Population alone does not guarantee success, but in China's case, its population was key to its success, and losing it will not benefit them.
Ask anything Thread
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
China's population played a role, but probably much less of one than is commonly thought. Most of the industrialization in China was on the coasts and the productivity of the population in the country's interior was much lower. Right now, there's been more of a push to get more out of the interior but it still lags behind by a lot. And in the long run, it's going to be the ability to increase productivity that's going to matter more than the total number of people in the workforce. Another way of putting it is that a factory that is more efficient but employs fewer people is going to be more useful than one that employs more people but is less efficient.
Also, it should be noted that access to lots of cheap labor was key to China's development from the 1990s to 2010s, but that was because the country was mostly doing labor intensive manufacturing lower in the value chain. China has moved up the value chain so this brute force approach isn't that important any more.
Declining population is not likely to be a benefit, but it's not likely to be a big detriment either. The folks aging out of the workforce are overwhelmingly less educated, less skilled, and less economically valuable for the simple reason that they were born into a much less developed society. Replacing unskilled labor with skilled labor + capex is quite normal as society moves up the ladder.
It's a challenge to be managed, sure, but hardly the sort of catastrophe that some folks doom endlessly about.
FriedRiceNSpice
Major
If China had 50% of its actual population, GDP would be 90-100% of what it currently is, but GDP per capita would be 180-200% of what it is today.
That's why I don't understand the deal with all the news always crying about the population when most of the mininal jobs are being replaced by robots china deploys the most robot in the world
China has a declining population = China is doomed. It's more talking heads telling Americans what they wanted to hear.
But doesn't having a larger population = more brainpower? China graduates an enormous amount of stem students. Other nations can build their own robots but the don't have the manpower to innovate at the pace China is at the moment. More stem people the better. I remember reading an excerpt from the US military forum where they're prioritizing more people to the F-47 program since trying to develop 2 6 gens would overstretch their engineers. Meanwhile China can slug around as many engineers as they want.
Yes but western media make it seem like china is doomed and people are just echoing it all the time
I agree, I'm just trying to say that having a large population than others is still a strength, it's best not to shrink down too much. 900m-1b is a good range
Demographic issues can lead to a lack of vitality in society. Consumers tend to be elderly, with low consumption desires and poor acceptance of new things. Companies in this country tend to favour conservative operating models rather than innovation-driven ones.