China demographics thread.

[Coalescence]

If China's birth rate is zero for 50 years, all those 900 million people will be over 50 years old and unable to reproduce, so after 5,000 years of continuous history, Chinese civilization would come to an end. Yes, that would be a bad thing, in my humble opinion. I like China so I want it to continue to exist. Hopefully that is not too controversial a position to take.

Indeed, the example is just an extreme scenario, It only serves to emphasize that China has a really big population and that won't change very soon. there's no way China will have 0 birth for 50 yrs. The main point is that China shouldn't be focused on increasing the number of the population, and should instead focus on the quality of the population and dampening the impact of an elderly population. An old scientist can still contribute to the development of the country, while an old laborer can't.

Looking into the future, I'm confident that China will be able to bring about a pro-birth environment, but it will take at least two decades to see it bear fruit. Pro-birth propaganda, lower the burden and pressure on society, reducing cost of child bearing and new technologies. There's a lot tailwinds that can positively affect China's birth rate, all the CPC needs to do is actively pursue them and take opportunities whenever it shows up.

 

[Broccoli]

Most countries what follow western style society have poor birthrates or they moving towards having poor birthrates.

Whole work till you drop mentality doesn't work in a long run and when you mix that with rising cost of living things become bad.

 

[Coalescence]

Most countries what follow western style society have poor birthrates or they moving towards having poor birthrates.

Whole work till you drop mentality doesn't work in a long run and when you mix that with rising cost of living things become bad.

Correct, also there's a theory I read somewhere as well that baby boom in US happened because of the increasing productivity and wealth from the oil boom, however I don't think we'll be seeing that again because of falling EROEI. So likely the only way to improve fertility is reduce the pressure on society or creating a technology that can fuel growth like oil did, one candidate is Fusion energy, but I don't think we'll see it successfully mass produced until after 2050.

 

[gadgetcool5]

Indeed, the example is just an extreme scenario, It only serves to emphasize that China has a really big population and that won't change very soon. there's no way China will have 0 birth for 50 yrs. The main point is that China shouldn't be focused on increasing the number of the population, and should instead focus on the quality of the population and dampening the impact of an elderly population. An old scientist can still contribute to the development of the country, while an old laborer can't.

Looking into the future, I'm confident that China will be able to bring about a pro-birth environment, but it will take at least two decades to see it bear fruit. Pro-birth propaganda, lower the burden and pressure on society, reducing cost of child bearing and new technologies. There's a lot tailwinds that can positively affect China's birth rate, all the CPC needs to do is actively pursue them and take opportunities whenever it shows up.

No one is saying that China should not improve the quality of its population. What we are saying is that it can improve the quality of its population and maintain the quantity at the same time. It can both pursue a pro-birth environment and increasing education and skill. It is not mutually exclusive and China doesn't have to choose. In 2021, there were already 9 million university graduates, but only 10.6 million births.

So at the current rate, there are already enough university seats for 85% of the entire population of babies born in 2021. That is higher than the US by far. The population of the future will have far higher quality than today's population, and there will be more office workers than laborers, similar to Japan and South Korea. The only question is whether there will be enough of them to maintain China's current advantages in terms of market size, labor pool, tax base, and talent base.

 

[Coalescence]

No one is saying that China should not improve the quality of its population. What we are saying is that it can improve the quality of its population and maintain the quantity at the same time. It can both pursue a pro-birth environment and increasing education and skill. It is not mutually exclusive and China doesn't have to choose. In 2021, there were already 9 million university graduates, but only 10.6 million births.

So at the current rate, there are already enough university seats for 85% of the entire population of babies born in 2021. That is higher than the US by far. The population of the future will have far higher quality than today's population, and there will be more office workers than laborers, similar to Japan and South Korea. The only question is whether there will be enough of them to maintain China's current advantages in terms of market size, labor pool, tax base, and talent base.

Ah, so we're on the same page. But I'm certain that China can maintain its advantages due to its geography to the East, where all the growth will be in for this century, completeness of supply chain, and having a competent government pursuing industrial policies, fueling research into technologies that will help transition the economy into a high-quality one (4th Industrial revolution). And if that doesn't work out, the dual circulation strategy will help dampen the impact by shifting China's economy to a domestic orientated one instead of export (Though this is kind of partially achieved already, with percentage of export to GDP dropping to 18%).

 

[thailand_guy]

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.

Longtime lurker, just created an account. Do you think China is able to bring TFR to 1.5-1.7 within the decade?

 

[Coalescence]

Longtime lurker, just created an account. Do you think China is able to bring TFR to 1.5-1.7 within the decade?

Not OP, but I think China will not be able to reach that TFR in this decade, instead it will stabilize somewhere around 0.8-1.2, then the decade after that we might see it increase.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

Longtime lurker, just created an account. Do you think China is able to bring TFR to 1.5-1.7 within the decade?

This was the TFR before the pandemic, so I think it should revert to that once the pandemic is over and normal life resumes.

 

[thailand_guy]

This was the TFR before the pandemic, so I think it should revert to that once the pandemic is over and normal life resumes.

2020 birth rates are for the most part, non-pandemic birth rates though. Guess the real question is getting to 2.1 but alas

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

2020 birth rates are for the most part, non-pandemic birth rates though. Guess the real question is getting to 2.1 but alas

As I outlined, doing a year by year comparison of this is not going to get anywhere. This is a problem like climate change, meaning it manifests slowly, it's very difficult to solve, and China will be far more capable of solving it in the future than it is today. Certain headcases in this thread are advocating the equivalent of China shutting down every single coal plant it has this year - that just isn't going to work. It's going to take a complex mix of policies over many years and correct over a long period of time. It's worthless to draw trends from a single year's data.

If you want to worry about something, don't worry about demographics, worry about democracy. Because if China "democratizes", everything I outlined will be blown away like dust in the wind. China won't be able to solve any of its problems, and will just drift toward failure like the other East Asian "democratic" states.