China demographics thread.

[Eventine]

Because with even the most doomest trajection we are still talking about a china with like 800~1000 million citizens in 2100 if I'm not mistaken.

In 2050 China will still be 3.5 times the US, in 2100 China still be around double the US in population numbers. This is without taking in account of black swan events like de-dollarization, growth of global south. What happens with US numbers when global citizens don't want to migrate to the US anymore? Because the dollar went from king dollar to one of the pleb coins. The economics is not worth being seperated from family.

Then you also have to look at the US vassals in the neighborhood of China like south Korea and Japan both are also declining in population numbers and economic might.

China demographic problem will be more of a government budget problem as long as chinese people continue innovating in tech they will be secure.

Not saying they should stop fixing this it's still a problem that needs to be solved.

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Those projections assume Chinese birth rates stay constant but Chinese birth rates are crashing year after year. It’ll almost certainly be worse than expected at this rate.

Also the count of people isn’t as important as the structure; if you have 1 billion people but 70% of them are old people you’re not competitive with younger societies because old people neither consume nor produce at the level of younger people.

Old people also need more societal support. Which means much more spending on health care and nursing instead of manufacturing and industry. Productivity will drop like a rock just look at Japan.

 

[tankphobia]

You also need to take into account the average age of the population when talking about total population, as it declines, the average age of the population will also increase, which comes with skyrocketing healthcare costs and decreased productivity, I'm not convinced mass automation will be a good solution, as it will also require the government to be willing to step in and rip those profits off mostly automated factories to support an ever growing social program.

 

[Michaelsinodef]

Those projections assume Chinese birth rates stay constant but Chinese birth rates are crashing year after year. It’ll almost certainly be worse than expected at this rate.

Also the count of people isn’t as important as the structure; if you have 1 billion people but 70% of them are old people you’re not competitive with younger societies because old people neither consume nor produce at the level of younger people.

It's unrealistic to expect that birth rates will only ever fall as well though, it might be the case that TFR goes to say 0.9 or 0.8 within the 2020s, but then start to rise to say 1.2 or 1.3 again in the 2030s.

All in all, a rough projection of 800m to 1b by 2100 doesn't seem that far off or unrealistic though.

 

[Eventine]

It's unrealistic to expect that birth rates will only ever fall as well though, it might be the case that TFR goes to say 0.9 or 0.8 within the 2020s, but then start to rise to say 1.2 or 1.3 again in the 2030s.

All in all, a rough projection of 800m to 1b by 2100 doesn't seem that far off or unrealistic though.

But we don’t know how low it’ll hit before it gets better. I do believe it will get better after hitting bottom, but we don’t know yet how much longer it has to go.

South Korea will be instructive as it has similar dynamics as China.

 

[Michaelsinodef]

But we don’t know how low it’ll hit before it gets better. I do believe it will get better after hitting bottom, but we don’t know yet how much longer it has to go.

South Korea will be instructive as it has similar dynamics as China.

We see, in general trying to do predictions all the way to 2100 just really aren't all that realistic/useful, as technology etc. will also play a huge role, besides possibly changes in culture, government priorities etc.

Who knows, we might get some real artificial intelligence by say 2060s, and after that it might get to the point where most scientists aren't even gonna get needed, at which point, scientific advantages and discoveries really might not care about how big your population is.

Also, China is socialist, so stuff about jobs, job security, taking care of elderly etc. I don't think it's gonna be as big as a problem as it's gonna be for capitalist countries like western ones, even if China has a larger population and number of elderly.

 

[Overbom]

Biggest problem is, surprise surprise, housing and other living expenses costs.

I see the young people around me and they are all preoccupied with buying a house. They live like slaves in order to save up some money.

Especially for males, like 99%, don't want a child unless they have a house on their name at least (no/minimal loans also!).
Now also think about it from females' perspectives as well. The situation is even worse

So all these posts blaming culture and people in general, miss the mark. Money is always the problem, you can do all you want with culture and propaganda, but people aren't stupid. They know how expensive raising a kid is

 

[KYli]

You want to marry. You need money. You want to raise a family. You need a home. It is as simple as that.

However, managing expectation is also important. Social media and women empowerment have unleashed some unrealistic expectation for many young women. I am talking about many women that do want to marry and raise a family but were brainwashed by Xiaohongshu. It has been a huge problem for the Chinese society but recently has gotten out of hand.

For example, bride dowry in many parts of China has gotten out of hand when women asking for a million yuan or more before marriage is simply wrong and no longer the true intention of bride dowry. Xiaohongshu encourages many women to stay single and claims ugly women can marry wealthy good looking handsome charming guy is just fairy tail but too many women just love to daydreaming.

More evil intention such as encourage girls to prevent their parents from having a second child so they could remain a little princess or even encourage young girls to trigger a miscarriage for their moms. The government needs to take actions to ban such fake women empowerment posters that probably funded by NGOs.

 

[xypher]

A few points by me, I will skip the tired stuff like automatization but focus on the information that, I think, often gets overlooked in the discussion on Chinese demographics:

1) China currently has among the lowest retirement ages in the world. Men retire at 60 years, white-collar female workers at 55 and blue-collar female workers at 50 (!). The average life expectancy for China is 78.2 years - I could not find disambiguation by sex but

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we could assume that it is around 81.5 years for women and 75.2 years for men. It is quite obvious that these retirement ages are quite obsolete by now. Let's compare that to OECD -

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and this includes countries like Turkey with abnormally low retirement ages of 49 and 52 for women and men respectively. If you look at the table from the link, then for most Western European countries the average retirement age is closer to 65 years for both sexes. The difference, especially for women, is absolutely massive. Adjusting the retirement ages alone is going to increase the labour pool quite substantially.

2) China has to maintain a lot of less efficient but labour-intensive jobs to be able to provide employment for its vast population. This is especially evident in agriculture,

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. GDP share of agriculture was

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in 2021 but it

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, compared to the US where

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. This means that we can roughly estimate that as much as 8% of the total labour pool could be "freed" by mechanizing the agriculture. Of course this is a simple estimate but you get the idea.

3) Productivity of the new people who are entering the labour pool is much higher than that of the retirees because of higher educational levels which open up possibilities for employment in advanced sectors that vastly outperform agriculture or labour-intensive manufacturing that were the dominant industries for the retirees. For economy, it means that you don't have to have one new entrant for each retiree to keep growing.

4) China has

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which means that there's a massive pool of "cheap" productivity growth that can be tapped if necessary. This is in contrast to Japan which

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and had the rate in high-80s when its population started declining.

 

[Gogurt4ever]

A few points by me, I will skip the tired stuff like automatization but focus on the information that, I think, often gets overlooked in the discussion on Chinese demographics:

1) China currently has among the lowest retirement ages in the world. Men retire at 60 years, white-collar female workers at 55 and blue-collar female workers at 50 (!). The average life expectancy for China is 78.2 years - I could not find disambiguation by sex but

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

we could assume that it is around 81.5 years for women and 75.2 years for men. It is quite obvious that these retirement ages are quite obsolete by now. Let's compare that to OECD -

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

and this includes countries like Turkey with abnormally low retirement ages of 49 and 52 for women and men respectively. If you look at the table from the link, then for most Western European countries the average retirement age is closer to 65 years for both sexes. The difference, especially for women, is absolutely massive. Adjusting the retirement ages alone is going to increase the labour pool quite substantially.

2) China has to maintain a lot of less efficient but labour-intensive jobs to be able to provide employment for its vast population. This is especially evident in agriculture,

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

. GDP share of agriculture was

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

in 2021 but it

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, compared to the US where

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

. This means that we can roughly estimate that as much as 8% of the total labour pool could be "freed" by mechanizing the agriculture. Of course this is a simple estimate but you get the idea.

3) Productivity of the new people who are entering the labour pool is much higher than that of the retirees because of higher educational levels which open up possibilities for employment in advanced sectors that vastly outperform agriculture or labour-intensive manufacturing that were the dominant industries for the retirees. For economy, it means that you don't have to have one new entrant for each retiree to keep growing.

4) China has

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which means that there's a massive pool of "cheap" productivity growth that can be tapped if necessary. This is in contrast to Japan which

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

and had the rate in high-80s when its population started declining.

These factors + the fact that China's total dependency ratio (minors+retirees/working age population) is currently extraordinarily low and will remain low for the next ~15 years means that China still has time to grow in a demographically favorable position for quite some time. People forget that taking care of children drains resources in the same way retirees do (if not more so). That said, It is undeniable that based on current trends, a major demographic reckoning will slowly arise in the mid-21st century.

 

[KYli]

The demographic crisis in the short term is just another China collapse story out there to give those China-haters a way to comfort themselves that China's rise is just a short term phenomenon. That Western exceptionalism and White supremacy and White-worshipers would continue to stay on the top.

In the short term which is within a decade or so, China would still have excess labors and too many unemployed population. After that, China can still tap to the vast early retirement group to expand its labor force. Which is why I would say demographic would not be a deciding factor between the power struggle and domination of the US and China.

In addition, the US and the West also have similar demographic crisis that only been mitigated by immigrants but such immigrants have also contributed to many issues that Western countries seem to be unable to resolve. I think the demographic crisis should be taken seriously and proactively but I don't buy all the gloom and doom and the end of the world thinking of many people.