China demographics thread.

[manqiangrexue]

It will not cost "everybody everything," because while lower TFR is global, it is not uniform.

Dropping TFR amongst developed high tech nations is uniform. The only question is where they currently are.

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This is due to the cultural / religious factor, which acts as a differentiating factor between equally developed countries:

It's been addressed many many times but you haven't read them or ignore them because they can't be refuted.
1. They're all dropping and below the 2.0 requirement for population maintenance, which means that according to your logic, it'll cost everybody everything.
2. In Western populations, educated tech-savy contributors to national power living in the large cities have very low TFR while poorer populations and populations of low income immigrants tend to high higher TFR. This presents an additional challenge to those nations which is that they can get hijacked by these non-native populations.

Countries also aren't equally rich and poor at the same time. Developing countries, especially those in Africa, have much higher TFR than developed countries.

Yeah, and those are all the brokest nations going nowhere in technology or national power. Would never want to be like them.

So the end result will not be uniform. It will be a shift in power dynamics. Low TFR countries that are wealthy and developed today will peak, stagnate, and descend into geriatric poverty (since old people don't produce and are net dependents).

So that is a guess which has never happened because you don't know if a self-correcting mechanism such as the ones in nature, will kick in.

So-called "windows of opportunity" will then open for countries with better population structure to displace and dominate them. Some of these windows will be seized; others, lost.

Yet the global trend is that those nations with the highest fertility rates like those in Africa, are going nowhere at all.

During this process, the weaker nations will indeed be extinguished, as it will be easy for a young, powerful country to conquer and colonize a geriatric, poor country, unless the latter has asymmetric factors like nuclear weapons to help protect their borders. Even easier, in fact, if they are inviting them in via immigration due to desperate labor demands. "It's not the end of the world, just the end of you," as a popular saying goes.

"You're making shit up" is the more popular saying because it hasn't happened to anyone.

And then the cycle repeats.

1. If it does, that means everyone will succumb.
2. The cycle hasn't even happened once so that's way jumping the gun.

There is no evidence of this effect

There is abundant evidence of this in nature but humans haven't gotten there yet in modern history. In ancient history, we saw the Irish population deplete then replenish after the potato famine. I'm sure there are many other examples in history where some horrible stress depressed a population, then the population rebounded after the stress was removed.

and low TFR is not a new phenomenon - it's been going on for two decades in Japan

Japan was sabotaged by the US; its economy us not doing well enough to send the population into recovery,

and certain countries in Europe (especially Russia, Ukraine, etc.) Do you think these countries are doing well on TFR recovery right now with their "greater abundance of land and resources"?

Russia's not falling behind any broke 3rd world nation where women have 6 kids, are they? They are under the stress of war, actually. Why did you mention Ukraine? Are you not aware of what is happening there?

Abundance (measured in wealth, level of education, development, etc.) does not lead to better TFR. Poverty, lack of education, and religious fundamentalism, however, do. The most logical interpretation is that populations will not recover until a country has become so impoverished from geriatric transformation that it has reverted to a pre-industrial status. Then, yes, populations will likely recover as cities empty and people return to their rural communities.

1. Actually, two opposite things can lead to an increase in TFR. True abundance without stress, and desperate need for extra manual labor within the family. The second one is seen in impoverished nations. The former, as it applies to the modern world, is a hypothesis based on observations in nature but the environment for a mass effect has not been strongly demonstrated in humans yet. As a matter of fact, the world is currently under great stress due to the Sino-American power struggle.

2. If this is your interpretation, which I do not agree with, then what is there to complain about? Let it ride out.

But that's a long way down, and much can happen while the country is at its weakest.

Yeah, sooo much can happen, like it can not happen at all just like any 100-120 year predictions.

Agree, if China can raise its TFR to ~1.7 in the next 5-10 years, it should be able to avoid the worst of the coming population crunch in East Asia.

What's the magic in that number? It's still below replacement.

But if it stays at 1.0 or falls below 1.0, then we're back to hoping "technology will save us."

Which is showing a lot of promise (in automation, not in artificial precreation).

 

[Index]

July marriages hit record surge in S. Korea​

Newlywed count rises 33% year-on-year; newborns up 8%, driven by housing benefits and incentives

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It seems like the absolute worst country in the world for demographics, South Korea, is seeing a rise in marriages and rise in births now.
"

The number of marriages in South Korea surged unexpectedly during the July off-season, continuing the upward trend from April and May, when weddings increased by over 20% compared to the previous year. After 11 years of decline due to low birth rates and the rise of non-marriage trends, the country’s marriage rate finally grew by 1% last year, driven by a wave of “endemic weddings” from couples who delayed their ceremonies due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The increase in marriages is attributed to policy incentives, such as the expanded gift tax exemption for marrying children and marriage subsidies from local governments. Many couples expedited their marriage registrations to apply for special housing allocations for newlyweds in key metropolitan areas in July. Daejeon reported the highest marriage growth rate at 50.1%, providing newlyweds with up to 5 million won in marriage incentives, followed"

Why is this relevant for China? Well, it's another East Asian country, and it proves that policy works. If the government gets serious about offering huge incentives for marriage and childbirth, then people will respond. So the situation is not hopeless. But the main thing is, that the government must act and use a sufficiently forceful policy package to raise the birth rate to sustainable levels, and keep them there; just like it stimulates the economy if the economy weakens too much.

In order for that to happen, there needs to be a serious societal reckoning that yes, this is a problem, and not just copium.

It has never been a "hopeless" situation, population adjusts itself in peaks and dips. Either you let your population dip by choice, or nature finds another way to dip it. Currently, the dip is caused by the huge rise in living standards overloading people with things to do. This is especially exaggerated in China, which experienced a transformation in 10 years, whereas Europe/US took 30-50. As soon as enough people die off, people will suddenly realize now there's a lot of land/opportunity open, then you'll see 2-3 birth rate for awhile. Plus childbirth is going to be much less painful in the 2050s, due to tech advances.

We just have a situation where most advanced countries are living somewhere in the dip. The only disadvantage this causes is a brief period of vulnerability in the somewhere around the 2080s.

The idea that any non developed country can surpass a developed country due to TFR is only hypothetical. It has never been observed.

 

[Eventine]

Should look to Vietnam. Unlike some countries, Chinese believe that everyone has something to teach (maybe a negative lesson though). 三人行必有我师.

Can they escape the East Asian fertility trap? Vietnam currently is at 2.0 fertility rate, the best among all East Asian countries.

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When China was at Vietnam's GDP per capita in 2010, China's fertility rate was 1.7, so Vietnam is doing substantially better.

Vietnam's national government is superficially similar to China's.

Vietnam's compulsory education system shares all the benefits and faults of China's.

There is 1 big difference: Vietnam still has not gone through the equivalent of China's 1998 higher education reform and expansion and investment into science.

It's not just that; it's also the timing of it. Malthusian propaganda was at its height in the late 20th century, being promoted both by Western think tanks (mostly targeting developing countries, naturally, because of

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), and unfortunately by the Chinese government itself due to the influence of Malthusianism on key Chinese leaders.

While the implementation of the one-child policy was only partially to blame, it is all aspects of the same Malthusian cult - it was deeply imprinted in the Chinese psyche that "more children = poverty and shame; less children = civilized and developed." Indeed, we can see its stubborn lingering effects in this very thread.

By contrast, Vietnam did not reach similar levels of development during the same period of time; it was less effected, as such, by the Malthusian cult, since mainstream ideology has shifted towards worrying about too few children.

Its Nature Index share this year is 35.33

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Adjusted for per capita, it would be the equivalent of 350 for China. China's in 2016 was 7500.

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So Vietnam needs to 20x its Nature Index share to catch up to China of 2016, even adjusted per capita.

20x is 10% growth in Nature Index share for 31 years, just to be 8 years behind.

Looks like the big difference between China and Vietnam that may be correlated to fertility is that China traded fertility for basically a 30 year leap in technological capability.

Was this effective? I can't say - but you can compare BYD with Vinfast, and the answer is right there.

Vietnam is obviously significantly behind China in its development curve, for various reasons (Vietnam War being a big factor).

But it will fare better demographically, I predict, when it eventually does reach the same state of development, for reasons cited above.

 

[HighGround]

It's not just that; it's also the timing of it. Malthusian propaganda was at its height in the late 20th century, being promoted both by Western think tanks (mostly targeting developing countries, naturally, because of

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), and unfortunately by the Chinese government itself due to the influence of Malthusianism on key Chinese leaders.

While the implementation of the one-child policy was only partially to blame, it is all aspects of the same Malthusian cult - it was deeply imprinted in the Chinese psyche that "more children = poverty and shame; less children = civilized and developed." Indeed, we can see its stubborn lingering effects in this very thread.

By contrast, Vietnam did not reach similar levels of development during the same period of time; it was less effected, as such, by the Malthusian cult, since mainstream ideology has shifted towards worrying about too few children.


Vietnam is obviously significantly behind China in its development curve, for various reasons (Vietnam War being a big factor).

But it will fare better demographically, I predict, when it eventually does reach the same state of development, for reasons cited above.

What you're missing is that many developed countries, especially in Africa, did in fact struggle to keep up food production with population growth. That's why there was a Malthusian revival in the 20th century. So these concerns weren't just random and didn't spring out of nowhere. It was because governments around the world took food security seriously, and took active steps to prevent famine, that the Malthusian prophecy did not come to fruition, and there were plenty of famines in the 20th century anyway, even the latter part.

Similarly, there are clearly dangers from bad demographics. Just look at Japan. But sure, society in Japan did not collapse and it probably won't collapse, but people should ask themselves.

Do they really want to be in Japan's situation 30-50 years from now?

 

[Eventine]

What you're missing is that many developed countries, especially in Africa, did in fact struggle to keep up food production with population growth. That's why there was a Malthusian revival in the 20th century. So these concerns weren't just random and didn't spring out of nowhere. It was because governments around the world took food security seriously, and took active steps to prevent famine, that the Malthusian prophecy did not come to fruition, and there were plenty of famines in the 20th century anyway, even the latter part.

Similarly, there are clearly dangers from bad demographics. Just look at Japan. But sure, society in Japan did not collapse and it probably won't collapse, but people should ask themselves.

Do they really want to be in Japan's situation 30-50 years from now?

Malthusian ideology was predicated on the idea that humans, like locusts, would reproduce until and after they've consumed all available natural resources, causing ecological collapse, and so government policy was needed to control human populations. This was clearly false (and historically false). Yet Western think tanks continued to push the idea that over population in developing countries was the main threat to the world, convincing (especially) Chinese leaders that they should impose the one-child policy.

It was simply the continuation of long standing white supremacist thinking that people who aren't white can't be trusted to govern themselves. Africans, Chinese, etc. can't help but breed, so they have to be stopped, etc.

 

[GiantPanda]

Malthusian ideology was predicated on the idea that humans, like locusts, would reproduce until and after they've consumed all available natural resources, causing ecological collapse, and so government policy was needed to control human populations. This was clearly false (and historically false). Yet Western think tanks continued to push the idea that over population in developing countries was the main threat to the world, convincing (especially) Chinese leaders that they should impose the one-child policy.

1) The demographics collapse theory we see today is developed by whites directly as way to paint China as a failure and a "doomed" society. It is complete Western bullsh1t. No one outside the West sees this as a problem demanding any serious attention over economic and technological issue (the West wants China to concentrate on this BS demographics doom scenario instead of expand economic and technological investment),

2) No affluent country had ever went extinct from low birth rate and no one ever talked about this before the rise of China; what we do know is many populous nations that cannot invest in high per capita resources for its people -- transportation, power, infrastructure, etc. -- will stay poor and unable to overcome the West despite all the demographic "advantages" they have. Why haven't sub-Saharan Africa passed Europe despite this ongoing demographics advantages since the 1960s?

3) The really decisive stuff for development are economics, infrastructure and technology. Fixing this so-called demographics problem is basically a welfare issue. You need to be willing to spend untold resources changing minds and supporting lifestyles that modern society and its fertile females do not want. You might need to disrupt a modern economy that allows women to work and be productive economically. You need to spend resources away from economics, infrastructure and technology which, again, is what the West wants you to do,

4) All problems -- demographic or otherwise -- are best served by money and technology. If you want to encourage births? Subsidize childcare, give stipends, harvest eggs from all young females and keep them on cryo, etc. For all that you need money and technology -- so take care of that first.

 

[manqiangrexue]

@Eventine Your Vietnam example was another instance where a nation with higher TFR failed to take off against one with lower TFR. There's something to this obvious trend of technlogically advanced nations exhibiting low TFR.

So a question is, if Chinese couples obeyed you, allowing you to put China's TFR at anywhere you please, where would you put it? 1.7? 2.1? 2.5? 3 to make up for lost time?

Now think about the consequences if this were to just happen now. If you made every Chinese couple have 2-3 kids, they need to take care of those kids. China's in a dead heat technological fight with the whole Western empire; our best warriors, the modern day equivalent of Spartans in a tech war, are total nerds and geeks. Their lives are spent entirely at the cutting edge of technology. They don't have kids; they're not married; they don't even date. All their friends are from the office and similar to them. You'd think they're weird if you met one for a meal/chat. All they do all day long is cut down Western tentacles sent to tie China down. Now they have 2-3 kids to look after; they are going from all dedication, all momentum, all immersion to part time scientist, part time parent, and the momentum aspect is huge. Being in a continuous work-mode train of thought means that 2X the time could produce more than 2X the results, until you hit fatigue. Getting out of work for a week because your kid needs to be shown places and taken on vacations means you need to spend time being rebriefed on where the team is exactly and you need to transfer your mind and thought process there. Having a kid with school or health troubles means you are absent-minded or half-minded at work, turning a scientist whose purpose was to solve a problem into a worker who's watching the clock to see when he can leave.

What does this do to China while we're in a critical moment of competition? Is this what you want now? Or is this what you want 20, 30 or 40 years later when the geopolitical landscape is different? When China is the unrivaled superpower who can control the global flow of technology like the US does now, the difficulty is much lower. By then, it will not be China vs the US and the whole technologically-capable world. It may be China and half the tech world vs US and the other half. Or it may be China vs the US with the tech world largely neutral. Or it may even be China and the tech world vs the US. By the time we get there, even the US could very well have thrown in the towel and opted for total cooperation accepting that China is a more powerful country in every way. By then, we can likely truly afford to keep a tech lead while spending time taking care of 2 or more kids.

So aside from the fact that you can't control how many kids other people have, if you could, would you want them to have 2-3 kids now??

 

[Eventine]

1) The demographics collapse theory we see today is developed by whites directly as way to paint China as a failure and a "doomed" society. It is complete Western bullsh1t. No one outside the West sees this as a problem demanding any serious attention over economic and technological issue (the West wants China to concentrate on this BS demographics doom scenario instead of expand economic and technological investment),

Countries all over the world are treating it seriously, actually. It's just gotten more press in relation to China because China is an enemy (and the West loves to report bad news on enemies) and the situation is more serious than most (this is also why South Korea keeps getting brought up, since it has the worst TFR in the world.)

2) No affluent country had ever went extinct from low birth rate and no one ever talked about this before the rise of China; what we do know is many populous nations that cannot invest in high per capita resources for its people -- transportation, power, infrastructure, etc. -- will stay poor and unable to overcome the West despite all the demographic "advantages" they have. Why haven't sub-Saharan Africa passed Europe despite this ongoing demographics advantages since the 1960s?

The problem is new to post-industrialized societies so no country has gone extinct yet. But saying it hasn't affected the ability to compete? I give you the example of Japan. Or most of the EU, for that matter. China's rise wasn't just due to China being competent, it was also due to stagnation across much of the developed world, some of which can be attributed to failing demographics.

3) The really decisive stuff for development are economics, infrastructure and technology. Fixing this so-called demographics problem is basically a welfare issue. You need to be willing to spend untold resources changing minds and supporting lifestyles that modern society and its fertile females do not want. You might need to disrupt a modern economy that allows women to work and be productive economically. You need to spend resources away from economics, infrastructure and technology which, again, is what the West wants you to do,

4) All problems -- demographic or otherwise -- are best served by money and technology. If you want to encourage births? Subsidize childcare, give stipends, harvest eggs from all young females and keep them on cryo, etc. For all that you need money and technology -- so take care of that first.

How much money and technology is enough?

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Waiting until China is as rich as Japan is not going to work, since China's TFR (~1.08) is already significantly below what Japan's TFR was at similar levels of development. In fact, it's even worse than Japan's are right now, and Japan is a more developed country than China. Japan's GDP per capita for most of the last two decades was very close to the US's, but its demographics could not keep up, and that's why the country has steadily lost its economic power. Time is of the essence - you can't wait until the country is mostly old people before saying "hold up, we should fix this"; it's too late by then.

@Eventine Your Vietnam example was another instance where a nation with higher TFR failed to take off against one with lower TFR. There's something to this obvious trend of technlogically advanced nations exhibiting low TFR.

So a question is, if Chinese couples obeyed you, allowing you to put China's TFR at anywhere you please, where would you put it? 1.7? 2.1? 2.5? 3 to make up for lost time?

Now think about the consequences if this were to just happen now. If you made every Chinese couple have 2-3 kids, they need to take care of those kids. China's in a dead heat technological fight with the whole Western empire; our best warriors, the modern day equivalent of Spartans in a tech war, are total nerds and geeks. Their lives are spent entirely at the cutting edge of technology. They don't have kids; they're not married; they don't even date. All their friends are from the office and similar to them. You'd think they're weird if you met one for a meal/chat. All they do all day long is cut down Western tentacles sent to tie China down. Now they have 2-3 kids to look after; they are going from all dedication, all momentum, all immersion to part time scientist, part time parent, and the momentum aspect is huge. Being in a continuous work-mode train of thought means that 2X the time could produce more than 2X the results, until you hit fatigue. Getting out of work for a week because your kid needs to be shown places and taken on vacations means you need to spend time being rebriefed on where the team is exactly and you need to transfer your mind and thought process there. Having a kid with school or health troubles means you are absent-minded or half-minded at work, turning a scientist whose purpose was to solve a problem into a worker who's watching the clock to see when he can leave.

What does this do to China while we're in a critical moment of competition? Is this what you want now? Or is this what you want 20, 30 or 40 years later when the geopolitical landscape is different? When China is the unrivaled superpower who can control the global flow of technology like the US does now, the difficulty is much lower. By then, it will not be China vs the US and the whole technologically-capable world. It may be China and half the tech world vs US and the other half. Or it may be China vs the US with the tech world largely neutral. Or it may even be China and the tech world vs the US. By the time we get there, even the US could very well have thrown in the towel and opted for total cooperation accepting that China is a more powerful country in every way. By then, we can likely truly afford to keep a tech lead while spending time taking care of 2 or more kids.

So aside from the fact that you can't control how many kids other people have, if you could, would you want them to have 2-3 kids now??

China needs to urgently raise its TFR to as high as possible - preferably replacement but any value higher than 1.08 would be welcome. How it does this, I and others have already spent pages brain storming, so you can just look it up in the earlier posts as I'm not going to go over them again, except to say that it requires a combination of 1) national awareness 2) ideological education 3) cultural change 4) financial incentives 5) government aid and 6) "all of society" support.

In this respect, it's much like the recent economic deflation spiral - the later you wait to restore confidence, the harder it will be to fix public sentiment, and public sentiment ultimately is the factor that drives both spending and TFR. If Chinese people are convinced they need to save, the economy will slow to a halt regardless of its fundamentals. Similarly, if Chinese people are convinced they shouldn't have children, fertility will collapse even if it doesn't have to.

 

[manqiangrexue]

The problem is new to post-industrialized societies so no country has gone extinct yet.

So saying they will, is just imagination.

But saying it hasn't affected the ability to compete? I give you the example of Japan.

I've already sent that example back. Japan's wings were clipped by the US and this caused economic stagnation and fed into lower TFR.

Or most of the EU, for that matter.

They're not falling behind any poor countries with sky high TFRs, are they?

China's rise wasn't just due to China being competent, it was also due to stagnation across much of the developed world, some of which can be attributed to failing demographics.

But technological growth shows an inverse relationship with TFR, in China and in the world.

How much money and technology is enough?

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ee above on Japan.

Waiting until China is as rich as Japan is not going to work, since China's TFR (~1.08) is already significantly below what Japan's TFR was at similar levels of development. In fact, it's even worse than Japan's are right now, and Japan is a more developed country than China. Japan's GDP per capita for most of the last two decades was very close to the US's, but its demographics could not keep up, and that's why the country has steadily lost its economic power. Time is of the essence - you can't wait until the country is mostly old people before saying "hold up, we should fix this"; it's too late by then.

Japan's economy is languishing. Its spirit was crushed as a conquered nation in 1945, then it was crushed again as an economically defeated nation at the Plaza Accords. The only reason anybody in Japan has the vitality to get up to do things in the morning is because of the copium they all had to suck down that the US is an ally instead of the country that bombed Japan into submission turning it from one of the most powerful and feared nations on earth into a cartoon freakshow whore house for Western entertainment. As a defeated people, lowered TFR comes with the territory.

China needs to urgently raise its TFR to as high as possible - preferably replacement but any value higher than 1.08 would be welcome.

You're all over the place. "As high as possible," 1.7 from before, now 1.08. Where do you come up with this crap?

How it does this, I and others have already spent pages brain storming, so you can just look it up in the earlier posts as I'm not going to go over them again, except to say that it requires a combination of 1) national awareness 2) ideological education 3) cultural change 4) financial incentives 5) government aid and 6) "all of society" support.

Every previous post, I told you that suggestions were far more valuable than any doomsaying. You failed every time to say something meaningful. Now, the one time I ask you an entirely different question, I get this. It's basic, it's not bad as a summary of all that was already said, but it still adds nothing.

In this respect, it's much like the recent economic deflation spiral - the later you wait to restore confidence, the harder it will be to fix public sentiment, and public sentiment ultimately is the factor that drives both spending and TFR. If Chinese people are convinced they need to save, the economy will slow to a halt regardless of its fundamentals. Similarly, if Chinese people are convinced they shouldn't have children, fertility will collapse even if it doesn't have to.

This doesn't answer the question at all. The question is that suddenly increasing TFR takes away substantially from the speartip of the technology drive by reallocating work dedication to childrearing. Do you think we should suffer that blow now to increase TFR and potentially lose the tech war that determines global power, or do you think we can afford to keep nerding away with low TFR for another ~2-3 decades until we are well ahead of the West, then increase the TFR while coasting with far less effort to keep the lead? Seriously, just reread my last post. I don't think you understood anything at all.

China demographics thread.

It will not cost "everybody everything," because while lower TFR is global, it is not uniform. Dropping TFR amongst developed high tech nations is uniform. The only question is where they currently are. Western TFR is significantly higher than East Asian TFR, and never got as low. This is due...

www.sinodefenceforum.com

And note that this is the guaranteed mild vanilla version of what's happening. The higher stakes version is that the world is not at peace. There are wars in the Middle-East, Europe, flashpoints in the SCS and they could potentially bring about WWIII. If that happens, we need to be prepared with a technological surge to our military so we can fight it and win it, because if we lose a world-changing war from taking it easy at work to have kids, we're done for at least for another century. The TFR of militarily defeated nations goes right down to hell.

 

[GiantPanda]

China needs to urgently raise its TFR to as high as possible - preferably replacement but any value higher than 1.08 would be welcome. How it does this, I and others have already spent pages brain storming, so you can just look it up in the earlier posts as I'm not going to go over them again, except to say that it requires a combination of 1) national awareness 2) ideological education 3) cultural change 4) financial incentives 5) government aid and 6) "all of society" support.

You have no real answers on what to do except to drone on about the Western narrative of demographic collapse.

Financial incentative and government aid? Yes, that needs money. That is exactly what China is doing now. Getting wealthier so China can deal problems, demographics or otherwise.

National awareness, ideological education and "all of society" is concentrated on moving China into higher rungs of the technology ladder which in turn is what will generate wealth for China so it could deal with issues like demographics.

I have no idea what you want to do except repeat again and again the Western narrative that China is "doomed" because of demographics.

Sorry, there are 1.4B Chinese and if we can get to a per capita income of Shanghai on a national level then you are talking about a $70T GDP (by order of magitudes greater than any other country in history) that really could afford the trillions needed for incentives for births, free childcare and maternity leave for a fully engaged female work force.

China needs to concentrate on economic growth and tech first not some solution (to some senseless numbers in the far future) that is not only unaffordable today and probably ineffective but would create social fissures that can slow down or wreck the economy like forcing women to quit work to have babies or forcing families to raise children without the trillions in support needed.

Grow and advance first. Fix later when you have the money and technology. China did this with pollution. If it tried to fix pollution in 2000s, it would have cut off its best years of growth.