Just because you have a greater margin for error does not mean that it will develop a solution, assuming there is even one. If anything it might prolong the malaise of the decline and allow a smaller and less densely populated country like Japan or Korea to recover and adapt much more quickly from their fall. The large size of the Qing Empire made it difficult to enact reforms and modernize while smaller nations were able to change more quickly, like small start-ups vs big conglomerates with technological shifts.
Abundance isn't the main issue, otherwise, third-world nations wouldn't have the highest fertility rates. China had much more fertility when it was poorer and less developed. It's selectiveness. Men who don't want to marry women who don't look like Douyin models and women being hypergameous and disdain lower-status men, and so both don't settle until it's too late. They watch porn, k-pop, anime and romance novels and have unrealistic expectations of life and already live in a high pressure society to succeed. As would be parents who only want the very best for their kids, so instead of just having them, they keep waiting until they feel confident enough either in their career or wealth to do but they never find the right moment. That competitive mindset to outdo each other for status is what creates a societal bottleneck. It creates artificial scarcity of space and resources where there might not be one, as the desire to be on top, means you must impose and monopolize advantages and hinder others success. When you are poor and have few options, you make do and just go for but when you have options, you bid your time until it's too late. Perhaps this is simply a natural limiter placed on population, like a behavioral sink for humans.
- The ability to change policies is precisely China's advantage right now, or have you not been paying attention to China being the only country able to divert real estate to manufacturing, or cracking down on big tech, or finance? Tell me which country, big or small, has been able to successfully make even a fraction of the reforms China has made? And equally important, why do you think China made them?
- Poor countries have higher birth rate because it's not about wealth alone, it's about the time-cost of expectations, it's how much time you have expend to achieve the life you expect, and it does not actually cost as much time to achieve one's expected lifestyle if they expects to be poor due to an actual lack of pathway to higher standards.
- Similarity the reason there was a baby boom after WW2 was because the war lowered everyone's expectations, so the surge in relative wealth as the war ended, combined with very low expectations from war rationing made it easy for everyone to achieve their low expectations.
This is why abundance is very important, yes people will always compare themselves with others, and the internet does promote unrealistic expectations, but at end of the day a person who only have to work 5, maybe even 4 days a week, and can easily afford everything, including housing, will have more actual, physical ability to seek out relations and start a family.
Expectations aren't linear, people don't actually hold out on relationships waiting for the perfect partner, unrealistic expectations might delay relationships, but it's the inability to achieve material expectations that prevents people from starting families. This isn't a theory, it's well known, if only from observed surge in birth rates from direct cash handouts.
Clearly Beijing understands this and it's why they went after real estate and finance and invested heavily in robotics and manufacturing. China's objective is abundance, China is the only one that actually demonstrated the agility to make structural changes to achieve it, the only one with the actual ability to achieve it, and the only one with a culture that aims to distributes wealth evenly so abudance can be experienced by everyone.
The fate of Japan and Korea isn't China's problem, they can spend all day arguing China will suffer just like them, but while they're doing that, China has already acted.
