China demographics thread.

[ZeEa5KPul]

The shift from agricultural to industrial employment isn't exactly unique to China, it happened in the USSR and before that in western countries during the industrial revolution. The problem with it is that it's a one off economic boost. Once the agricultural workforce is less than 5% then what?

I don't like using the USSR as an example for anything because it's an economic failure. With that out of the way, let's take a look at "then what?"

I claimed that there's already a 280 million person population in China who are economically useless. Let's net them out of the population of 1.4 billion and divide the 2022 PPP adjusted GDP of China among the remainder to get an upper bound on what China's level of development would be if the labour composition were optimum. The answer is $26,800. By comparison, the OECD average PPP adjusted per capita GDP is $50,000. The answer to "then what?" should be clearer now. What then is productivity goes up and keeps going up. Demographers and people who subscribe to their doom-and-gloom should understand that productivity can grow without bound.

Automation isn't a binary state, it doesn't stop just because it didn't reach a level you expected in 1980s Japan. Automation is like the sea levels rising due to climate change, a gradual inexorable process that will eventually drown cities.

But that's not all, let's examine another dimension. The demographer defines "labour force" as people aged 16-64, as if all that determines their productivity and economic utility is age. It's some constant within that range and zero outside it. But the thing to note here is that not all work is created equal. The unfortunate Farmer Zhang of my example probably doesn't want to and can't continue working past 64, but a STEM worker in comfortable desk job certainly can, as can a "miner" sitting in an air-conditioned room controlling a 500 ton digger in real-time through a 5G connection (technology available in China today).

It gets even better. 64 is given as a magic number at which human beings reach a certain level of decrepitude where they're no longer able to work. You casually mentioned lab-grown meat as an alternative for resource intensive farming; do you understand the implications of that? Do you know what it would mean for medicine if tissue could be synthesized in bioreactors cheaply enough to use as food? Medicine would be completely revolutionized - people would be able to replace failing organs as easily as they replace car parts. Living well past 100 in an excellent state of health (not "excellent for your age") would be the norm. How would "labour force" be defined then?

Being dependent on that for economic growth is creating a problem for future generations.

I'll have to bust out the equation again
GDP = size of labour force * productivity.
Being dependent on the factor that can grow without bound is a problem because?

 

[gelgoog]

I think the big emergent techology will lab grown meat. If that matures to the point that herd farming is no longer necessary, it'll free up a massive amount of grain and water resources.

The amount of food and land area wasted on biofuels is way more critical in my opinion.
Corn ethanol and biodiesel made from vegetable oil are economic nonsense. Corn ethanol might even be net negative in terms of energy production once you take the fertilizer and diesel used in farming machinery into account.

I don't like using the USSR as an example for anything because it's an economic failure.

The USSR had huge economic growth in its initial stages. Until China's modern development it was probably the highest recorded economic growth period in modern history. A lot of economists today try to dismiss these output numbers as fantasy but you can't fake coal, steel production, and electricity generation. The growth only stopped in the late 1960s some time after Khrushchev went into power. Back then a lot of people thought the Soviet Union would surpass the US economically because of its economic growth rate.

Being able to concentrate capital like that and focus all of it into a massive industrialization program probably allowed the Soviets to industrialize 2x or 3x faster than would have happened otherwise. The problem is, once you finish this industrialization, what will you do next? And such a highly centralized economy means if advances do happen into a peripheral area of the economy they might be missed out entirely and never spread.

A lot of people also claim all sorts of things like how Stalin basically killed genetics and cybernetics research in the Soviet Union and this lead to a historical decline in these fields in the Soviet Union. That this lead to the failure to keep up with genetic engineering and computers. But back then the main focus on valve and transistor research was for radio and radar applications. And the Soviets did finance radio and radar even when Stalin was alive. So it is utter bollocks. And with regard to genetic engineering, it only became truly useful after Stalin had long since died. So I think it is a bit rich to claim he's responsible.

I think the main problem the Soviets had, was they focused on extracting oil and gas, selling it to the West, started buying food and other items abroad after Detente, and their economy started sliding backwards as they stopped focusing on keeping up. It was just a lot easier to just buy crap abroad and after the oil price collapsed their economy was squeezed.

 

[Abominable]

Automation isn't a binary state, it doesn't stop just because it didn't reach a level you expected in 1980s Japan. Automation is like the sea levels rising due to climate change, a gradual inexorable process that will eventually drown cities.

So more and more automation will solve a declining population? For a country the age of China where do you think this will end up?

It gets even better. 64 is given as a magic number at which human beings reach a certain level of decrepitude where they're no longer able to work. You casually mentioned lab-grown meat as an alternative for resource intensive farming; do you understand the implications of that? Do you know what it would mean for medicine if tissue could be synthesized in bioreactors cheaply enough to use as food? Medicine would be completely revolutionized - people would be able to replace failing organs as easily as they replace car parts. Living well past 100 in an excellent state of health (not "excellent for your age") would be the norm. How would "labour force" be defined then?

Keep raising the age of retirement to get more work force. This is the current state of European countries. Just like internal migration and urbanisation it's a one off fix.

Human bodies aren't cars, it'll take more than growing new organs on demand to reverse aging. The older you are, the less effective modern healthcare is. In the UK the life expectancy of someone aged 100 is the same as it was 120 years ago.

I'll have to bust out the equation again
GDP = size of labour force * productivity.
Being dependent on the factor that can grow without bound is a problem because?

If we're talking about GDP I think that equal sign should replaced with a ∝

But what is the problem with increasing population as a means to increase GDP?

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

The amount of food and land area wasted on biofuels is way more critical in my opinion.
Corn ethanol and biodiesel made from vegetable oil are economic nonsense. Corn ethanol might even be net negative in terms of energy production once you take the fertilizer and diesel used in farming machinery into account.


The USSR had huge economic growth in its initial stages. Until China's modern development it was probably the highest recorded economic growth period in modern history. A lot of economists today try to dismiss these output numbers as fantasy but you can't fake coal, steel production, and electricity generation. The growth only stopped in the late 1960s some time after Khrushchev went into power. Back then a lot of people thought the Soviet Union would surpass the US economically because of its economic growth rate.

Being able to concentrate capital like that and focus all of it into a massive industrialization program probably allowed the Soviets to industrialize 2x or 3x faster than would have happened otherwise. The problem is, once you finish this industrialization, what will you do next? And such a highly centralized economy means if advances do happen into a peripheral area of the economy they might be missed out entirely and never spread.

A lot of people also claim all sorts of things like how Stalin basically killed genetics and cybernetics research in the Soviet Union and this lead to a historical decline in these fields in the Soviet Union. That this lead to the failure to keep up with genetic engineering and computers. But back then the main focus on valve and transistor research was for radio and radar applications. And the Soviets did finance radio and radar even when Stalin was alive. So it is utter bollocks. And with regard to genetic engineering, it only became truly useful after Stalin had long since died. So I think it is a bit rich to claim he's responsible.

I think the main problem the Soviets had, was they focused on extracting oil and gas, selling it to the West, started buying food and other items abroad after Detente, and their economy started sliding backwards as they stopped focusing on keeping up. It was just a lot easier to just buy crap abroad and after the oil price collapsed their economy was squeezed.

it is clear that corn ethanol and vegetable oil as fuel are both programs mostly designed to control food prices and punish the poor, not to actually do anything about climate change.

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Compare that with

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... it looks really bad.

then you have the big boys like coal (30:1), hydro (50:1), nuclear (75:1!). Corn ethanol is just trash.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

So more and more automation will solve a declining population? For a country the age of China where do you think this will end up?

Yes, that's literally true. Productivity could grow toward infinity without stopping. If strong AI is developed, the concept of a human economy will come to an end.

If the size and age of the population were the prime determinant of economic performance, how come Nigeria and India aren't the wealthiest states on Earth?

Keep raising the age of retirement to get more work force. This is the current state of European countries. Just like internal migration and urbanisation it's a one off fix.

Unlike most discussions in this thread, I've actually proposed actionable solutions that the Chinese government could implement today, as well as strategies for tackling this problem at a root level. Why shouldn't the age of retirement be raised if medicine advances to the point where 150 years is a typical lifespan? And raised further and further when the age becomes 200, 300, etc. People like projecting populations out to 2100, project the life sciences out to that point too.

As for being a "one off fix", there's a fix that will work every single time it's applied: raise productivity. By the way, rising productivity is why the West will remain a power into the indefinite future. No matter what happens to them demographically, if they remain politically coherent and continue to raise their productivity, they'll still be the major power bloc on Earth alongside China.

Human bodies aren't cars, it'll take more than growing new organs on demand to reverse aging. The older you are, the less effective modern healthcare is. In the UK the life expectancy of someone aged 100 is the same as it was 120 years ago.

At a fundamental level both human bodies and cars are just machines, they only differ in degree of complexity. I'm sure it'll take more than new organs, but that was just an example. Medicine will advance to the point where all the damage the human body suffers as a result of aging can be addressed, at which point people will be biologically immortal. The only things that will kill people then are the non-medical things that kill young people now. If this sounds like science fiction, remember that demographers like to predict exactly what a population will look like a century from now and people take them seriously. If they can take that seriously, they can take this seriously.

But long before that time, the technology will be available to grow people in artificial uteruses like The Matrix. At that time, the Chinese government could just pay the best and brightest of its population for their gametes, optimally fertilize and clone them (if not go further and edit them), artificially gestate them and then raise the children in what are essentially state orphanages.

I don't outline these scenarios to say that's exactly what's going to happen, but to illustrate the range of solutions to this problem if we even accept the proposition that we must raise production only by raising population - which has never happened anywhere in any wealthy or successfully developing country.

If we're talking about GDP I think that equal sign should replaced with a ∝

That depends on the units productivity is measured and the definition used. Whether it's = or ∝, the point is unchanged.

But what is the problem with increasing population as a means to increase GDP?

Because there's only so much resources on planet Earth, especially for an affluent population. On the other hand, there are no limits to how much productivity can rise.

 

[xypher]

A lot of people also claim all sorts of things like how Stalin basically killed genetics and cybernetics research in the Soviet Union and this lead to a historical decline in these fields in the Soviet Union. That this lead to the failure to keep up with genetic engineering and computers. But back then the main focus on valve and transistor research was for radio and radar applications. And the Soviets did finance radio and radar even when Stalin was alive. So it is utter bollocks. And with regard to genetic engineering, it only became truly useful after Stalin had long since died. So I think it is a bit rich to claim he's responsible.

I think the main problem the Soviets had, was they focused on extracting oil and gas, selling it to the West, started buying food and other items abroad after Detente, and their economy started sliding backwards as they stopped focusing on keeping up. It was just a lot easier to just buy crap abroad and after the oil price collapsed their economy was squeezed.

The genetics were killed because the Soviets essentially made pseudoscientist Lysenko the gatekeeper for agriculture - it is a huge managerial mistake and indicates a lack of balancing in the government when an obviously unqualified person presides over such an important area. As for cybernetics - it was not Stalin but later Soviet governments that mismanaged this issue. The problem was that the Soviets actually had more or less decent computing machines but they were largely incompatible with each other and there was no single standard, so the government decided to go the easy way and ordered to basically copy the IBM, then they ran into the problem of being unable to meaningfully improve it and after the USSR essentially entered into economic crisis, the whole industry basically stagnated.

The Soviets bought food and other items abroad not because they wanted to, but because they had to. Food issues, in particular, were the result of mismanagement which led to high inefficiency - from genetics which you mentioned to dumb decisions like rapid agricultural exploitation of soils in northern Kazakhstan which then led to quick degradation and massive crop failures. Other items primarily include technological imports which the USSR was unable to produce itself or lagged behind. Soviet MIC was world-class but Soviet civilian sectors were highly uncompetitive and technologically backward in many areas.

 

[Abominable]

Yes, that's literally true. Productivity could grow toward infinity without stopping. If strong AI is developed, the concept of a human economy will come to an end.

If the size and age of the population were the prime determinant of economic performance, how come Nigeria and India aren't the wealthiest states on Earth?

Not all countries started from the same starting position. Healthy demographics alone aren't enough for a country to prosper.

Unlike most discussions in this thread, I've actually proposed actionable solutions that the Chinese government could implement today, as well as strategies for tackling this problem at a root level. Why shouldn't the age of retirement be raised if medicine advances to the point where 150 years is a typical lifespan? And raised further and further when the age becomes 200, 300, etc. People like projecting populations out to 2100, project the life sciences out to that point too.

I've proposed actual solutions. A mandatory 2/3 child policy, just like the one child policy but in reverse. Fine and/or limit job promotions for those who don't comply. Draconian from the western perspective but less so than the one child policy IMO.

Raising the retirement age indefinitely isn't a solution. You're essentially hoping that science fiction will become reality where people don't age. Life expectancies in the developed world have already plateaued and in some they are actually declining.

Food production and resource extraction on the other hand has consistently grown. It doesn't even need to, countries historically have fought over resources if need be.

At a fundamental level both human bodies and cars are just machines, they only differ in degree of complexity.
Medicine will advance to the point where all the damage the human body suffers as a result of aging can be addressed, at which point people will be biologically immortal. The only things that will kill people then are the non-medical things that kill young people now. If this sounds like science fiction,

This is all conjecture.

remember that demographers like to predict exactly what a population will look like a century from now and people take them seriously. If they can take that seriously, they can take this seriously.

I've not heard anyone claim they can predict what future populations are going to look like in a century. At best it is based on "current trends". Things change all the time, but often they remain the same as Europe, Japan are finding out. So it is useful to extrapolate data x years from now.

If anything people tend to be overly optimistic when studying demographics and assume the best. When I was a student in the 00s the prevailing mindset was that the fertility decline was temporary due to people choosing to have children later. In the public health module the lecturer I had was convinced that Scandinavian style maternity support would fix everything.

20 years on fertility rates have continued to decline.

don't outline these scenarios to say that's exactly what's going to happen, but to illustrate the range of solutions to this problem if we even accept the proposition that we must raise production only by raising population - which has never happened anywhere in any wealthy or successfully developing

Israel has but they've cheated. Getting billions of dollars of funding from the west yearly, then they get to send their young to Europe for free education and migrate back to Israel.

Western European countries and America have also mitigated the problem through immigration, particularly receiving migrants from populations that traditionally have high birth rates. But that again is a temporary solution. Migrants themselves get old, and future generations will become more like their hosts. Black American fertility rates aren't much different to white ones.

That depends on the units productivity is measured and the definition used. Whether it's = or ∝, the point is unchanged.

Because there's only so much resources on planet Earth, especially for an affluent population. On the other hand, there are no limits to how much productivity can rise.

So the same arguments that were being made 200 years ago when the world population was less than 1 billion. We've explored and extracted a tiny fraction of the earth's crust, we are nowhere near maxing out.

You're also ignoring the point that if one country doesn't do it, another country will.

 

[Minm]

Not all countries started from the same starting position. Healthy demographics alone aren't enough for a country to prosper.

I've proposed actual solutions. A mandatory 2/3 child policy, just like the one child policy but in reverse. Fine and/or limit job promotions for those who don't comply. Draconian from the western perspective but less so than the one child policy IMO.

Raising the retirement age indefinitely isn't a solution. You're essentially hoping that science fiction will become reality where people don't age. Life expectancies in the developed world have already plateaued and in some they are actually declining.

Food production and resource extraction on the other hand has consistently grown. It doesn't even need to, countries historically have fought over resources if need be.

This is all conjecture.

I've not heard anyone claim they can predict what future populations are going to look like in a century. At best it is based on "current trends". Things change all the time, but often they remain the same as Europe, Japan are finding out. So it is useful to extrapolate data x years from now.

If anything people tend to be overly optimistic when studying demographics and assume the best. When I was a student in the 00s the prevailing mindset was that the fertility decline was temporary due to people choosing to have children later. In the public health module the lecturer I had was convinced that Scandinavian style maternity support would fix everything.

20 years on fertility rates have continued to decline.

Israel has but they've cheated. Getting billions of dollars of funding from the west yearly, then they get to send their young to Europe for free education and migrate back to Israel.

Western European countries and America have also mitigated the problem through immigration, particularly receiving migrants from populations that traditionally have high birth rates. But that again is a temporary solution. Migrants themselves get old, and future generations will become more like their hosts. Black American fertility rates aren't much different to white ones.

So the same arguments that were being made 200 years ago when the world population was less than 1 billion. We've explored and extracted a tiny fraction of the earth's crust, we are nowhere near maxing out.

You're also ignoring the point that if one country doesn't do it, another country will.

It's true that China's demographic problems are exaggerated. There is a very large economically inactive rural population that can migrate and cause an increase in the number of skilled workers. And with technological advances in the next few decades, China may have a stable skilled workforce until technology can help raise the birth rate. This could be enough to continue increasing the prosperity of the Chinese people.

However, in geopolitics it's not just about being rich yourself, it's a competition. The only reason China can already keep up with the western world technologically and militarily, despite its lower level of development, is the size of the population. If China's population stays stable at around 1 billion by the end of the century but immigration into the US raises their population to 700 million and high birth rates increase India's population to 2 billion, it will be much harder to compete against them.

So I agree China is going to be ok and is not about to end up like Japan and (soon) Korea. But beating the US requires more than just doing ok. This is why it's so important to lower the cost of accommodation, education and raising children as well as creating more fertile lands by greening the desert.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

Not all countries started from the same starting position. Healthy demographics alone aren't enough for a country to prosper.

These aren't "healthy" demographics, these are humanitarian catastrophes in the making. At best these countries are condemned to widespread misery. Per capita GDP is barely growing in these places, their economies are growing because their populations are growing but it's still the same misery and poverty. The growth in China over the past 30 years because of rising productivity is 100 times greater than that because of rising population.

I've proposed actual solutions. A mandatory 2/3 child policy, just like the one child policy but in reverse. Fine and/or limit job promotions for those who don't comply. Draconian from the western perspective but less so than the one child policy IMO.

Why hasn't the Chinese government done this if it's so simple, then? Do you think you know better than they do? Are they stupid?

Raising the retirement age indefinitely isn't a solution. You're essentially hoping that science fiction will become reality where people don't age. Life expectancies in the developed world have already plateaued and in some they are actually declining.

It's no more science fiction than trying to predict what populations will look like in a century. Yes, demographers do that all the time. You say it's based on "current trends", I say that what you call science fiction is just current trends in the biotech field. If you counter with "life expectancy hasn't gone up in 100 years", I'll say just wait a while.

This is all conjecture.

What's conjecture is the idea that China can support a vastly expanded population. These are just reasonable extrapolations of current trends.

20 years on fertility rates have continued to decline.

Let's say I'm wrong about everything and fertility rates continue to go down the drain; that isn't China's problem alone. If all its enemies are in the same boat then it evens out.

We've explored and extracted a tiny fraction of the earth's crust, we are nowhere near maxing out.

Crops still only grow in topsoil. Unless you propose that we're going to burrow into the Earth's crust and live in underground cities, to which I'll ask you not to throw shade on my biomedical science fiction.

 

[Chilled_k6]

Regarding the GDP equation, ageing population is correlated with negative impact on productivity.

This is a study of OECD countries, it was found that in Western Europe during the period of 2006-2014, productivity growth could not partially compensate for negative impact of aging on GDP growth. Although interestingly, not so for Japan as productivity growth there offset aging.

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Figure 2.7. In half of regions, productivity growth fell short of compensating for ageing
Actual labour productivity growth vs. needed productivity growth in TL2 regions (%)

Also as people age, by human nature, are also less likely to be entrepreneurial and take risks. Not to mention other domino impacts of an aging population population like spending more on the healthcare system and decreasing the tax base.

China will probably continue to do better than Japan or any OECD country in productivity growth in the foreseeable future, ok, but the margin is much less. How much will productivity be affected population ageing in China is hard to say. There's so many variables involved that influence each other, and new ones that'll be introduced. By 2030, application of AI is predicted to contribute $7 trillion in growth to China's economy, compared to $8 trillion in the rest of the world of which about $4 trillion will be from the US (From Kai Fu Lee's book AI Superpowers).

The population aging issue has caught the eye of the Chinese govt because the population decline is going to happen earlier than expected with the dramatic birth rate crash in recent years. In any case, I think China should aim to put a hard limit on the population decline.