China demographics thread.

[AndrewS]

India's GDP PPP is 1/3rd of China's right now with the same population. The gap is hardly going to be 10-20 times. China's rate of development is not going to accelerate. It's about 10-15 years out from South Korea, if I had to guess, based on demographics, productivity levels, and GDP per capita PPP. Again, if you believe China will converge towards Japan and South Korea, then Japan's long stagnation and South Korea's coming stagnation should tell you all you need to know about China's trajectory. India does not need to accelerate its development to catch up to China, nor does it need to catch up completely to be much stronger in relation to China than it is today.

An India that's just 50% of China's GDP would be much more of a threat than it is today, especially with a higher population. I think a miracle in technology or policy would need to happen to prevent India from reaching that target in ~15-20 years.

In the First Industrial Revolution, the British ended up with the highest productivity levels in the world. That translated into the highest wages and also living standards.

In the Second Industrial Revolution, we saw the US dominate. Again, that translated into the world's highest productivity, wages and living standards.

Now we see China as the undisputed overall leader in terms of the technologies underlying the Third Industrial Revolution.
Furthermore, the overall Chinese lead is increasing every year.

In terms of wind, solar, batteries and electric transport - it is acknowledged that the Chinese lead is unassailable.
In terms of AI, Biotech, semiconductors - China is currently behind. But within 10 years, I expect Chinese companies will have caught up completely and may start surpassing the US.

This represents a NEW TECHNOLOGICAL FRONTIER, where large improvements in productivity are to be expected.

That should translate into China having higher productivity, wages and living standards than the USA.

This is outlined in Rifkind's "Third Industrial Revolution"

---

If we use US productivity levels as a benchmark, Brazil and Mexico have stagnated at a level 4x smaller.

That is where I think India will end up

 

[Serb]

In nominal terms, Japan's economy was ten times the size of China's in 1990. It was adding half a China every year back then. Its labor productivity, manufacturing output value, electricity generation, etc. were all much higher than China's.

So what happened? Did Japan keep accelerating its economy, did it keep widening the gap?

No, of course not. In 2010, just two decades later, China's economy overtook Japan's.

It doesn't matter how ahead you are now. Countries catch up, at times quickly, at times not so quickly. But they do, because economies hit diminishing returns once they reach the technological frontier. If they didn't, Europeans would've left everyone in the dust by now and be on their way to galactic hegemony.

Demographics is important because technology can only get you so far. As the person above said, Japan and South Korea could never have been expected to over take the US, because they just didn't have the population size.

Chinese and Japanese are essentially the same type of people, and culture, and similar strong national unity.

Also, we know about Chinese potential from its powerful standing on average in its 5000 years long history.

That's why you could have expected for China to overtake Japan, but you can't expect India to overtake China.

Also, Japan is like 1/10 of China, whereas India is 1/1 with China, and could at most become 125% of China in 2050.

By that time likely crude population numbers would become obsolete and you have AI completely take over everything.

And by that time China would have already achieved the peak per capita productivity of Japan, Taiwan, SK today, or more.

So, India would need to become 1000-2000% of China, not 125%, in population size, of China to be "on par" with it at that point.

You don't need to "guess" anything, just use the basic math. You are doing much guessing, and not much verification here.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[sunnymaxi]

India's GDP PPP is 1/3rd of China's right now with the same population. The gap is hardly going to be 10-20 times. China's rate of development is not going to accelerate. It's about 10-15 years out from South Korea, if I had to guess, based on demographics, productivity levels, and GDP per capita PPP. Again, if you believe China will converge towards Japan and South Korea, then Japan's long stagnation and South Korea's coming stagnation should tell you all you need to know about China's trajectory. India does not need to accelerate its development to catch up to China, nor does it need to catch up completely to be much stronger in relation to China than it is today.

An India that's just 50% of China's GDP would be much more of a threat than it is today, especially with a higher population. I think a miracle in technology or policy would need to happen to prevent India from reaching that target in ~15-20 years.

India has massive Potential
India has massive Potential
India has massive Potential

and no, i m not joking. its true. india could become big power.. but
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i have read all your massages regarding india.. let me tell you some facts and figures. it seems you don't read much..

''Manufacturing made you superpower''

as long as, india doesn't become manufacturing power or hold Core tech.. nothing Modi or other leader can do.. current india is basically a giant service balloon. with rising automation and 4.0 industrial revolution this can become obsolete.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

india have 100 billion USD trade deficit with China .. for each and every core tech they are dependent on China and western powers. india probably the only big country in history. who runs massive trade deficit despite 5th largest economy and soon to become 3rd largest economy..

india doesn't hold a single core tech right now..
india don't have a single world class university in top 100
entire indian Military industrial complex runs on imports
india send its ''Kaveri'' engine to Russia for testing and collecting data
DRDO indian institute send its AIP engine to France for testing

these are few examples, i can literally post hundreds of such examples..

as of May, 2024. india don't even have tech infrastructure and labs for testing/evaluation let alone compete with China.. they missed first , second and third industrial revolutions and you know what's going on in 4.0 industrial revolution.. its beyond india's thinking.. so india is already too late..

absolutely nothing india can do if they don't hold manufacturing prowess and core tech..
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

what you are saying is true . but only if india starts working on manufacturing and technology. build its own core tech and domestic champion ..

 

[Randomuser]

People underestimated China and were wrong. Therefore underestimating India will be the same and you will be wrong.

That's pretty much what this boils down to.

In that world, we wouldn't have any countries that failed to live up to their potential. But actually when you think about it, most countries did. Compared the number of fully developed countries to around the colonization era and it's not really that different.

I personally don't doubt India will have significant influence in the future. But there needs to be more than just China did it therefore I can do it. Especially when by the time India really enters its significant growth period, the circumstances are a lot different like climate change, automation, changes in technology etc

I used to think climate change was some exaggerated stuff pushed by grifters but it's kinda hard to deny it with all the heatwaves especially in south/southeast asia. If it starts to affect infrastructure on a massive scale then that's already a huge wrench thrown into the equation.

 

[resistance]

So Japan and South Korea thought - both invested heavily in robotics and automation in order to "beat the demographics cliff." Yet, as their demographics collapsed, their economies stagnated. Turns out, demographic collapse affects every aspect of society - not just manual labor; and in fact, it affects the highly educated, STEM demographics much more so since educated women are even less likely to reproduce.

Nope, Japan and south Korea didn't grow in the era where automation will replace 90 percent of the job.
Also if you see stem demographics compared to overall demographics, china still has at least 20 years before stem grads reaching capacity.

 

[Randomuser]

Btw I noticed there seems to be a trend of blaming Japan slowing down solely due to demographics while omitting stuff like Plaza accords or China/Korea stealing it's lunch. Anyone who does this you can assume to be either ignorant or worse disingenuous. Americans in particular do this, coz they don't want to admit they clipped Japan's wings despite calling them an "ally". Forcing them to do stuff that is obviously not in their interest but have no choice.

But isn't US trying to do this with China now? Yeah they're trying to. But I guess having your own sovereignty helps a bit after all. Not to mention times are a bit different. How much does sovereignty help? That story remains to be seen.

 

[sanctionsevader]

You're not wrong. It's easy for Chinese people to hate Indians because they are so different from us. China does not get along with Japan or South Korea either but it's much harder for us to hate Japanese and South Korean people because they are similar to us. I personally know many Chinese-Korean and Chinese-Japanese couples but I don't know a single Chinese-Indian couple.

In my opinion, the best solution for Chinese and Indian people is to ignore each other for the time being. In my opinion, there is no hope for Chinese-Indian relations in my lifetime. Instead of arguing, it is better for us to save our energy for better things.

There's lots of couples who are Indian-Chinese in Hong Kong actually. I have grown up among some of these families and they're pretty well adjusted and normal HKers, many people who've subcontinental ancestry actually are HK citizens with fluency in Cantonese and so on.

 

[azn_cyniq]

There's lots of couples who are Indian-Chinese in Hong Kong actually. I have grown up among some of these families and they're pretty well adjusted and normal HKers, many people who've subcontinental ancestry actually are HK citizens with fluency in Cantonese and so on.

I hope this doesn't spread to Taiwan and the rest of China

 

[sanctionsevader]

I hope this doesn't spread to Taiwan and the rest of China

Honestly the obsession and race-hatred for India/Indians on this site is extremely tiresome. Does every non-hardware thread have to have dozens of posts about how indians are untermensch and chinese are ubermensch?

Anyway, too late. Already a documented phenomena of subcontinental women marrying dudes in China that can't find wives mostly for the bride-price (since dowry culture in the norm in India and I think also Pakistan).

 

[Randomuser]

Honestly the obsession and race-hatred for India/Indians on this site is extremely tiresome. Does every non-hardware thread have to have dozens of posts about how indians are untermensch and chinese are ubermensch?

Anyway, too late. Already a documented phenomena of subcontinental women marrying dudes in China that can't find wives mostly for the bride-price (since dowry culture in the norm in India and I think also Pakistan).

To be fair it's not like they are nicer to Chinese on the Indian defense forum or any other website where a lot of them hang out. We are allowed to punch back especially when a lot of times they are the ones who start it. They're not innocent after all despite what they claim all the time.

While it is a waste of time since we have bigger fights to take care of, we can't pretend they don't exist. It's why being at Chinese leader is no easy job since you have so many parties to deal with and assess at the current time.