even in the US, most immigrants or their descendants will never be able to truly enter the leadership class (sorry Vivek and Yang, the only 2nd generation immigrant that will lead is Trump).

Will China's leadership be more flexible? I doubt so - think about how the fact that on XHS, there's so many people who thought illegal dishwashers in the US could buy a house after working for 6 months or that toilets in Japan are clean enough to drink out of. How the fuck do these rumors survive contact with the truth even with millions of visitors to US and Japan? Because this was a widely printed rumor in 读者文摘 and 意林 in the 1990's and the vast majority of people will have this thought engraved into their head as just a simple fact.

There is still a window to reverse this but if this is not done, then unfortunately I see the same complacency and stagnation that came to tcome to China.

Methinks that in 10 or 20 years time, the big policy decisions will be made by computer running something like AI.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Methinks that in 10 or 20 years time, the big policy decisions will be made by computer running something like AI.

If it's chatGPT, lmao.

 

[dom146352]

From the Rationalists over at lesswrong;

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.

 

[RoastGooseHKer]

But they will lose them when their population and culture are replaced by imported people in a fruitless attempt to maintain or grow the population.

That's why countries facing aging population should import people, but doing so in a highly selective manner compatible with long-term national security, population health, economic growth, and fostering of national community consciousness. In the case of China, due to the country's particular problems (aging population, gender imbalance, existing need to catch up in certain tech sectors, severe urban-rural divide, and gender conflicts), Beijing could give PRs to PhD STEM grads and foreign scientists with 5+ years work experience in strategic fields. Any foreign female students and workers married to Chinese citizens working in China could also be given marriage-contingent PR/work permits (but such benefits cannot be given to foreign males since China already have an excess of men, unless such foreign males work in a STEM fields critical to long-term national interests). Finally, and most importantly, all foreign applicants of PRC PR/work permit need to be fluent in mandarin and have in-depth understanding of modern Chinese history. This is to allow foreign PRs to better assimilate and avoid situations like in France and UK, where foreign immigrants are literally imposing their own cultures at the expense of host nations. It is long overdue to China to have a sophisticated immigration court system similar to Western countries, as well as immigration reform.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

That's why countries facing aging population should import people, but doing so in a highly selective manner compatible with long-term national security, population health, economic growth, and fostering of national community consciousness. In the case of China, due to the country's particular problems (aging population, gender imbalance, existing need to catch up in certain tech sectors, severe urban-rural divide, and gender conflicts), Beijing could give PRs to PhD STEM grads and foreign scientists with 5+ years work experience in strategic fields. Any foreign female students and workers married to Chinese citizens working in China could also be given marriage-contingent PR/work permits (but such benefits cannot be given to foreign males since China already have an excess of men, unless such foreign males work in a STEM fields critical to long-term national interests). Finally, and most importantly, all foreign applicants of PRC PR/work permit need to be fluent in mandarin and have in-depth understanding of modern Chinese history. This is to allow foreign PRs to better assimilate and avoid situations like in France and UK, where foreign immigrants are literally imposing their own cultures at the expense of host nations. It is long overdue to China to have a sophisticated immigration court system similar to Western countries, as well as immigration reform.

let's be realistic. Established foreign PhD scientists without a connection to China already, won't come to China. They, in fact, are much more likely to willfully damage China after a while because China does not offer them what they want (immense personal wealth and power or to impose their will on others without question). Lots of white professors stay for a while and then get 'sick of it', leave and trash things on the way out while talking shit.

Ironically, I noticed Asians in China, including Indians and Japanese, are actually the ones who are ideologically motivated and defend their careers viciously, even against Chinese detractors. That is what we should want to see. Investing in early career talent lets the talent come to you. Those who aren't agreeable will leave by themselves before they have a chance to do real damage. Those who stay are going to be 100x more loyal because they weren't bought, they were given an opportunity.

You never want to buy talent either with money or power, you want ideologically motivated talent. China has alot to offer, but it should offer what it does to everyone including Chinese to foreigners too, no more, no less. Those that want it will come on their own, those that don't want it, can gtfo.

 

[Eventine]

let's be realistic. Established foreign PhD scientists without a connection to China already, won't come to China. They, in fact, are much more likely to willfully damage China after a while because China does not offer them what they want (immense personal wealth and power or to impose their will on others without question). Lots of white professors stay for a while and then get 'sick of it', leave and trash things on the way out while talking shit.

Ironically, I noticed Asians in China, including Indians and Japanese, are actually the ones who are ideologically motivated and defend their careers viciously, even against Chinese detractors. That is what we should want to see. Investing in early career talent lets the talent come to you. Those who aren't agreeable will leave by themselves before they have a chance to do real damage. Those who stay are going to be 100x more loyal because they weren't bought, they were given an opportunity.

You never want to buy talent either with money or power, you want ideologically motivated talent. China has alot to offer, but it should offer what it does to everyone including Chinese to foreigners too, no more, no less. Those that want it will come on their own, those that don't want it, can gtfo.

I'd argue it's more nuanced than that.

Every student of Chinese history knows about An Lushan, whose rebellion more or less ended the Tang dynasty.

An Lushan came to China as a refugee, and was taken in by Zhang Shougui, a local governor, who mentored him and treated him almost like a foster son. Despite insubordination and defeat, for which the normal punishment would be execution, Zhang shielded him and arranged for him to meet the emperor, who spared him. He would subsequently rise in Tang ranks to become the most powerful general of his era.

Yet, despite all this preferential treatment and success, out of a lust for power, An Lushan spent years plotting his rebellion to overthrow the Tang. The war he subsequently launched killed or displaced nearly 36 million people - half of the Tang's population at the time. He was directly responsible for ending the Tang's hegemony over East Asia.

You might argue that, well, native Chinese generals and nobles are capable of equal destruction. After all, didn't that happen during the War of the Eight Princes, which similarly brought down the Western Jin Dynasty? There are many more examples of destructive civil wars between native Chinese contenders, such as the Chinese Civil War between Mao and Chiang, after all.

But here's the problem - An Lushan's case was unique in that he sabotaged a dynasty at the height of its power. In the other cases, the civil wars were caused by the lack of a stable authority - basically rival factions fighting to become the new central government, as was customary in Chinese history when no one had yet established a mandate and there were multiple claims. Yet, during An Lushan's time, there was a strong central government. The Tang was flourishing, and was on the edge of total victory over its greatest rival in the Tibetan Empire. An Lushan wrecked it all because he could care less about the country. He just wanted personal power.

The lesson here is, no amount of fair or even preferential treatment can keep foreign immigrants loyal, nor should they be welcomed just because they came by choice. An Lushan's problem was that he never saw himself as a Tang citizen. He never put the welfare of the country first. If there's one lesson China should learn from the fall of the American project, it is that most immigrants don't give a **** about ideology or the locals, and the eventual outcome of a policy of open immigration is further division along class and ethnic lines, eventually giving way to civil strife.

China should only welcome those who could become - not just legally, not just ideologically, but culturally and spiritually Chinese. Not only that, but it should also plan for subsequent generations - it must make sure the immigrants' children will also be assimilated and won't just go off to form their own ethnic enclaves within China. Only then could it avoid what's happening in Europe and the US.

 

[RoastGooseHKer]

let's be realistic. Established foreign PhD scientists without a connection to China already, won't come to China. They, in fact, are much more likely to willfully damage China after a while because China does not offer them what they want (immense personal wealth and power or to impose their will on others without question). Lots of white professors stay for a while and then get 'sick of it', leave and trash things on the way out while talking shit.

Ironically, I noticed Asians in China, including Indians and Japanese, are actually the ones who are ideologically motivated and defend their careers viciously, even against Chinese detractors. That is what we should want to see. Investing in early career talent lets the talent come to you. Those who aren't agreeable will leave by themselves before they have a chance to do real damage. Those who stay are going to be 100x more loyal because they weren't bought, they were given an opportunity.

You never want to buy talent either with money or power, you want ideologically motivated talent. China has alot to offer, but it should offer what it does to everyone including Chinese to foreigners too, no more, no less. Those that want it will come on their own, those that don't want it, can gtf

Do you see any prospects of American scientists other than Chinese Americans moving to China after the massive Trump firings?