China demographics thread.

[didklmyself]

It's already economical. Israel employs desalination at massive scale and the cost is minimal, especially for household uses. If we have nuclear fusion ready, you can literally just boil water, and transport 100% pure H20 via pipelines to anywhere on Earth.

The Malthusians were wrong, are wrong, and will be wrong. Human ingenuity has always beaten any resource constraints to human expansion.

What's the state of Chinese desalination program? If it is economical then China would have already been building it at a massive scale. Surely, something must be constraining the massive deployment.

They really should push ahead with it, hopefully the renewed focus on agriculture results in it...

 

[zbb]

It's already economical. Israel employs desalination at massive scale and the cost is minimal, especially for household uses.

What's the state of Chinese desalination program? If it is economical then China would have already been building it at a massive scale. Surely, something must be constraining the massive deployment.

It's still quite expensive and only used right now in rich countries with severe fresh water shortages (e.g., Israel, the Gulf Arab states, Singapore, etc.) and even then still mainly for household use.

To make desalination economical for the entire world, including for agricultural use, energy costs still have to come down much further. This is another reason why the West's complaints about China's "overcapacity" in renewable energy is so ridiculous. So much of the world's problems can be easily solved if extremely cheap sources of clean energy become widely available.

 

[coolgod]

Water can be diverted (as already being done on a massive scale to North China) but water cannot be created. China as a whole has a water shortage. Areas in the northern part of China proper lack water. To divert water to Mongolia would mean increasing the water stress on other far more important regions. Just because it can be done does not mean it should be done. What benefit does a green Mongolia bring? Even if affordable seawater desalination comes online in the near future, it is still not going to be a worthwhile expenditure of resources to greenify Mongolia. And extracting resources has nothing to do with mentality towards exploitation. China has a massive demand for natural resources, and resources are being extracted all over China. If there are minerals that are needed by Chinese industry in Mongolia, why not extract it? What would make Mongolia special in relation to other regions of China that would make it worthy of being greenified and its mineral wealth preserved and left in the ground? There are barely anyone living there.

Your arguments can be made for many of the other lands China has heavily modified in the past. Take a look at satellite maps of Xinjiang and how it has changed over the decades. Rain can be created/enhanced, China has been working on artificial precipitation for decades. Outer Mongolia won't be a rainforest, but there can be definitely enough precipitation to support grasslands.

What benefits does a green Outer Mongolia bring? Well no more sandstorms for Beijing and northern China. Just that reason alone might be enough to greenify Outer Mongolia. Or less wildfires attacking the Inner Mongolia border.

You can greenify Outer Mongolia and still mine the minerals, the two aren't mutually exclusive. Heck you can strip mine the shit out of Outer Mongolia and can still turn it green, this feeble excuse is only used to fool the current Mongolian public.

 

[jli88]

What's the state of Chinese desalination program? If it is economical then China would have already been building it at a massive scale. Surely, something must be constraining the massive deployment.

They really should push ahead with it, hopefully the renewed focus on agriculture results in it...

China still doesn't face acute water stress that requires any meaningful desalination requirement. It is much cheaper to manage water well, transfer water etc. as already explained by @zbb

It's still quite expensive and only used right now in rich countries with severe fresh water shortages (e.g., Israel, the Gulf Arab states, Singapore, etc.) and even then still mainly for household use.

To make desalination economical for the entire world, including for agricultural use, energy costs still have to come down much further. This is another reason why the West's complaints about China's "overcapacity" in renewable energy is so ridiculous. So much of the world's problems can be easily solved if extremely cheap sources of clean energy become widely available.

I agree except for one thing: in my definition it is already economical (almost definitely for household use).

Here: Israeli project costs 58 cents for 1000 liters of water. 55% of all household water coming from desalination.

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Same costs, (in fact cheaper) here:

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Have a look above and you will see desalination combined with solar can be super cheap.

Desalination is also being used in agriculture, but in very niche cases and limited scale.

 

[gelgoog]

This is already changing with the recent events involving Russia. The illusion of Russia being this ultra-badass warrior state is gone and their declining power is clear to see, while China's quality of life and power is just getting clearer and clearer. Turns out that Russia was borrowing alot of their power and prestige from the soviet union. Not to mention Russia current sabre rattling towards central Asia and throwing their rural poor central Asian men into the War.

It turns out that people from poor rural backgrounds are more likely to join a volunteer army for the promise of good pay. The same thing happens in the US as well. Most of the grunts come from rural places. It is not exclusive to Russia. But somehow we are supposed to believe this is some kind of ploy by the Russian government against these rural people or something. No one is forcing them to join the military.

If Mongolia was a part of Russia, a lot of their men would be in the frontlines today. Yeah 10 years ago Mongolians would have clearly preferred to join Russia, but today it's changing and 10 years from now... who's to say how Russia would look like and if Putin and his inner circle of soviet boomers would stop trying to recreate the soviet union by invading former soviet states.

Mongolia has traded allegiance to Russia to allegiance to the West. This is evident in all sorts of ways. Only old people in Mongolia still remember Russia with some kind of fondness. Today several Western mining companies operate in Mongolia (so called Mongolian third neighbor policy) and they have their hooks in the political class there as well.

Russia isn't trying to recreate anything. They have a sphere of influence and interest and this has been true for hundreds of years. It is the West that keeps trying to change the status quo by interfering in Russia's area of influence. The Russians are perfectly fine with peaceful relations with their neighbors, but they don't have any issues with confrontation with them either if that's what they want.

 

[manqiangrexue]

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.

The rise of automation to supplant the poor rural labor has been discussed to death. The population reduction is mild; there are jobless young people. Because of China's massive anti-poverty drive, it's not even certain yet if that population reduction even translated to a labor reduction in the short-medium term because of all the extremely poor communities getting lifted from being totally useless (farms for just enough to stay alive) to being blue collar labor. Furthermore, the rise in automation is not mild; it is extremely fast. Doesn't look to be any serious gap coming along.

Somehow this missed me, apparently China's TFR is already down to 1.09 in 2022! And some sources saying that it is down to 1.02 in 2023!!!!

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For context, South Korea crossed TFR of 1 in 2018. With this trend, China may cross TFR of 1 in a few years. Just 6-7 years behind, and the pace of decline is much faster than Korea, at a wealth level significantly lower than Koreas.

People are taking this too lightly. It's not like you can wake up one day and suddenly fix this, the later you start the harder it gets, because the number of child bearing women also decrease dramatically. In my opinion this is THE biggest long term challenge for China.

It's not that people are taking it lightly; it's that it's more important to analyze behind the number rather than focus panic on the number. Have you read through the thread? So many facets have been addressed before, it's difficult to reiterate all of them in 1 post so just a few points:

1. Rise of automation offsets decline in manual labor... though it's uncertain that there is a decline (see above answer to @FriedRiceNSpice)
2. Useful population (low-middle class and up) in China grows while total population declines
3. America has 330M people on the same land mass as China; they are lazy and scholastically poor compared to the Chinese. Why does China need to panic with over 1.3B people?? India has 1.4B people; that country basically doesn't work. Therefore, it is testment that the quality of the people is far more important than having an insanely high number of them.

At the rate it's going, the selfish I-don't-want-kids-I-just-want-to-enjoy-life community in China will probably just get old and die; their genes will disappear. And that's fine. Any efforts should be focused on allocating resources to those who want to have kids so they can have many kids as they can handle and they will inherit the country.

Lastly, why worry about Korea? They're working themselves to death FOR NO REASON!! China has the US to fight against; we worked hard to beat them in the trade war; we're working hard to beat them at the tech war, and we must always work hard so they fear us too much to start a hot war. Korea's just killing itself working for no damn goal or reason whatsoever. They are running around like a headless cockroach. Forget about them.

 

[jli88]

It's not that people are taking it lightly; it's that it's more important to analyze behind the number rather than focus panic on the number. Have you read through the thread? So many facets have been addressed before, it's difficult to reiterate all of them in 1 post so just a few points:

Issues haven't been addressed, they have just been discussed, and I am firmly against the addressals that people are providing.

The rise of automation to supplant the poor rural labor has been discussed to death. The population reduction is mild; there are jobless young people. Because of China's massive anti-poverty drive, it's not even certain yet if that population reduction even translated to a labor reduction in the short-medium term because of all the extremely poor communities getting lifted from being totally useless (farms for just enough to stay alive) to being blue collar labor. Furthermore, the rise in automation is not mild; it is extremely fast. Doesn't look to be any serious gap coming along.

I agree with everything that you have said. The problem is NOT in the short term. Say 5 years. But over the long term >10 years, the problem is severe.

However, to handle that long term problem, arrangements need to be made now (so in the short term).

1. Rise of automation offsets decline in manual labor... though it's uncertain that there is a decline (see above answer to @FriedRiceNSpice)

It does, but only to an extent.
There are 2 points I would like to make:

1. Let's say automation, AI etc. make 90% of today's jobs obsolete. (Very bold and IMO unrealistic goal). This doesn't mean humans are not important, it just means that humans shift to higher value stuff. We have already seen this before. Before Industrial Revolution, 90% or so of population was engaged in agriculture, what if the Qing dynasty officials have said that okay since we can now replace 90% of human jobs with mechanization, let's just decrease population by 90%?
   Humans always shift to higher value added stuff. More humans ==> More demand & More Innovation
   Some people claim that this time it will be different (people have been saying that for every tech leap over last 3 centuries, and AI will be no different in my opinion).
2. Even the wildest predictions for robotics, AI growth (realistic made by experts and not PPT bros to get investor money), doesn't forecast reaching any where near the fidelity or dexterity of humans. As such, humans, even low educated ones are going to be needed. For shipbuilding, For agriculture etc. etc. (though mechanization and automation will keep increasing)

2. Useful population (low-middle class and up) in China grows while total population declines

The people born in China last year were lower than the total number of graduates that year. So by definition, the number of college graduates will have to decline in near future.
And useful population is not only of college grads or middle class as explained earlier.

3. America has 330M people on the same land mass as China; they are lazy and scholastically poor compared to the Chinese. Why does China need to panic with over 1.3B people?? India has 1.4B people; that country basically doesn't work. Therefore, it is testment that the quality of the people is far more important than having an insanely high number of them.

Again couple of points:

1. Population metrics show the past, not the future. For future, look at births where China is barely over 2x that of US births. On top of that, US is a huge net immigrant country, which supplements that even further.
2. US has huge alliances, and as such it should be West that should be considered as a unit, not the US. Like literally, for a while Australians wanted US in pacific more than US itself! West has population of around billion people.
3. US attracts the best talent from over the world, even its adversaries. Recent Iranian woman fields medalist was in the US not Iran.
4. Quality is important, but not the only thing. And there are limits to getting a qualitative leap. Let's assume for argument's sake that Chinese are the most efficient, but even then it wouldn't be hard for India to come to say 80% efficiency of China.
5. When I hear this claim that somehow for whatever 10 reasons Indians can't even be half the GDP per capita of China, I am basically reminded of what Japanese used to think of Koreans and Chinese, and what Koreans thought (and think) of Chinese. The cycle keeps repeating.
6. Don't panic, be paranoid and always aware. To American credit, they are paranoid about emerging competitors. Only the paranoid survive.

At the rate it's going, the selfish I-don't-want-kids-I-just-want-to-enjoy-life community in China will probably just get old and die; their genes will disappear. And that's fine. Any efforts should be focused on allocating resources to those who want to have kids so they can have many kids as they can handle and they will inherit the country.

Except this generation is not passing. All trends show that this trend and generation is increasing. There are more people foregoing to have kids. The fertility rate has reduced to barely around 1. The fertility trend in major urban centers is around 0.7. This trend is not reversing its strengthening.

Lastly, why worry about Korea? They're working themselves to death FOR NO REASON!! China has the US to fight against; we worked hard to beat them in the trade war; we're working hard to beat them at the tech war, and we must always work hard so they fear us too much to start a hot war. Korea's just killing itself working for no damn goal or reason whatsoever. They are running around like a headless cockroach. Forget about them.

Korea has been used as an example to study the effects, future, and consequences of fertility and births. It's for China to study, learn, and avoid mistakes by looking at Korean and Japanese examples.

 

[azn_cyniq]

When I hear this claim that somehow for whatever 10 reasons Indians can't even be half the GDP per capita of China, I am basically reminded of what Japanese used to think of Koreans and Chinese, and what Koreans thought (and think) of Chinese. The cycle keeps repeating.

That's not a good analogy. India is not a part of that cycle at all, and there are many legitimate reasons to be skeptical about India's future. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese people are similar to each other, so the success of one suggests, but doesn't guarantee, that the others can also succeed. On the other hand, India has absolutely nothing to do with East Asia. Indians (not including northeastern Indians) are not even remotely related to East Asians because of the Himalayas. East Asia's success does not imply that India can succeed, although it may succeed in the future.

 

[ChongqingHotPot92]

The rise of automation to supplant the poor rural labor has been discussed to death. The population reduction is mild; there are jobless young people. Because of China's massive anti-poverty drive, it's not even certain yet if that population reduction even translated to a labor reduction in the short-medium term because of all the extremely poor communities getting lifted from being totally useless (farms for just enough to stay alive) to being blue collar labor. Furthermore, the rise in automation is not mild; it is extremely fast. Doesn't look to be any serious gap coming along.

It's not that people are taking it lightly; it's that it's more important to analyze behind the number rather than focus panic on the number. Have you read through the thread? So many facets have been addressed before, it's difficult to reiterate all of them in 1 post so just a few points:

1. Rise of automation offsets decline in manual labor... though it's uncertain that there is a decline (see above answer to @FriedRiceNSpice)
2. Useful population (low-middle class and up) in China grows while total population declines
3. America has 330M people on the same land mass as China; they are lazy and scholastically poor compared to the Chinese. Why does China need to panic with over 1.3B people?? India has 1.4B people; that country basically doesn't work. Therefore, it is testment that the quality of the people is far more important than having an insanely high number of them.

At the rate it's going, the selfish I-don't-want-kids-I-just-want-to-enjoy-life community in China will probably just get old and die; their genes will disappear. And that's fine. Any efforts should be focused on allocating resources to those who want to have kids so they can have many kids as they can handle and they will inherit the country.

Lastly, why worry about Korea? They're working themselves to death FOR NO REASON!! China has the US to fight against; we worked hard to beat them in the trade war; we're working hard to beat them at the tech war, and we must always work hard so they fear us too much to start a hot war. Korea's just killing itself working for no damn goal or reason whatsoever. They are running around like a headless cockroach. Forget about them.

But wouldn't a massive pool of elderly folks lead to more pressure on China's already stretched healthcare system, forcing the government to cut programs on other much-needed spendings? If the government does not shift the social expenditures to look after those elders, there's always the moral kidnapping card 道德绑架 some of these elders could play to try to force the government and taxpayers to increase their healthcare coverage.

Meanwhile, there is indeed a real risk that China's pension system could be stretched to the breaking point by 2035, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Science.

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[FriedRiceNSpice]

When I hear this claim that somehow for whatever 10 reasons Indians can't even be half the GDP per capita of China, I am basically reminded of what Japanese used to think of Koreans and Chinese, and what Koreans thought (and think) of Chinese. The cycle keeps repeating.

India doesn't have the same culture, political system, quality of human capital, work ethic, and unity that the 3 East Asian nations all share. India cannot even do step 1, which is land reform. Without land reform, Indian economy will never get anywhere.

US attracts the best talent from over the world, even its adversaries. Recent Iranian woman fields medalist was in the US not Iran.

Rest of world talent < talent in China

Except this generation is not passing. All trends show that this trend and generation is increasing. There are more people foregoing to have kids. The fertility rate has reduced to barely around 1. The fertility trend in major urban centers is around 0.7. This trend is not reversing its strengthening.

Tax people without kids more and more until they have kids. Use the tax revenue to subsidize childcare costs. Don't know why the government is still waiting and not doing anything.