A question no one asks (probably because it's rather off colour) is how many useful people China has. As a first approximation, let's look at the labour force compositions in China and the EU. The breakdowns are as follows:
China: agriculture 27%, industry 29%, services 44%.
EU: agriculture 5%, industry 21.9%, services 73.1%
I certainly wouldn't want to suggest that everyone working in agriculture is useless, but there is an enormous excess in China. In the US that component of the labour force is 1%, although I believe that's understated because of the number of undocumented migrants in the US working in agriculture.
If we consider a composition like the EU's (and the EU doesn't consist solely of highly developed countries), there's a 22 percentage point excess in agriculture that should be transferred to the two other much more productive sectors. That's around 300 million people in China that are essentially doing nothing more productive than feeding themselves. They are entirely outside the modern economy and contribute nothing to it. That's about an America right there if they can be shifted to more productive work.
Furthermore, since China experienced extremely massive growth in the last few decades, the productivity of a Chinese worker is highly dependent on age. The people retiring from the Chinese workforce now entered it in the '70s/'80s, when China's productivity and education were in the gutter. To give you some perspective, in 1982 the literacy rate in China was 65.5%, meaning more than a third of Chinese adults then couldn't even write their own name. These people aren't retiring with exorbitant pensions and healthcare. The people entering the Chinese workforce now are incomparably more educated and productive.
In case all this isn't enough, I'll give you an anecdote. Since we're on a defense forum, I'm sure you all know what Changxing Island is (you need to read some of the naval threads here if you don't). One of China's shipyards, Hudong Zhonghua, is relocating to Changxing. While HD's overall building capacity will only slightly increase since the old facility is shutting down, the new facility will require only two-fifths of the workforce of the old facility thanks to automation and smart manufacturing. That's 60% of the previous workforce gone, and the old shipyard isn't exactly ancient.
Just imagine how much technology will change the nature of productive work in the coming decades. How many jobs are going to be destroyed by self-driving vehicles, a technology that exists and is in use today?
In conclusion, demographics and especially the interaction between demographics and economics are extremely complex and multifaceted and they play out over many decades. The subject can't be reduced to a few stupid soundbites like "China will grow old before it grows rich" and other such tripe. There are many more projections than either a population growing to infinity or declining to zero. It's very likely that China's population will shrink by a significant amount (200-300 million) before stabilizing and growing very gradually. That population will be multiple times more productive than the current one and China then will be far wealthier and more powerful than it is now.
This thread is barely a year old and already it's more than a hundred pages. Not much is going to happen in a year. Watch this space if you like, but you're going to be watching it for decades.
China: agriculture 27%, industry 29%, services 44%.
EU: agriculture 5%, industry 21.9%, services 73.1%
I certainly wouldn't want to suggest that everyone working in agriculture is useless, but there is an enormous excess in China. In the US that component of the labour force is 1%, although I believe that's understated because of the number of undocumented migrants in the US working in agriculture.
If we consider a composition like the EU's (and the EU doesn't consist solely of highly developed countries), there's a 22 percentage point excess in agriculture that should be transferred to the two other much more productive sectors. That's around 300 million people in China that are essentially doing nothing more productive than feeding themselves. They are entirely outside the modern economy and contribute nothing to it. That's about an America right there if they can be shifted to more productive work.
Furthermore, since China experienced extremely massive growth in the last few decades, the productivity of a Chinese worker is highly dependent on age. The people retiring from the Chinese workforce now entered it in the '70s/'80s, when China's productivity and education were in the gutter. To give you some perspective, in 1982 the literacy rate in China was 65.5%, meaning more than a third of Chinese adults then couldn't even write their own name. These people aren't retiring with exorbitant pensions and healthcare. The people entering the Chinese workforce now are incomparably more educated and productive.
In case all this isn't enough, I'll give you an anecdote. Since we're on a defense forum, I'm sure you all know what Changxing Island is (you need to read some of the naval threads here if you don't). One of China's shipyards, Hudong Zhonghua, is relocating to Changxing. While HD's overall building capacity will only slightly increase since the old facility is shutting down, the new facility will require only two-fifths of the workforce of the old facility thanks to automation and smart manufacturing. That's 60% of the previous workforce gone, and the old shipyard isn't exactly ancient.
Just imagine how much technology will change the nature of productive work in the coming decades. How many jobs are going to be destroyed by self-driving vehicles, a technology that exists and is in use today?
In conclusion, demographics and especially the interaction between demographics and economics are extremely complex and multifaceted and they play out over many decades. The subject can't be reduced to a few stupid soundbites like "China will grow old before it grows rich" and other such tripe. There are many more projections than either a population growing to infinity or declining to zero. It's very likely that China's population will shrink by a significant amount (200-300 million) before stabilizing and growing very gradually. That population will be multiple times more productive than the current one and China then will be far wealthier and more powerful than it is now.
This thread is barely a year old and already it's more than a hundred pages. Not much is going to happen in a year. Watch this space if you like, but you're going to be watching it for decades.
