China demographics thread.

[FairAndUnbiased]

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.

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.


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.

Russia being a failed state?? They have the same GDP per capita as China and are a major immigration destination themselves with 11 million immigrants. China should actually learn how Russia is managing their migrant population.

Russia is able to attract immigrants because it borders multiple Russophone countries all with less than 3x their GDP per capita.

From that list, only Myanmar might have significant migration to China. But they are still very pro India, are part of the Thai cultural sphere, and despite Thailand being poorer there are far more in Thailand than China.

I think the profile is going to be secular, young to middle age ambitious people who like Chinese popular culture. So basically, Vietnamese, Chinese Malaysian, Laotians, then ASEAN generally, then Japanese and Koreans.

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[HumanHDMI]

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Recent research estimates as many as 400k Vietnamese work in guangdong up to pandemic era. Immigration is barely a fingertip bandaid.

 

[tacoburger]

Russia being a failed state??

I said to a "lesser extent". Russia could go off like a bomb at any moment with all the bullshit with the war. We already saw what happened to Yevgeny Prigozhin and his march to Moscow, and we have no idea what's going to happen if Putin dies or if Russia suffers some major setback in Ukraine. Things could deteriorate very fast. People also don't like living in an country in a prolonged war where their children has a real chance of being drafted years down the line. And we really don't know if the War will last another year, or a decade of stalemate.

Russia is able to attract immigrants because it borders multiple Russophone countries all with less than 3x their GDP per capita.

A lot of that was before the war, your own chart says it's from 2019, things have changed since then... We already saw hundreds of thouands of Russian men flee to avoid the war and conscription. And who wants to move to Russia today? Negative view of Russia is through the roof, even in central Asia. Certainly no fighting aged male will want to go.

From that list, only Myanmar might have significant migration to China. But they are still very pro India, are part of the Thai cultural sphere, and despite Thailand being poorer there are far more in Thailand than China.

Why are you acting like cultures don't change over a short/medium period of time. Like the example with Russia, 3 years ago they had a great image, lots of central asian/eastern european countries looked up to them and there was positive immigration flow to the country. And look where they are today, a laughing stock with people fleeing the country. SK was on nobody's mind 10 years until their cultural exports like Kpop and movie industries started becoming mainstream and really popular. Japan was despised in Asia and SEA until 40 years ago. America/Europe's image has changed so much over the last decade, their soft power is on a steep decline.

The point is that China actually has to start making an effort to export culture and start advertising itself as soon as possible. This things take time so better to start now.

Immigration patterns depend greatly on word of mouth anyway. People get in, word gets back to their families and community on how great a place in and they help bring in the rest of their family and friends. That's how immgriation works in the West anyway. That's not happening when you only accept a thousand new immgriants a year.

I think the profile is going to be secular, young to middle age ambitious people who like Chinese popular culture. So basically, Vietnamese, Chinese Malaysian, Laotians, then ASEAN generally, then Japanese and Koreans.

That's the low hanging fruit yes. But why not make an effort to attract people from all over the world?

Recent research estimates as many as 400k Vietnamese work in guangdong up to pandemic era. Immigration is barely a fingertip bandaid.

Better then nothing. And 400k mainly male temporary workers doesn't compare to people that can actually put down roots and start families.

 

[Serb]

Immigration should be a supplementary strategy to China and only be allowed for the highest-value individuals. Which is what will happen in reality too.

Or else you get degenerating mean IQs and/or increased chances for broad societal collapses like in the West.

That ends up not only in increased budget spending to maintain order, but the quality of life for everyone goes down.

The quality of life for example (not the standard of life yet) is currently one of the major reasons why people abroad look up to China and would potentially choose to migrate there in the first place. You can't destroy that, it's not good in any way shape, or form.

Clean streets, no crime of various kinds, no drugs, homeless people, no interracial and religious kinds of motivated riots and lootings, tensions, divisions, etc.

If you can't get those highest-quality individuals, then it is better to do nothing at all, or you will end up with a major net loss.

The main aspects for China will be further improving upon the existing base population in terms of education, productivity, etc,

And once that is done in a few decades completely, probably state-sponsored, semi-enforced, and state-run artificial womb programs to boost birth rates.

China is the most rational, atheistic country in the world, where the average citizen has also experienced the most technological and societal changes in his lifetime than in any other place, so it would be easier to accept further drastic high-tech changes in the future as well.

People literally paying and using various services with their faces and fingerprints, for example. People accept constant public surveillance for greater crime reduction and social services, etc. There is 95% trust in the government and big-time collectivism ideology.

That's why China will be the first country to decide on and its people accept something like this and get a massive advantage over the rest of the world.

The only argument against something like this is religious zealotry. But what can you do when women simply don't like having births more, due to work and many other modern developments and issues?

The way easier solution is to allow women to do it with the least hassle possible - semi-state parentship and full-on artificial wombs.

There are 10 different theories as to why birth rates fail in modern countries, that were also tried to be mitigated, that were targeted, and all simply failed.

Then instead of guessing which one is what with a crystal ball, the way better is to simply industrialize the entire process with the social credit system, etc.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

I said to a "lesser extent". Russia could go off like a bomb at any moment with all the bullshit with the war. We already saw what happened to Yevgeny Prigozhin and his march to Moscow, and we have no idea what's going to happen if Putin dies or if Russia suffers some major setback in Ukraine. Things could deteriorate very fast. People also don't like living in an country in a prolonged war where their children has a real chance of being drafted years down the line. And we really don't know if the War will last another year, or a decade of stalemate.

A lot of that was before the war, your own chart says it's from 2019, things have changed since then... We already saw hundreds of thouands of Russian men flee to avoid the war and conscription. And who wants to move to Russia today? Negative view of Russia is through the roof, even in central Asia. Certainly no fighting aged male will want to go.

Why are you acting like cultures don't change over a short/medium period of time. Like the example with Russia, 3 years ago they had a great image, lots of central asian/eastern european countries looked up to them and there was positive immigration flow to the country. And look where they are today, a laughing stock with people fleeing the country. SK was on nobody's mind 10 years until their cultural exports like Kpop and movie industries started becoming mainstream and really popular. Japan was despised in Asia and SEA until 40 years ago. America/Europe's image has changed so much over the last decade, their soft power is on a steep decline.

The point is that China actually has to start making an effort to export culture and start advertising itself as soon as possible. This things take time so better to start now.

Immigration patterns depend greatly on word of mouth anyway. People get in, word gets back to their families and community on how great a place in and they help bring in the rest of their family and friends. That's how immgriation works in the West anyway. That's not happening when you only accept a thousand new immgriants a year.

That's the low hanging fruit yes. But why not make an effort to attract people from all over the world?

Better then nothing. And 400k mainly male temporary workers doesn't compare to people that can actually put down roots and start families.

China has already made efforts here, but the problem is that China's cultural exports are entertainment and products, which actually doesn't matter that much for soft power.

Look at Bilbili English. 10M+ views on some Chinese animes. That's some entertainment power considering few of these views are from Chinese speaking regions (who are on regular Bilibili).

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Look at games like Genshin and Honkai. Millions of fans on even Youtube and Reddit. Products like OnePlus - even anti China haters who try to start boycotts get shouted down by sweaty neckbeards who will go on a rampage if you take their phone away. TikTok.

Yet that is still insufficient.

EU/West soft power isn't movies, TV, music or games. It's that they control the news agencies and "authoritative" agencies. Basically, the difference is, when they say something it is assumed true and you must work to disprove it, but if you say something, it is assumed false, and you must work to prove it. What can you do about this?

They tell people ___ about China, which is costless to them, but extremely costly to disprove.

 

[donjasjit]

This was inevitable that China and CCP has a realistic view of how to raise child birth. There is this thinking in many people that the only thing preventing people from having more children is cost. So, just keep giving more and more benefits to people so that they have children. But that doesn't explain anything about why extremely poor people have so much more children in other countries. Having children is about mindset, social expectation. In a society dominated by thinking that getting married and having children is detriminal to women's freedom, life and well being, giving birth to more children is seen as a weakness, bad or backward. That's the exact thinking that is prevalent in China. Where there is hyper focus on money making, career advancement and it is thought that women cannot have a fulfilling life if they do not devote everything towards their career.

But what is needed is a change mindset and social expectation. This is where CCP and government power comes in. China can use its propaganda and control over the media to change how to see Child birth. They will make it so that it is no longer seen as anti-women's freedom but a national duty. They will make it so that slowly not having children will be seen as anti-social. This is just the beginning of this process. It will take many years but a full on propaganda campaign to change social mindset will probably happen. This will also be combined with carrot and stick approach where having more children will be rewarded by the government with more benefits while not having children will penalized in various ways. This is how China will raise child birth rate.

This is the best solution to China’s demographic issue that I have seen anywhere. It has to happen if China wants to preserve all the great things the past couple of generations have achieved.

I am sure at one point in the near future it will happen.

 

[donjasjit]

This was inevitable that China and CCP has a realistic view of how to raise child birth. There is this thinking in many people that the only thing preventing people from having more children is cost. So, just keep giving more and more benefits to people so that they have children. But that doesn't explain anything about why extremely poor people have so much more children in other countries. Having children is about mindset, social expectation. In a society dominated by thinking that getting married and having children is detriminal to women's freedom, life and well being, giving birth to more children is seen as a weakness, bad or backward. That's the exact thinking that is prevalent in China. Where there is hyper focus on money making, career advancement and it is thought that women cannot have a fulfilling life if they do not devote everything towards their career.

But what is needed is a change mindset and social expectation. This is where CCP and government power comes in. China can use its propaganda and control over the media to change how to see Child birth. They will make it so that it is no longer seen as anti-women's freedom but a national duty. They will make it so that slowly not having children will be seen as anti-social. This is just the beginning of this process. It will take many years but a full on propaganda campaign to change social mindset will probably happen. This will also be combined with carrot and stick approach where having more children will be rewarded by the government with more benefits while not having children will penalized in various ways. This is how China will raise child birth rate.

Earlier, I was not able to put in words, why the above suggestion is so good. Let me explain.
1 The West is all about individualism, China is about society. It looks for the overall good of society than the interests of individuals. In fact, that is the essence of living in a socialist society.
China can use its media to inform the people why rapid population decline is so bad, it can explain using examples of Japan, Korea who are at a more advanced stage of demographic decline. The People will listen because society takes the government’s lead for major societal decisions. Besides as Tamsen has pointed out, this can be combined with a carrot and stick approach for having more children.

This will almost certainly have an impact on population stability.

Solutions like immigration or improving working conditions for families are good but they don’t have a very successful track record in Western Europe or East Asia.
2 It is not yet clear that demographics is destiny. Just the other day, a U.K based consultancy released a report that by 2100, India will have a GDP twice as much as China and 40% more than America. This report assumes demographics is destiny and makes economic predictions with an assumed population of 1.5 billion for India and 590 million for China.

I find the assumptions hard to believe. The report is clearly biased against China.

I believe China will do much better than it’s haters expect. 40% of all graduates in China are STEM graduates compared to 18% for America. This is critical.

Even more importantly, how will India nurture a huge population of 1.5 billion plus in an era of climate change, A.I and Robotics. It will also have to compete with similar huge populations in the Muslim world and Africa.

A decline in population of China of a few hundred million may not be such a bad thing.

A China with a population of around 1 billion, will require much less food and energy than now. Such a population, highly skilled with stable demographics will be a much more formidable challenger to the West than their direst predictions.

 

[Maikeru]

Earlier, I was not able to put in words, why the above suggestion is so good. Let me explain.
1 The West is all about individualism, China is about society. It looks for the overall good of society than the interests of individuals. In fact, that is the essence of living in a socialist society.
China can use its media to inform the people why rapid population decline is so bad, it can explain using examples of Japan, Korea who are at a more advanced stage of demographic decline. The People will listen because society takes the government’s lead for major societal decisions. Besides as Tamsen has pointed out, this can be combined with a carrot and stick approach for having more children.

This will almost certainly have an impact on population stability.

Solutions like immigration or improving working conditions for families are good but they don’t have a very successful track record in Western Europe or East Asia.
2 It is not yet clear that demographics is destiny. Just the other day, a U.K based consultancy released a report that by 2100, India will have a GDP twice as much as China and 40% more than America. This report assumes demographics is destiny and makes economic predictions with an assumed population of 1.5 billion for India and 590 million for China.

I find the assumptions hard to believe. The report is clearly biased against China.

I believe China will do much better than it’s haters expect. 40% of all graduates in China are STEM graduates compared to 18% for America. This is critical.

Even more importantly, how will India nurture a huge population of 1.5 billion plus in an era of climate change, A.I and Robotics. It will also have to compete with similar huge populations in the Muslim world and Africa.

A decline in population of China of a few hundred million may not be such a bad thing.

A China with a population of around 1 billion, will require much less food and energy than now. Such a population, highly skilled with stable demographics will be a much more formidable challenger to the West than their direst predictions.

If demographics really is destiny, why isn't there a massive flood of investment into sub-saharan Africa?

 

[donjasjit]

If demographics really is destiny, why isn't there a massive flood of investment into sub-saharan Africa?

I don't believe demographics is destiny as I made clear in my post. Africa is a good example why demographics is not destiny.The people who claim demographics is destiny will be disappointed in the age of A.I and robotics.

 

[Chevalier]

Next Chinese New Year is the Year of The Dragon; i anticipate we should see a non-trivial bump in births considering how many parents would wish for a child born in the Year of The Dragon.