China demographics thread.

[ficker22]

Mongolian hate China. Like... really hate China, to the degree where they'd rather be annexed by Russia. And they consider themselves Central Asians, not East Asians, and many speak Russian as a 2nd language, not Chinese. Realistically they'd move their entire country to Russia if they could, it's Russia that is hesitant to want them.

Vietnamese don't hate Chinese. They may dislike the government but that is abstract. Some nationalists say they do but there's so many looking at Douyin, already learning Chinese even if they never plan to move to China, playing Genshin, etc.

North Vietnamese really like China tho, it's the southern gentey that kinda cockblocks this "common destiny" thingy going on between both central governments.

 

[resistance]

South Korean median age (2020) --> 43
Japan median age (2020) --> 48

5 years difference is quite large.

Also, Japan has been older for far longer.

Japan median age (2000) --> 40
South Korea median age (2000) ---> 31


So Japan has had very high median ages for this whole millenia, while South Korea was relatively young even 10 years back. It's just that South Korea is on a very fast and accelerated pace of birth decline.

China is very unlike either of these countries, because of policy interventions (one-child policy), major dips in demographics (due to Famine etc.). So, it is very different. However, in some metrics it's birth rate is declining even faster than South Korea.

China's median age (2020) is already around 37, which was South Korea's median age around 2012-13. So the median age is just 7-8 years behind South Korea.

I think China is best placed in terms of handling the issue because Chinese state simply has more policy levers available, more capacity to muster etc. The issue is if they realize the enormity of the issue and take corresponding action at a national scale.

I don't think one child policy actually a blame here. It's about birthrates decline. If there's no one child policy, the demographics still the same with worse GDP per Capita.

Mongolian hate China. Like... really hate China, to the degree where they'd rather be annexed by Russia. And they consider themselves Central Asians, not East Asians, and many speak Russian as a 2nd language, not Chinese. Realistically they'd move their entire country to Russia if they could, it's Russia that is hesitant to want them.

Vietnamese don't hate Chinese. They may dislike the government but that is abstract. Some nationalists say they do but there's so many looking at Douyin, already learning Chinese even if they never plan to move to China, playing Genshin, etc.

Vietnam won't badly effects from climates change as much as Mongolia, especially for northern Vietnam( the south got seawater flooding and the droughts). Meanwhile almost at least 90 percent of Mongolia will turn to desert. They have no choice but to move somewhere else and force to learn Mandarin.

 

[coolgod]

Vietnam won't badly effects from climates change as much as Mongolia, especially for northern Vietnam( the south got seawater flooding and the droughts). Meanwhile almost at least 90 percent of Mongolia will turn to desert. They have no choice but to move somewhere else and force to learn Mandarin.

I don't think Mongolia's rapid desertification is from climate change, mostly from overgrazing. You'd think after living thousands of years in the steppe, they'd have to learnt to live sustainably.

 

[resistance]

I don't think Mongolia's rapid desertification is from climate change, mostly from overgrazing. You'd think after living thousands of years in the steppes, they'd have to learnt to live sustainably.

Climate change made Mongolia unable to live sustainably anymore due to lower rainfall( lost grassland won't come back). This country may be gone in few decades and millions pop must leave for somewhere else.
Also desertification makes economy bad which led to even more overgrazing

 

[FriedRiceNSpice]

People here don't understand the difference between total population and useful population. Useful population is the lower middle class and above and those with education of course. Total population includes villagers living in dirt floor huts, doing basic farming producing barely what they need to survive (sometimes less), with nothing really taxable. You can have a trillion of those and your country wouldn't be able to challenge anyone. China has a (slightly) declining total population with a rising useful population, so its economy is well on track to continue growing as it always has.

In the past, the rural poor in China provided the labor pool for China's rapid development, industrialization, and urbanization. They were responsible for building China's cities, infrastructure, and factories, as well as working in the low wage manufacturing jobs that generated the initial capital needed to fuel China's rapid rise. It is imperative that this labor pool does not dry up before sufficient advancements in automation are made that would drastically reduce the amount of unskilled labor required. Otherwise China will be in the same situation as the US, where labor costs are so high that it becomes prohibitively expensive to build anything.

You still need people for the demand side of things. China doesn't suffer from this nearly as much as it's population is still massive even it it's slowly declining and the population as a whole is getting richer , so consumption/GDP will still rise at a steady rate for a few more decades. But eventually wealth and the amount of things a people can consume maxes out, so the main way to boost GDP is via population growth, we sort of see this with America already. And of course eventually population decline is gonna hurt in around 50 years if China doesn't boost it's birthrates, right now it's basically a non-issue, but when your average age is in the 50s, it's not a joke.

Maximizing consumption, both on a per-capita basis and especially on an aggregate basis should not be the goal. It is not sustainable to promote a massive population consuming as much possible. China's per capita consumption is currently low so there is room for growth, but only up to a certain point. The goal should be a sustainable population with maximal quality of life for all and where you have sufficient human capital to produce/develop everything that is needed. Gradual decline in population over the next few generations would be ideal. The problem with a sharp drop in birthrate is that eventually the proportion of working age people becomes too low, giving rise to the situation where each working couple has to support 4 elderly parents as well as (ideally) 1-2 children. Policy should aim to push birth rate up to around 1.6-1.8 ( and eventually 2.0 once the desirable population level is reached).

China itself will be struggling with climate change in southern China. It will be interesting to see if the 2 decade population decrease of northern China can be reviewed. Everything north of Henan was declining in population except Beijing.

I suspect that border provinces with similar minorities will be popular migrant destinations from Southeast Asians i.e. Vietnamese in Guangxi and Burmese in Yunnan.

Newly urbanized Chinese maybe will migrate to central and northern cities like Xi'an, Zhengzhou, Shenyang, etc. especially with cheaper housing and government jobs. Lots of little problems can be overlooked with cheap houses, money, and everyone speaking Mandarin.

The problem is that a lot of the climate change is actually impacting the north. Desertification and water shortage are already significant challenges in North China, so I doubt that North China outside of few select areas in the Northeastern 3 provinces can support any substantial increases in population. The most comfortable and pleasant region to live is by far Jiangsu/Zhejiang. Once you've spent any amount of time in a nice Jiangnan city, you will not want to live anywhere else (in the world). Not only the is the climate ideal, the cities in that region tend to be the best developed, most advanced, cleanest, newest, most modern cities in the world. Even BJ falls far behind cities like Suzhou/Hangzhou/Wuxi/Shanghai.

Also maybe there will be mass migration from Mongolia to china than Vietnam due to desertification that Mongolia can't control.

The population of Mongolia is roughly the same as that of a single district in Beijing.

 

[coolgod]

Climate change made Mongolia unable to live sustainably anymore due to lower rainfall( lost grassland won't come back). This country may be gone in few decades and millions pop must leave for somewhere else.
Also desertification makes economy bad which led to even more overgrazing

I bet you if Outer Mongolia was still part of PRC than it would be green, prosperous and life would be on par with that of Inner Mongolia's.

 

[FriedRiceNSpice]

I bet you if Outer Mongolia was still part of PRC than it would be green, prosperous and life would be on par with that of Inner Mongolia's.

Prosperous, definitely. Green? No. Not even China is capable of reversing climate change. Over the last few decades, China has planted tens of billions of trees in North China in an effort to slow down desertification and mitigate the impacts of climate change. China has also invested billions to divert water from the south to the north. A massive effort undertaken all to slow down the desertification of North China. If Outer Mongolia was still part of the PRC, then the people living down would simply migrate to Inner Mongolia and Manchuria.

 

[coolgod]

Prosperous, definitely. Green? No. Not even China is capable of reversing climate change. Over the last few decades, China has planted tens of billions of trees in North China in an effort to slow down desertification and mitigate the impacts of climate change. China has also invested billions to divert water from the south to the north. A massive effort undertaken all to slow down the desertification of North China. If Outer Mongolia was still part of the PRC, then the people living down would simply migrate to Inner Mongolia and Manchuria.

What do you mean slow down the desertification, China has already eliminated small deserts in the north. China is winning the fight against desertification.

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The total area of desertification in China as of 2019 was 2.57 million square kilometers, representing 26.81% of the country's land area, according to the latest survey results published by the NFGA at the end of 2022.

The figure was down from 2.7 million sq. km in 1999, a reduction of sandy land area nearly equivalent to the size of Greece.

Since 2000, China has curbed the advance of the sand, which expanded just 52,000 sq. km between 1995 and 1999.

If China banned unsustainable grazing practises in outer Mongolia, and introduced techniques to combat desertification it would quickly become a grassland again. Why is China not able of reversing climate change? If China wanted to do geoengineering do you think climate change wouldn't be reversed?

 

[FriedRiceNSpice]

If China banned unsustainable grazing practises in outer Mongolia, and introduced techniques to combat desertification it would quickly become a grassland again. Why is China not able of reversing climate change? If China wanted to do geoengineering do you think climate change wouldn't be reversed?

Feasibility aside, you think it makes sense for investment on such a massive scale to greenify a region with a population smaller than a 4th tier city when there already exists adjacent regions with population in the tens of millions? Look on a map and see the location of the current great green wall then look at where outer Mongolia is. It makes far more economic sense for migration out of Mongolia, and focus on developing extractive industries in Mongolia (minerals and coal).

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

I don't think one child policy actually a blame here. It's about birthrates decline. If there's no one child policy, the demographics still the same with worse GDP per Capita.


Vietnam won't badly effects from climates change as much as Mongolia, especially for northern Vietnam( the south got seawater flooding and the droughts). Meanwhile almost at least 90 percent of Mongolia will turn to desert. They have no choice but to move somewhere else and force to learn Mandarin

Why wouldn't they just move to Russia where they will already know some Russian?