China demographics thread.

[Staedler]

Data from the US on TFR for Asians in America is not encouraging.

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Even in the US, with it's relatively much lower cost of housing and educational/career stress compared to Asia, the TFR for Asian Americans is 1.3, compared with a 1.67 average. And the Asian American TFR is probably being pulled upwards by Vietnamese Americans and Filipino Americans, so the TFR for Chinese Americans is probably close to 1. This is in a lower stress, lower cost of living environment with no lingering hangover from the one child policy.

I know many/most people here are probably subscribers to the "humans are material beings and their social world should be understood as material in its actuality" school of thought, and I'm certainly one of them, but there is still a significant role for culture traditions and biases to play in material outcomes.

The Chinese government will actually need to do a lot of societal engineering to raise the TFR. Lowering housing and educational costs won't be near enough.

The US is not a lower cost of living environment lol. It's a less competitively stressful environment for sure, but it makes up for that with stress in different ways.

The only places in US with lower cost of living are places in the middle of nowhere with no jobs for miles. Asian immigrants aren't flocking to Mobile, Alabama. Like Mobile's technically a city with 187k population but American car-cities are like a ghost town at that size. My college town was double that population and it still felt like a ghost town even when classes were in session. I've also been to "cities" that are even smaller than Mobile in the USA and the downtown there was basically 1 street with 3 shops. Those are literally the only places that are cheaper for Asians. Asians overwhelming don't like those places and instead immigrate to the big cities: NYC, LA, Dallas, and so on. Big cities (for NA) have real high CoL comparatively, several times higher than T1s in China even in just rent. Their parent's aren't settling in Mobile and there's no beeping way their kids, Asian Americans, are leaving the big cities for Mobile. That's explains away why Asian Americans have lower TFR than other folks; Asians overwhelming prefer to live in the cities with higher CoL.

The love of almost total isolation is really an American borne-and-raised fetish. Immigrants frequently don't get it. Even Asian Americans often don't.

And this is borne out not just by mere observation but raw data. Asians are in the "Other" category, and the "Other"s overwhelming prefer to live in urban areas.

 

[gelgoog]

In the US it is pretty common for people to move several places along their lifetime. You might grow up in the country, then move to the city to study, then work, might move again to a smaller city to be able to buy a large enough house to have a family, then you move again to retire.

 

[tacoburger]

Honestly China should just bite the bullet and let more immigrants in, even unskilled people. China is already quite diverse, with dozens of local ethnicites and languages/dialects, and with large cultural changes in the extreme south vs the extreme west vs extreme north of the country and the country as a whole is doing fine . And there's lots of chinese in SEA or south east asians themselves that can probably assimlate into China easily, it's not going to be the culture clash that we often see when regfuees go to Europe/America. Chinese culture is extremely strong anyway and the population is large enough to absorb smaller countries like a drop in the ocean.

Yes mass immigration can cause problems as we can see in Europe/America/Canada, but countries like Canada are letting in like half a million people in a year with an existing population of like 30 million. That will always cause problems. Currently China is accepting like a few thousand immigrants a year with a population of 1.4 billion, to be fair most of those are skilled immigrants with PHDs and whatnot. With a population of 1.4 billion, you can easily accept a million new immigrants a year without much issue if they are spread out among the population. Especially if you're smart and take preventive measures like splitting immgirants of a common background into mutiple cities and even then, splitting them up into muitple neighbours so that they don't form enclaves/gangs. China already controls people's movement via the hukou system so this can be easily used for that effect.

Take my country Singapore, we have a system where governemnt housing, which is where 95% of the population lives, are controlled so that the various races are evenly spread out so that you don't have an entire neighour of only Indians or malays where echo chambers and gangs can form and where people can get used to living with other races and reglions.

It's not a permant solution but can at least slow the bleeding down enough for China to try to lift birthrates up. And China can control her borders well and don't need the political correctness badge of looking good for the West, you can easily go and mainly give citizenship to young unmarried women for example and say that to remain a citizen you have to get married and have childern within 5 years of arriving, as distasteful as it might seem.

Honestly the problem might be to attract that many immigrants in the first place. I don't see that many westerners wanting to move to China even if China bends over backwards to give them citizenship. I think some poorer south east asians might jump at the chance? Espically for those of the poorer countries and there's lots of chinese in SEA too that might want to go back. I guess it's a good thing that China is surrounded by really poor 3rd world countries? I the appeal of moving to China if you live in Nepal or one the Stans, or even Russia at this point. Plenty of Africans will also jump at the chance, even if let's be honest they are some of the worse immigrants that you can get. China can probably attract lots of they do some mass advertising campaign and make the process of immigration a lot easier.

 

[august1]

Honestly China should just bite the bullet and let more immigrants in, even unskilled people. China is already quite diverse, with dozens of local ethnicites and languages/dialects, and with large cultural changes in the extreme south vs the extreme west vs extreme north of the country and the country as a whole is doing fine . And there's lots of chinese in SEA or south east asians themselves that can probably assimlate into China easily, it's not going to be the culture clash that we often see when regfuees go to Europe/America. Chinese culture is extremely strong anyway and the population is large enough to absorb smaller countries like a drop in the ocean.

Yes mass immigration can cause problems as we can see in Europe/America/Canada, but countries like Canada are letting in like half a million people in a year with an existing population of like 30 million. That will always cause problems. Currently China is accepting like a few thousand immigrants a year with a population of 1.4 billion, to be fair most of those are skilled immigrants with PHDs and whatnot. With a population of 1.4 billion, you can easily accept a million new immigrants a year without much issue if they are spread out among the population. Especially if you're smart and take preventive measures like splitting immgirants of a common background into mutiple cities and even then, splitting them up into muitple neighbours so that they don't form enclaves/gangs. China already controls people's movement via the hukou system so this can be easily used for that effect.

Take my country Singapore, we have a system where governemnt housing, which is where 95% of the population lives, are controlled so that the various races are evenly spread out so that you don't have an entire neighour of only Indians or malays where echo chambers and gangs can form and where people can get used to living with other races and reglions.

It's not a permant solution but can at least slow the bleeding down enough for China to try to lift birthrates up. And China can control her borders well and don't need the political correctness badge of looking good for the West, you can easily go and mainly give citizenship to young unmarried women for example and say that to remain a citizen you have to get married and have childern within 5 years of arriving, as distasteful as it might seem.

Honestly the problem might be to attract that many immigrants in the first place. I don't see that many westerners wanting to move to China even if China bends over backwards to give them citizenship. I think some poorer south east asians might jump at the chance? Espically for those of the poorer countries and there's lots of chinese in SEA too that might want to go back. I guess it's a good thing that China is surrounded by really poor 3rd world countries? I the appeal of moving to China if you live in Nepal or one the Stans, or even Russia at this point. Plenty of Africans will also jump at the chance, even if let's be honest they are some of the worse immigrants that you can get. China can probably attract lots of they do some mass advertising campaign and make the process of immigration a lot easier.

I live in China and can guarantee you that mass immigration will be an absolute disaster for the country. You can draw this conclusion just by observing some of the events of the last couple of decades. This will be unpleasant reading for many here, but modern Han Chinese simply cannot assimilate other ethnicities organically. Just take the Uyghurs as an example. 1000+ years of Uyghur-Han contact and what was XJ like prior to 2015? 0.5% intermarriage and 70% of Uyghurs not even being able to write their names in Chinese. Just absolutely zero social contract between the two ethnic groups in every strata of society, from grassroots to the elite. Any mass immigration involving pretty much any ethnic group will encounter the exact same conflict in China with all the ensuing controversy and negative attention from the rest of the world, especially the developing world were these migrants will invariably come from.

 

[Moonscape]

Absolutely not. China already has a youth unemployment problem. The solution to demographic woes is automation, not the mass importation of labor which has disastrous secondary effects as seen in Europe and Canada

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Honestly China should just bite the bullet and let more immigrants in, even unskilled people. China is already quite diverse, with dozens of local ethnicites and languages/dialects, and with large cultural changes in the extreme south vs the extreme west vs extreme north of the country and the country as a whole is doing fine . And there's lots of chinese in SEA or south east asians themselves that can probably assimlate into China easily, it's not going to be the culture clash that we often see when regfuees go to Europe/America. Chinese culture is extremely strong anyway and the population is large enough to absorb smaller countries like a drop in the ocean.

Yes mass immigration can cause problems as we can see in Europe/America/Canada, but countries like Canada are letting in like half a million people in a year with an existing population of like 30 million. That will always cause problems. Currently China is accepting like a few thousand immigrants a year with a population of 1.4 billion, to be fair most of those are skilled immigrants with PHDs and whatnot. With a population of 1.4 billion, you can easily accept a million new immigrants a year without much issue if they are spread out among the population. Especially if you're smart and take preventive measures like splitting immgirants of a common background into mutiple cities and even then, splitting them up into muitple neighbours so that they don't form enclaves/gangs. China already controls people's movement via the hukou system so this can be easily used for that effect.

Take my country Singapore, we have a system where governemnt housing, which is where 95% of the population lives, are controlled so that the various races are evenly spread out so that you don't have an entire neighour of only Indians or malays where echo chambers and gangs can form and where people can get used to living with other races and reglions.

It's not a permant solution but can at least slow the bleeding down enough for China to try to lift birthrates up. And China can control her borders well and don't need the political correctness badge of looking good for the West, you can easily go and mainly give citizenship to young unmarried women for example and say that to remain a citizen you have to get married and have childern within 5 years of arriving, as distasteful as it might seem.

Honestly the problem might be to attract that many immigrants in the first place. I don't see that many westerners wanting to move to China even if China bends over backwards to give them citizenship. I think some poorer south east asians might jump at the chance? Espically for those of the poorer countries and there's lots of chinese in SEA too that might want to go back. I guess it's a good thing that China is surrounded by really poor 3rd world countries? I the appeal of moving to China if you live in Nepal or one the Stans, or even Russia at this point. Plenty of Africans will also jump at the chance, even if let's be honest they are some of the worse immigrants that you can get. China can probably attract lots of they do some mass advertising campaign and make the process of immigration a lot easier.

A few questions:

1. how many people want to come to China?

2. are they willing and able to learn Chinese?

3. are they willing and able to accept Chinese culture?

These are not trivial questions because most of the world, even though the average person is from a developing country, also speaks a Indo-European language, believe in western religion and practices western culture.

And if they are only willing to come to China but not willing to learn Chinese and at least tolerate Chinese culture as the mainstream culture, then they're just a source of future instability no matter what skills they bring.

The only group of people that historically came to China in large enough numbers to matter, and with the capability to learn Chinese and tolerate Chinese culture, is from Southeast and Central Asia. China's neighbors.

Both regions are themselves experiencing population stagnation or decline.

 

[tacoburger]

Absolutely not. China already has a youth unemployment problem. The solution to demographic woes is automation, not the mass importation of labor which has disastrous secondary effects as seen in Europe and Canada

Both problems are linked. It's complex but the youth unemployment is linked to a sluggish economy, having more people to consume products and contribute to local economy will make the economy healthier, improve demand and create jobs. Again, I have explained that for Europe and Canada, they are importing wayyyy too many people for their base population level. A few hundred thousand people a year for countries with populations of 20-50 million is too much of a shock, that's like a full 1-5% of their population within a handful of years. For a nation with 1.4 billion people, it's another story, entire nations are just a single mega-city by China's standards.

Let's have an example, if 100 new people move into a tiny little village of 100 people, the entire village changes. If 100 people move into a town of 1000, not much changes, and if 10 people moves into a mega-city of a million people, nobody will even notice them.

I live in China and can guarantee you that mass immigration will be an absolute disaster for the country. You can draw this conclusion just by observing some of the events of the last couple of decades. This will be unpleasant reading for many here, but modern Han Chinese simply cannot assimilate other ethnicities organically. Just take the Uyghurs as an example. 1000+ years of Uyghur-Han contact and what was XJ like prior to 2015? 0.5% intermarriage and 70% of Uyghurs not even being able to write their names in Chinese. Just absolutely zero social contract between the two ethnic groups in every strata of society, from grassroots to the elite. Any mass immigration involving pretty much any ethnic group will encounter the exact same conflict in China with all the ensuing controversy and negative attention from the rest of the world, especially the developing world were these migrants will invariably come from.

China has been assimilating tons of people over the last 2 thousands years. And you can't compare new immigrants to Uyghurs, they are central to one region for hundreds of years, mainly practice a singular religion and have strong ties to other central asian countries and live on the far rural west of the country. Only really in the last 10 years can you easily travel from the coast to Xinjiang so it's no surprise that they haven't integrated well so far.

I'm talking about a slow but increasing stream of new immigrants that are deliberately mixed evenly between cities to ensure that they don't form the kind of enclaves that cause trouble. If you wake up, go to work, go watch a movie and all you see all day everyday is han chinese, you will assimilate pretty quickly. And again, China is the one calling the shots here, they don't have to play fair. Have 90% of the accepted immigrants be female, threaten to deport them if they can't pick up fluent mandarin and a steady job within 2 years or whatever you want, they have time to perfect the process.

And again, a few thousand thousand new people a year for Canada/Europe is society changing, that's 1% of the population every year, 10% over 10 years, no shit they're having issues. By contrast 500k people every year is like 0.02% of China's population. The only way they will cause trouble if they all cram into the same city or province. I'm not even saying that China should get 500k immgriants a year, hell I doubt that the country can attract that many people, but it certainly afford to be more then the 1000+ new immgriants that the country is currently accepting. It will be a slow process of ramping up too, it's not like the country can open the gates and let in a few hundred thouand people in a month or two. It will take many years and it's better to start ramping up today rather than in 2040 if the population crisis really does get really bad.

Just look at Korea or Japan, they only really opening to immigration after the problem is so bad that they can't handle it anymore, and they will also have the same issues in intergrating them as China does. Better to start early and slowly ramp up, rather then ignore the problem and panic once the issue is so bad that you can't take it any more.

A few questions:

1. how many people want to come to China?

2. are they willing and able to learn Chinese?

3. are they willing and able to accept Chinese culture?

These are not trivial questions because most of the world, even though the average person is from a developing country, also speaks a Indo-European language, believe in western religion and practices western culture.

And if they are only willing to come to China but not willing to learn Chinese and at least tolerate Chinese culture as the mainstream culture, then they're just a source of future instability no matter what skills they bring.

The only group of people that historically came to China in large enough numbers to matter, and with the capability to learn Chinese and tolerate Chinese culture, is from Southeast and Central Asia. China's neighbors.

Both regions are themselves experiencing population stagnation or decline.

Which is why it's better to start outreach programs today rather then tmr.

1) Considering countries like Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Nepal, cambodia, philippines etc etc, I'm sure that you can find a few desperate enough. Quality of life in China is so much better then it was 10 years ago and still improving quite fast. It's all about advertising anyway. You have countries like Canada/australia literally showing Indians ads to get them to come to their country.

2) Yes, language and culture is a issue, but more will probably start to learn if they know that China is actively looking for immigrants. Why even bother to learn if there's no incentive after all? And China has full control over their citizenship, just make it an requirement to be fluent in Chinese to gain citizenship, or say that once they set foot in China, they are on probation for 2 years to learn the language or be deported or something like that.

3) Again, with control of movements, they don't have a choice. People don't assimilate well because they form tight knit commities with their own kind, considering that they tend to immigrate within a group and have freedom of movement once they gain citizenship so they flock togethor. Just do what Singapore does and evenly spread them out. Can't help but pick up Chinese culture if it's just you and your family in a city of hundreds of thousands of chinese and it's chinese that you interact with every single day. Contrast with Canada or Europe where you have entire ghettos full of the same race or nationality living togethor.

4) Oh and SEA isn't really declining, indonesia is barely in replacement rate yes but Laos, myanmar, philippines and cambodia are comfortably above replacement rate. All have a decent amount of chinese in their population. Indoneasia has like the 4th largest population in the world, so even if they're stagnating or have a declining population it's still a large pool of people to draw on from. What are they gonna do, ban freedom of movement? So many of them already immgrate to western countries anyway. If anything, brain drain is a good way to weaken a country. Eastern Europe has been ravaged by massive population decline via people moving to western europe over the last few decades. You think Germany or France or Britan gives a shit? They probably consider it a bonus if anything and will continue to drain eastern europe to the last man without remorse.

 

[BlackWindMnt]

A few questions:

1. how many people want to come to China?

2. are they willing and able to learn Chinese?

3. are they willing and able to accept Chinese culture?

These are not trivial questions because most of the world, even though the average person is from a developing country, also speaks a Indo-European language, believe in western religion and practices western culture.

And if they are only willing to come to China but not willing to learn Chinese and at least tolerate Chinese culture as the mainstream culture, then they're just a source of future instability no matter what skills they bring.

The only group of people that historically came to China in large enough numbers to matter, and with the capability to learn Chinese and tolerate Chinese culture, is from Southeast and Central Asia. China's neighbors.

Both regions are themselves experiencing population stagnation or decline.

Make it a requirement they get their hsk 4 cert within 3 or 4 years or else it's out. It's not a bad thing to require such a thing its also better for the migrant because it adds to the persons languages.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Both problems are linked. It's complex but the youth unemployment is linked to a sluggish economy, having more people to consume products and contribute to local economy will make the economy healthier, improve demand and create jobs. Again, I have explained that for Europe and Canada, they are importing wayyyy too many people for their base population level. A few hundred thousand people a year for countries with populations of 20-50 million is too much of a shock, that's like a full 1-5% of their population within a handful of years. For a nation with 1.4 billion people, it's another story, entire nations are just a single mega-city by China's standards.

Let's have an example, if 100 new people move into a tiny little village of 100 people, the entire village changes. If 100 people move into a town of 1000, not much changes, and if 10 people moves into a mega-city of a million people, nobody will even notice them.

China has been assimilating tons of people over the last 2 thousands years. And you can't compare new immigrants to Uyghurs, they are central to one region for hundreds of years, mainly practice a singular religion and have strong ties to other central asian countries and live on the far rural west of the country. Only really in the last 10 years can you easily travel from the coast to Xinjiang so it's no surprise that they haven't integrated well so far.

I'm talking about a slow but increasing stream of new immigrants that are deliberately mixed evenly between cities to ensure that they don't form the kind of enclaves that cause trouble. If you wake up, go to work, go watch a movie and all you see all day everyday is han chinese, you will assimilate pretty quickly. And again, China is the one calling the shots here, they don't have to play fair. Have 90% of the accepted immigrants be female, threaten to deport them if they can't pick up fluent mandarin and a steady job within 2 years or whatever you want, they have time to perfect the process.

And again, a few thousand thousand new people a year for Canada/Europe is society changing, that's 1% of the population every year, 10% over 10 years, no shit they're having issues. By contrast 500k people every year is like 0.02% of China's population. The only way they will cause trouble if they all cram into the same city or province. I'm not even saying that China should get 500k immgriants a year, hell I doubt that the country can attract that many people, but it certainly afford to be more then the 1000+ new immgriants that the country is currently accepting. It will be a slow process of ramping up too, it's not like the country can open the gates and let in a few hundred thouand people in a month or two. It will take many years and it's better to start ramping up today rather than in 2040 if the population crisis really does get really bad.

Just look at Korea or Japan, they only really opening to immigration after the problem is so bad that they can't handle it anymore, and they will also have the same issues in intergrating them as China does. Better to start early and slowly ramp up, rather then ignore the problem and panic once the issue is so bad that you can't take it any more.

Which is why it's better to start outreach programs today rather then tmr.

1) Considering countries like Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Nepal, cambodia, philippines etc etc, I'm sure that you can find a few desperate enough. Quality of life in China is so much better then it was 10 years ago and still improving quite fast. It's all about advertising anyway. You have countries like Canada/australia literally showing Indians ads to get them to come to their country.

2) Yes, language and culture is a issue, but more will probably start to learn if they know that China is actively looking for immigrants. Why even bother to learn if there's no incentive after all? And China has full control over their citizenship, just make it an requirement to be fluent in Chinese to gain citizenship, or say that once they set foot in China, they are on probation for 2 years to learn the language or be deported or something like that.

3) Again, with control of movements, they don't have a choice. People don't assimilate well because they form tight knit commities with their own kind, considering that they tend to immigrate within a group and have freedom of movement once they gain citizenship so they flock togethor. Just do what Singapore does and evenly spread them out. Can't help but pick up Chinese culture if it's just you and your family in a city of hundreds of thousands of chinese and it's chinese that you interact with every single day. Contrast with Canada or Europe where you have entire ghettos full of the same race or nationality living togethor.

4) Oh and SEA isn't really declining, indonesia is barely in replacement rate yes but Laos, myanmar, philippines and cambodia are comfortably above replacement rate. All have a decent amount of chinese in their population. Indoneasia has like the 4th largest population in the world, so even if they're stagnating or have a declining population it's still a large pool of people to draw on from. What are they gonna do, ban freedom of movement? So many of them already immgrate to western countries anyway. If anything, brain drain is a good way to weaken a country. Eastern Europe has been ravaged by massive population decline via people moving to western europe over the last few decades. You think Germany or France or Britan gives a shit? They probably consider it a bonus if anything and will continue to drain eastern europe to the last man without remorse.

I don't oppose this but I doubt it will have significant success.

China has GDP per capita of 12k USD. Typically people need up to 6x higher pay to migrate somewhere else: see Mexican migration to the US.

Even accounting for cultural compatibility, let's call it at least 3-4x... that does not help!

Pakistanis, Filipinos, etc. all speak English fluently. They can more easily migrate to a competing place in the west, or to Singapore. Singapore is a member of ASEAN and there's more free people flow. Russia has comparable GDP per capita to China and their GDP per capita more or less in line with the rest of Eastern Europe. Russia itself is a migrant magnet for Russophone workers from poorer central Asian countries.

South Asians and Filipinos are likely to continue migration to Singapore and the west. Russians will likely either stay where they are or move to EU.

I think maybe some Vietnamese and Chinese Malaysians are willing to move to China as a top choice. The rest I am not sure on. I believe that before any talk of migration happens, you will see smaller steps like:

1. opening up hukou internally to maximize internal population first
2. reciprocal visa free regimes signed with countries in regions of interest (i.e. in ASEAN or CSTO)
3. loosening of work visa and permanent residency requirements for foreigners
4. allowing dual citizenship for PRC nationals that do not participate in government
5. allowing overseas Chinese to claim some sort of heritage citizenship

These are all more likely and may be more successful than actively encouraging immigration.

 

[tacoburger]

China has GDP per capita of 12k USD. Typically people need up to 6x higher pay to migrate somewhere else: see Mexican migration to the US.

True, but let's be honest here, China is bordering some near failed states like Myanmar/Afghanistan or to a lesser extent Pakistan/Russia, it will not take much to get them to seek a better life in some tier 2 city.

Pakistanis, Filipinos, etc. all speak English fluently. They can more easily migrate to a competing place in the west, or to Singapore. Singapore is a member of ASEAN and there's more free people flow. Russia has comparable GDP per capita to China and their GDP per capita more or less in line with the rest of Eastern Europe. Russia itself is a migrant magnet for Russophone workers from poorer central Asian countries.

It's not a competition. Who cares if America/Europe is snatching up thousands of times more immigrants then China, what is important is how many China can snatch up herself. I see it more as a bandaid until China takes however long to raise her birthrate anyway. And it's all a fixable problem. Export more culture, post ads, fund Chinese language schools in various countries, it's a problem that will take decades to solve, so better start now. All I know is that 100% China can get more immigrants than the mere thousand people that she takes in a year.

Japan/South korea are quite attractive for immigrants themselves, and while they are much richer per capita and have better quality of life, they also have the same language problem that China does and themselves don't border any countries.

If you look at duolingo stats, Chinese is the most popular language to learn in Laos and Vietnam. Extending that to the rest of SEA and the countries that they border will easily be enough for a decent population base to draw upon.

1. opening up hukou internally to maximize internal population first
2. reciprocal visa free regimes signed with countries in regions of interest (i.e. in ASEAN or CSTO)
3. loosening of work visa and permanent residency requirements for foreigners
4. allowing dual citizenship for PRC nationals that do not participate in government
5. allowing overseas Chinese to claim some sort of heritage citizenship

They can do all that and also take steps to try to increase immigration at the same time. Like I said before, it's better if it grows slowly over time and it's not like it needs to reach the 500k per year figure that western countries have. China is in total control here, if they see any negative effects or issues, they can immediately clamp down on the amount of immigrants or change the system whatever they like. Better then what SK is doing now, opening the floodgates only when the situation is so bad and the population is in active terminal decline.