China demographics thread.

[FairAndUnbiased]

I think the issue is that 1.4B is still too high a population re: resource and job availability; nothing is going to fix that and more births as a still developing country doesn't provide any tangible benefit at a macro level. The same argument for the one child policy can still be made today which is a fixed resource amount to be divided amongst fewer people.
So I think the focus on the one child policy is a moot point and unnecessary - it served its purpose (to prevent China turning out like India with a huge number of non-productive mouths with feet to feed when food availability was not even sufficient for the then population), and it was terminated when those conditions no longer existed.
I believe that a natural population reduction to 800M - 1B would be beneficial for China as it would eliminate a lot of unproductive competition. This is in line with studies done in the 70s/80s which projected the ideal population for China to be in the 700M - 800M range.
In short, I think all this worry about fertility rates at 1.4B pop is premature... and to put some perspective on things, the most I have heard about China's fertility rate is from US media.

Good thoughts. But I am wondering just how bad it would be to have 20% lower GDP per capita and 20% more population with a younger population pyramid as would've been the case if China followed its 1990s and 2000s demographic trends.

China still wouldn't be India. India's problems are from a lack of land reform and ethnic policy, not merely population. Dispossessed tenant farmers is the root cause of urban slums, and China has solved that.

Yes there will still be more people engaged in manual labor but they're a market too. Yes social competition will be high but not like today where people "can't afford to lose on the starting line". Social pressure comes in 2 forms. 1 is how hard it is to get a good job or school slot, which does get harder with more people. On the other hand is the price of failure. Lower fertility with existing high population means harder to get what you want but also higher price of failure.

In 1980s China only 10% of graduates were allowed to pass gaokao. Even in 1998 after expanding higher education it was in the 20% level. Yet it wasn't that bad if you didn't pass because you had siblings or cousins and not all the pressure was on you.

 

[tygyg1111]

Beyond sufficient housing and food, I don't see how a country's natural resources have anything to do with it. Assembly line work isn't the great employer it was in the past, so the bulk of employment for people is actually in services, academics, engineering, etc. All of these fields scale proportionally with population. The whole green energy / sustainable development initiative has revolutionized the availability of energy, so it's not like you're going to run out of electricity because there are more people.

The global situation has changed drastically since the 70s / 80s, and demographics policy has been slow to adapt. I don't understand why that is so hard for people to accept. The faith Chinese people have in Western Neo-Malthusian ideology is honestly disappointing to see considering it was a component of the West's race war against the Global South. If you studied any history you'd know that Europeans and Americans were terrified of the fertility of the Global South and the threat it posed to their "master race."

A huge part of the reluctance to have more children is the second order costs it would impose on the parents, as well as reluctance to bring a child into the hyper competitive schooling system (which is putting it nicely).

I also just cannot see the advantages of having 1.4B people vs 1B at a point 50-70 years (or more) into the future - you would unlock a higher quality of life (more to go around / allocated on a per cap basis), and most importantly there would be less competitive pressure leading to less 内卷 (I believe China is much better equipped to change student / workplace culture than the more rigid Japan and South Korea).

A common 'complaint' you hear on Chinese social media is that there are just way too many people, which turns everything into an ordeal (e.g. have you been to a major tourist attraction on National Day?).

I will just ask the question: would you rather go to school in China, South Korea etc. or Canada? Then ask where would you rather send your kids to school. Answering honestly I would say Canada for both - I / my kids get to enjoy childhood, have hobbies, and experience balanced personal growth rather than going through the meatgrinder of a hyper competitive schooling system and all the additional time and money costs (tutoring etc.) required if you want to do well.

 

[Eventine]

A huge part of the reluctance to have more children is the second order costs it would impose on the parents, as well as reluctance to bring a child into the hyper competitive schooling system (which is putting it nicely).

I also just cannot see the advantages of having 1.4B people vs 1B at a point 50-70 years (or more) into the future - you would unlock a higher quality of life (more to go around / allocated on a per cap basis), and most importantly there would be less competitive pressure leading to less 内卷 (I believe China is much better equipped to change student / workplace culture than the more rigid Japan and South Korea).

A common 'complaint' you hear on Chinese social media is that there are just way too many people, which turns everything into an ordeal (e.g. have you been to a major tourist attraction on National Day?).

I will just ask the question: would you rather go to school in China, South Korea etc. or Canada? Then ask where would you rather send your kids to school. Answering honestly I would say Canada for both - I / my kids get to enjoy childhood, have hobbies, and experience balanced personal growth rather than going through the meatgrinder of a hyper competitive schooling system and all the additional time and money costs (tutoring etc.) required if you want to do well.

Of course, there are places you'd rather live in because of the lower pressure exerted on the individual and higher quality life-style. Can't blame anyone for that.

But how is this all sustained? Canada is not a great power. It is able to sustain its life-style largely through exporting resources to the great powers of the West. It is subservient to the US for this reason, among others. It is able to keep its life-style mostly through being a resource colony and vacation resort for US elites.

If the US did not exist, Canada would be subservient to another great power, and if no such great power existed, then Canada would be a terrible place to live in - a "barbaric frontier," if you will - as it would never be able to sustain its civilized life-style with the present state of its industries. It'd need to become a great power itself, and to do so, it'd need to dramatically increase its population.

China is not Canada. It does not and should not want to be the resource colony and vacation resort of a foreign power. It is a historical population and civilization center, similar to the Mediterranean. It is and should aspire to be a great power.

There are no great powers in history that did not have dense population centers with hyper competitive people. What the average person complains about and what is is in the interests of the greater community are often not the same. Tragedy of the commons, if you will.

 

[tygyg1111]

Good thoughts. But I am wondering just how bad it would be to have 20% lower GDP per capita and 20% more population with a younger population pyramid as would've been the case if China followed its 1990s and 2000s demographic trends.

China still wouldn't be India. India's problems are from a lack of land reform and ethnic policy, not merely population. Dispossessed tenant farmers is the root cause of urban slums, and China has solved that.

Yes there will still be more people engaged in manual labor but they're a market too. Yes social competition will be high but not like today where people "can't afford to lose on the starting line". Social pressure comes in 2 forms. 1 is how hard it is to get a good job or school slot, which does get harder with more people. On the other hand is the price of failure. Lower fertility with existing high population means harder to get what you want but also higher price of failure.

In 1980s China only 10% of graduates were allowed to pass gaokao. Even in 1998 after expanding higher education it was in the 20% level. Yet it wasn't that bad if you didn't pass because you had siblings or cousins and not all the pressure was on you.

My concern would be that at a lower per cap resource allocation, you might be getting a lower quality / lower tech tier of innovation, and that you might inadvertently screen out certain types of talent due to inability to afford further education in their ideal area.

i.e. some talents are suited for industries with a high cost overhead (e.g. software dev needs a computer, physical engineering needs equipment and materials, etc.). Further to this, nurturing of latent talents requires an environment where a child has access to and can play (often destructively) with various things, e.g. engineer grows up tinkering with small petrol engines / household appliances. All this points to a higher per cap resource allocation.
If I use an Age of Empires analogy, do you want an 80 unit feudal age army, or a 50 unit imperial age army with full upgrades?


In terms of social pressure, more people always adds to the pressure, due to the physical reality of having more mouths to feed, more bodies to house, more supplies required in general, so I don't think it is a viable way forward.

If I take colonial countries as an example (under populated with abundance of land and resources), there is an attitude of "somewhere out there, there is a place for me".

If the currently desolate land in western China can be 'oasified' it may be able to function as a release valve for those that can't / don't want to make it in today's highly urbanized areas, however to me, naturally allowing population to somewhat fall over a span of decades is a cheaper and more effective way of achieving this.

 

[tygyg1111]

Of course, there are places you'd rather live in because of the lower pressure exerted on the individual and higher quality life-style. Can't blame anyone for that.

But how is this all sustained? Canada is not a great power. It is able to sustain its life-style largely through exporting resources to the great powers of the West. It is subservient to the US for this reason, among others. It is able to keep its life-style mostly through being a resource colony and vacation resort for US elites.

If the US did not exist, Canada would be subservient to another great power, and if no such great power existed, then Canada would be a terrible place to live in - a "barbaric frontier," if you will - as it would never be able to sustain its civilized life-style with the present state of its industries. It'd need to become a great power itself, and to do so, it'd need to dramatically increase its population.

China is not Canada. It does not and should not want to be the resource colony and vacation resort of a foreign power. It is a historical population and civilization center, similar to the Mediterranean. It is and should aspire to be a great power.

There are no great powers in history that did not have dense population centers with hyper competitive people. What the average person complains about and what is is in the interests of the greater community are often not the same. Tragedy of the commons, if you will.

I think a good balance can be achieved, without going too far in the other direction. 1B is still a huge population, coupled with cultural strengths i.e. sense of responsibility, focus on education.

If China can secure a relief valve for the people that want to pursue a relaxing life, at the cost of lesser educational and professional achievements, then I think that would be the ideal scenario. The Australian continent would be ideal - the core (mainland) drives the world engine and exports critical technologies, while those that prefer a simpler life migrate to external territories and make a living on providing primary products to the core.

 

[Eventine]

I think a good balance can be achieved, without going too far in the other direction. 1B is still a huge population, coupled with cultural strengths i.e. sense of responsibility, focus on education.

If China can secure a relief valve for the people that want to pursue a relaxing life, at the cost of lesser educational and professional achievements, then I think that would be the ideal scenario. The Australian continent would be ideal - the core (mainland) drives the world engine and exports critical technologies, while those that prefer a simpler life migrate to external territories and make a living on providing primary products to the core.

I don't know the exact number China should aim for, but I think we should all agree that the ideal population structure is one in which there are neither too many young nor too many old. In other words, a TFR slightly above the replacement level of 2.1, to account for the fact that a certain % of people will want to move to other countries, which can be also be lower if China takes in a certain % of immigrants, obviously.

The trouble is that falling populations don't stabilize themselves. China's TFR is approaching 1. A crisis is developing.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

My concern would be that at a lower per cap resource allocation, you might be getting a lower quality / lower tech tier of innovation, and that you might inadvertently screen out certain types of talent due to inability to afford further education in their ideal area.

i.e. some talents are suited for industries with a high cost overhead (e.g. software dev needs a computer, physical engineering needs equipment and materials, etc.). Further to this, nurturing of latent talents requires an environment where a child has access to and can play (often destructively) with various things, e.g. engineer grows up tinkering with small petrol engines / household appliances. All this points to a higher per cap resource allocation.
If I use an Age of Empires analogy, do you want an 80 unit feudal age army, or a 50 unit imperial age army with full upgrades?


In terms of social pressure, more people always adds to the pressure, due to the physical reality of having more mouths to feed, more bodies to house, more supplies required in general, so I don't think it is a viable way forward.

If I take colonial countries as an example (under populated with abundance of land and resources), there is an attitude of "somewhere out there, there is a place for me".

If the currently desolate land in western China can be 'oasified' it may be able to function as a release valve for those that can't / don't want to make it in today's highly urbanized areas, however to me, naturally allowing population to somewhat fall over a span of decades is a cheaper and more effective way of achieving this.

Computers are cheap though. Physical engineering is often done on the shop floor and you'd have just as much manufacturing with a higher population.

20% GDP per capita lower is just a bit under 4 years of 2010-today average growth but 20% larger population is unimaginably difficult to attain.

The level of innovation wouldn't be too much lower if at all, because the things that Chinese industry needs to innovate on aren't driven by individual purchasing. Nobody is personally buying a lithography tool after all. And much of the earlier innovations like facial recognition AI, legal AI, etc were driven by the service demand of a large population.

The big improvement would be mentality. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Chinese were much less risk averse. Look at all the bureaucrats who gave up 100% secure government jobs to go into business at the time. Although the regulatory environment doesn't encourage that sort of reckless risk now, the innovation of youth vs old age stagnation is something that is observable.

Look at how Japan and SK are stagnating in the same industries, while China sped forward with tech off its demographic and innovation dividend in the 2010s. Even look at how the US is stagnating infrastructure and just recycling pop culture from the 1980s and 1990s because their old population no longer wants change, even positive change of better infrastructure.

 

[gadgetcool5]

Of course other ultra developed countries like Japan/South Korea, Scandinavian countries etc faced the same issue of low births but that wad after the whole country had fully developed and reached high living standards that birth rates started plummeting. So it was a natural issue bit China's own has been precipitated by its own leaders who deliberately brought about such a drastic measures and they enforced it strictly killing off/forcefully aborting millions of unborn babies now the same people want to try and increase birth rates invane.
In short, China is already facing birth issues while still being a developing country and this is due to the one child policy which stimied birth rates. China was supposed to start facing this issue decades from now when she will alresdy be a fully developed country as a whole not right now . So the leaders should take their responsibilities for this silly act, since birth rates would have keep falling naturally as stabdards of living improved they didnt need to adopt that drastic policy which was unheard in history.

The US has a higher GDP per capita than Japan/South Korea, or Scandinavian countries, but it also has a higher birth rate. Meanwhile, many Latin American countries with GDP per capita similar to China, such as Mexico, have seen plunging birth rates over the past decade:

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It is clear that there are more subtle cultural factors at play. China's one child policy was introduced in 1979. Between 1963 and 1979, China's birth rate more than halved. During the much longer period when the one child policy was in place, between 1979 and 2015, China's birth rate declined more slowly. Then, after the one child policy was lifted, the birth rate again plunged.

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So while I'm in agreement that the one child policy was a big mistake, it is clear that China's birth rate decline is secular and cultural, and has little to do with policy. Even if there had never been any one child policy, China would still be facing a demographic crisis, similar to other developing countries such as Latin American countries or Thailand.

 

[tokenanalyst]

The US has a higher GDP per capita than Japan/South Korea, or Scandinavian countries, but it also has a higher birth rate. Meanwhile, many Latin American countries with GDP per capita similar to China, such as Mexico, have seen plunging birth rates over the past decade:

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It is clear that there are more subtle cultural factors at play. China's one child policy was introduced in 1979. Between 1963 and 1979, China's birth rate more than halved. During the much longer period when the one child policy was in place, between 1979 and 2015, China's birth rate declined more slowly. Then, after the one child policy was lifted, the birth rate again plunged.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

So while I'm in agreement that the one child policy was a big mistake, it is clear that China's birth rate decline is secular and cultural, and has little to do with policy. Even if there had never been any one child policy, China would still be facing a demographic crisis, similar to other developing countries such as Latin American countries or Thailand.

It goes beyond policy, women are decision makers when they want children or not, as education rates go up most of them are putting their careers ahead of family, some even thinking of having children in their mid 30s, is logical, women are not fools, like men they also value money and good earnings, that's benefit the economy because more qualify labor but at the expense of fertility rates.

The problem is when countries are going to hit the panic button and their policies are going from encouragement to punitive, that is going to depend how much automation has advanced in the future, if a lot blue collar workers, soldiers and service workers are replaced by robots, armed drones and AGI, if that is the case is probably that governments don't care about lower rates but at the same time if automation take over and fertility rates increase then they will have have a problem.

 

[doggydogdo]

It does not improve the quality of the population to make it proportionally more elderly.

The quality of the younger generations is improving, as you can see in the number of gaokao takers.