China demographics thread.

[Eventine]

It is totally meaningless.

But they are insisting on 2100 because any realistic calculations in the next 25 to 30 years don't give them the apocalyptic numbers they wanted.

By 2050, using the worst case data we have today, China's population would decline to 1.3B. That is still a tremendous amount of people.

By 2100, the chances that China might be producing tens of millions of people through government programs using artificial wombs to colonize the moon, Mars and the rest of the Milky Way is probably far better than a demographic collapse.

No government or civilization with the proper technology would just allow itself to go extinct. The key is making sure you have that technology when the time comes.

Four generations is ~100-120 years. That's not a long time in the future. The table provided above is essentially correct. The main difference is you're looking at total population, while the graph is focused on generational population.

The former masks the problems with the latter. You can have a fairly stable total population (due to lots of old people living longer), but completely garbage generational population, which is precisely the "inverted population pyramid" people have been telling you about.

With a 0.7 TFR (South Korea's), generational population after four generations will decline from 1000 to just 15, or in other words, it'll drop by 98.5%. Imagine 1000 great grand parents having just 15 descendants. That's among the worst natural catastrophe we've seen in human history - far worse than famine, war, disease, etc.

Such a population collapse cannot be recovered from. They'll either become a country of robots or revert to a sustenance agricultural economy.

And the reason we accuse you of copium is because your answer to this coming catastrophe is "by then, China will be producing people through artificial wombs to colonize moon, Mars, and the rest of the galaxy". Sorry, but what evidence is there China is going to adopt a policy of producing people in factories? Saying that governments will not stand by and allow this to happen is against the empirical fact that governments are, in fact, standing by and allowing it to happen, mostly because they lack the courage to do anything drastic.

 

[Wrought]

Four generations is ~100-120 years. That's not a long time in the future.

100 years ago, warlords tore the nation apart after Yuan Shikai's death. 120 years ago, there was still a Qing emperor on the throne—and not even the last one either. I don't know what kind of hubris makes you think any predictions now will make any kind of sense 100 years later.

 

[GiantPanda]

And the reason we accuse you of copium is because your answer to this coming catastrophe is "by then, China will be producing people through artificial wombs to colonize moon, Mars, and the rest of the galaxy". Sorry, but what evidence is there China is going to adopt a policy of producing people in factories? Saying that governments will not stand by and allow this to happen is against the empirical fact that governments are, in fact, standing by and allowing it to happen, mostly because they lack the courage to do anything drastic.

Idiotic. Fifty-five years ago, in 1970, most people would have predicted that China was hurtling towards a fucking demographic disaster with 822M people mired at $114 per capita income and a fertility rate of 5.81. That was around 6 kids for every female of child-bearing age.

Taking those numbers at the time in 1970 and extrapolating 55 years to today, we would have had an absolute hellhole of 3.25B people scratching out an apocalyptic living crammed into the blasted China of today that would have been stripped bare of all resources by a perpetually hungry population.

Obviously, that never happened. You guys are taking the same kind of projections 75 years into the future. What makes your predictions any better than those in 1970?

Don't waste our time, you and the other demographics demagogues can't predict anything.

And what you are actually doing is pushing the Western narrative (and cope) that China will fail demographically even if they do advance economically and technologically.

Bullshit.

The best ammunition to deal with any future problem -- demographics or otherwise -- is with money and technology.

So it is FAR more important to make sure as a country of 1.5B people that you are creating wealth and advancing technology than to chase some solution to an imagined demographic collapse.

 

[manqiangrexue]

Population decline is a long-term ailment that requires early intervention and may not manifest problems until decade later; short- to medium-term challenges like unemployment cannot justify ignoring the problem, and governments the world over know that.

There is not one instance in which a modernizing society has reversed the trend of a falling TFR, especially when it dips <2.

So basically, it's a new problem. Countries haven't solved it yet because it hasn't gotten bad enough to have done anyone in yet. So saying no one has ever reversed it is rather meaningless.

Four generations is ~100-120 years. That's not a long time in the future. The table provided above is essentially correct. The main difference is you're looking at total population, while the graph is focused on generational population.

The former masks the problems with the latter. You can have a fairly stable total population (due to lots of old people living longer), but completely garbage generational population, which is precisely the "inverted population pyramid" people have been telling you about.

With a 0.7 TFR (South Korea's), generational population after four generations will decline from 1000 to just 15, or in other words, it'll drop by 98.5%. Imagine 1000 great grand parents having just 15 descendants. That's among the worst natural catastrophe we've seen in human history - far worse than famine, war, disease, etc.

Such a population collapse cannot be recovered from. They'll either become a country of robots or revert to a sustenance agricultural economy.

But the entire premise to assume that something is a constant for 100-120 years is totally nonsense. It's like taking a period of decline in property values, then saying if it keeps dropping like this for 100 years, your house will be worth 82 cents. Mathematically, it may be correct, but it is completely irrelevent to real life.

And the reason we accuse you of copium is because your answer to this coming catastrophe is "by then, China will be producing people through artificial wombs to colonize moon, Mars, and the rest of the galaxy".

Did you read mine? I highlighted a couple that had nothing to do with science fiction.

Sorry, but what evidence is there China is going to adopt a policy of producing people in factories? Saying that governments will not stand by and allow this to happen is against the empirical fact that governments are, in fact, standing by and allowing it to happen, mostly because they lack the courage to do anything drastic.

And what drastic thing are you "courageous" enough to propose?

 

[Eventine]

Idiotic. Fifty-five years ago, in 1970, most people would have predicted that China was hurtling towards a fucking demographic disaster with 822M people mired at $114 per capita income and a fertility rate of 5.81. That was around 6 kids for every female of child-bearing age.

Taking those numbers at the time in 1970 and extrapolating 55 years to today, we would have had an absolute hellhole of 3.25B people scratching out an apocalyptic living crammed into the blasted China of today that would have been stripped bare of all resources by a perpetually hungry population.

Obviously, that never happened. You guys are taking the same kind of projections 75 years into the future. What makes your predictions any better than those in 1970?

Don't waste our time, you and the other demographics demagogues can't predict anything.

And what you are actually doing is pushing the Western narrative (and cope) that China will fail demographically even if they do advance economically and technologically.

Bullshit.

The best ammunition to deal with any future problem -- demographics or otherwise -- is with money and technology.

So it is FAR more important to make sure as a country of 1.5B people that you are creating wealth and advancing technology than to chase some solution to an imagined demographic collapse.

Population increases are self correcting due to fundamental limitations to resource availability. Countless examples in history. The opposite is not the case. Neither money nor development have led to higher TFR. In fact it’s the opposite. Japan being a great example of a country that got rich, advanced, educated, but had its TFR shrink to 1.2.

I don’t think you really understand what sort of threat low TFR represents. High TFR was solved by countries becoming richer and more developed; by symmetry the opposite is true of low TFR. So yes, there is a “natural” solution as well, but it will cost East Asians everything.

 

[manqiangrexue]

Population increases are self correcting due to fundamental limitations to resource availability. Countless examples in history. The opposite is not the case. Neither money nor development have led to higher TFR. In fact it’s the opposite. Japan being a great example of a country that got rich, advanced, educated, but had its TFR shrink to 1.2.

I don’t think you really understand what sort of threat low TFR represents. High TFR was solved by countries becoming richer and more developed; by symmetry the opposite is true of low TFR.

I don't think you really understand what you're talking about at all. This is a new problem that hasn't done anyone in yet and no one has bothered to solve. So what is your purpose? What do you suggest be done? There's nothing valuable in what you say if you can't answer that.

So yes, there is a “natural” solution as well, but it will cost East Asians everything.

Looks like it's gonna cost everybody everything, isn't it? All the richer countries die off first. Then all the poor countries with huge TFR eventually develop to become rich, then they all experience low TFR and die off too. Off goes the human race, eh? Nothing specific about China if you're going to be pulling wild extrapolations hundreds of years into the future.

 

[BoraTas]

I don't think you really understand what you're talking about at all. This is a new problem that hasn't done anyone in yet and no one has bothered to solve. So what is your purpose? What do you suggest be done? There's nothing valuable in what you say if you can't answer that.

Looks like it's gonna cost everybody everything, isn't it? All the richer countries die off first. Then all the poor countries with huge TFR eventually develop to become rich, then they all experience low TFR and die off too. Off goes the human race, eh? Nothing specific about China if you're going to be pulling wild extrapolations hundreds of years into the future.

I find fatalistic descriptions of demographics intellectually deficient too. They assume no change in government policies and social dynamics with a declining population. Everyone was predicting an overpopulation crisis just 25 years ago. Now we predict a population doom. In the last two reports, the UN revised their estimate for China of 2100 from 1.1 billion to 640 million. That is a 42% revision in just 4 years. How could we ever say they are accurate now?

 

[coolgod]

Updated graph I made

Came across this pic on twitter, I knew China's political system massively increased the life expectancy and quality, but only when you compare with other countries do you fully appreciate it. India by comparison looks like an abject failure. Keep in mind India was a country that wasn't sanctioned by the west, a country that didn't fight the two superpowers, a country which had basic infrastructure built by the British previously.

This is also why the Indians hate the Chinese so vigorously.

 

[SinoSoldier]

Yes, and no advanced nation had actually gone extinct or had collapsed behind a poor nation with growing population.

Nigeria hasn't passed Japan. The US has not fallen behind India.

China has passed the US in GDP but its population growth rate has fallen at the same time.

So what is the actual situation in the real world? Nothing has really changed. It is a waste of time to worry at this point.

The fall in TFR is simply a women issue. You cannot ask females in an advanced economy with all its attractions and amenities to give up mind and body for children. Child birth is painful and dangerous. Raising children requires sacrifices in career and, frankly, in the pursuit of happiness.

Unless, your economy stay underdeveloped this issue will always be the case.

By 2100, you need technology to alleviate pain and health in birthing children and to alleviate risks and burden in raising them.

It's not a collapse or extinction that is the risk; it's the shortfall of the workforce that might lead to commensurate effects on the economy and overall prosperity of the population. This is not a trivial problem given the increased age of China's population.

So basically, it's a new problem. Countries haven't solved it yet because it hasn't gotten bad enough to have done anyone in yet. So saying no one has ever reversed it is rather meaningless.

Being a "new" problem doesn't make it any less of a problem. You're right that nobody can truly predict the trajectory of any nation's demographics in 50-100 years, but the only pieces of data available to construct such a prediction are TFR/birth rate/median age, none of which are looking optimistic.

 

[manqiangrexue]

It's not a collapse or extinction that is the risk; it's the shortfall of the workforce that might lead to commensurate effects on the economy and overall prosperity of the population. This is not a trivial problem given the increased age of China's population.

That "might." So far, we see automation picking up the slack, technology spawning technology, very little if any of the nations with high TFRs catching up with advanced nations with low TFRs.

Being a "new" problem doesn't make it any less of a problem. You're right that nobody can truly predict the trajectory of any nation's demographics in 50-100 years, but the only pieces of data available to construct such a prediction are TFR/birth rate/median age, none of which are looking optimistic.

Sometimes, using "the only pieces of data" to construct an analysis can result in very misleading answers, which are much worse than no answers at all. The less the path is paved, the more this is true and this demographic issue is a totally unpaved path. Western analysts took "the only pieces of data" available at the time when the first pictures of J-20 came out and thought it was a 75 foot bomber similar to the Aardvark. They would have been much more correct just sitting there and shutting up.

This is very much similar to our case. It is absolutely stupid, against all biology, to say that an incredibly low TFR will continue until you have 15 people left of the 1,000 founders because drops in population will lead to an abundance of land and resources per capita, which will then lead to lack of stress and competition, self-correcting to boost the population again. We simply haven't gotten that far yet in today's developed nations with low TFR and also the world is under extra stress as we are no longer in Pax anything, rather in a frictitious transition from the Pax Americana to what is likely the Pax Sinica or at least a multi-polar Pax.