Correction: not just because of demographics. If China had a TFR of 1.08 in the 1960s, it would have failed.
This is why professors, not uneducated people, make corrections to other people's work. Your mind seems incapable to grasping the trend the TFR drops as technological sophistication rises. Thus, you made this stupid comment pretending that both were lost. Yes, if you're backwards as fuck and you have no kids, you're doomed. That was never the discussion.
India's TFR is 2x that of China's, and its economy in GDP PPP is about 40% of China's. India has until 2040 before it has to realistically worry about demographic decline. I don't really care about India, except to predict that they will prove to be a strong threat for China in the coming years due to their emerging demographics dividend (a sentiment many here do not share; but again, all we have to do is wait).
They are currently below the replacement level so that is demographic decline, and they are nowhere near China in any area of development.
The vast majority of people in China are not engaged in the "tech. war." China has graduated an average of ~1.5 million STEM students per year since around 2000, and <500,000 before that. If we add up the entire STEM educated work force, it is just ~40-50 million people, which is ~5% of the population. There is no basis for saying that the "tech. war" is what is causing low TFR in China.
They may not be directly engaged, but your workforce which produces GDP to support your tech efforts, are the foundation of any war.
Most people filter out the obviously invalid paths before posting about them.
Most people filter out retarded 120 year projections before posting them. "As much as possible" without any number in mind, means nothing as always. Does it mean, as much as possible preserving maximal work effort? Does it mean, as much as possible shedding 25% work ambition? Shedding 50% career ambition? Shedding all ambition of non-child-related activities and being fully devoted to family? As much as possible preserving women in the workplace or while moving to a dichotomy of bread-winner husbands and stay a home wives? Does it mean as much as possible including semi-legal overseas surrogacy? Or just trying within your biological bounds? Does it mean promoting teen pregnancy is ok? Or do as much as possible but only after a completed secondary/tertiary education? As much as possible spurred by how much financial incentive? A bit every month to ease the food costs? Subdisize all childcare? Can we redirect military/tech development budget to subsidize these things?
Your skull is empty to everything except, "I just want more. Don't know how, don't know how much." My 1 year old thinks like that.
Evolutionary theory isn't about every type of change and adaptation.
No, it is. See this is why people shouldn't talk about things they don't know. Every type of adaptation is a reaction to enviromental stimuli and a driving force of evolution.
It is about those changes and adaptations that affect reproductive success. If a change affects reproductive success in a negative way, then from the perspective of evolutionary theory, it is contrary to natural selection and will eventually be bred out. Modern East Asian culture constitutes such a change and that is why I am pessimistic on its survival.
You clearly missed it last time when I said that after high school biology, which is what you're regurgitating, you have to learn about the limits of the theories. According to the most basic theory on reproduction, fitness is defined by the number of surviving children. By that definition, a Senegalese tribesman living in his hut with his 7 kids has higher biological fitness than a billionaire tech mogul with 6 kids. If you want to be that Senegalese tribesman, you go on ahead. That's not the ship that Chinese people want to be on.
Also, there were not 100 million Native Americans in North America. Best estimates today put them around ~7 (average estimate) million at the time of Columbus.
Peak populaton over 100M, estimates between 8M-100M, most estimates say 50M when the Brtish arrived. That's what wiki says, didn't look into it beyond that. The point, is, a very very small population on fucking 17th century boats overtook a population in the millions by technology.
More importantly, British TFR and Native American TFR were similar (both ~5-6), and so neither had a significant advantage over each other in reproductive potential. In a contest between equally fertile peoples, advanced technology and Old World diseases do indeed win out. But if British TFR in 1600 was 1.5 (as it is today), there would have been no way for them to displace Native Americans and North America would have remained in Native American hands, as the British colonists would've died off over several generations.
The same TFR doesn't mean that a population in the hundreds should overtake and almost kill off one in the millions, should it?
Which brings us to the question of if there is some sort of Faustian trade-off between demographics and technology/individual excellence. The answer is no
That is a very premature conclusion from your evidence.
because, as an example, the British maintained a high TFR throughout the Industrial Revolution and their Age of Empires (when the UK was the most innovative, productive, and powerful country in the world), only for it to utterly crash right before the 20th century because of a values shift:
View attachment 137341
To a certain point, technological advancement improves lives and lifts people out of poverty. Working to that end, it should actually have a positive effect on TFR as it makes life easier. However, we are past that. We are in a tech competition, making things to outsmart and kill the other person before he does it to you. This high stress environment caused by a tech drive frenzy is without a doubt, horrible for TFR.
Which emphasizes, again, that it is cultural values
Did you not get this from me? I posted this... more than once. But it is only part of it.
and not wealth, power, or innovation that causes a country's TFR to dive. East Asians have extremely low TFR today because they have copied the Western values shift (towards materialism & individualism, and away from family & fertility) down to the letter, and actually made it worse.
Yup, I said those things but only partially, which is why they can only be partially addressed by culture. And that might be good enough for a boost, but the stress of the Sino-American power struggle is very real and loss of productivity from child-rearing is guaranteed. If we lose, we're gonna be in for a century's worth of problems, demographic including, in an instant.
My primary goal in this thread is to stop the copium around how China will do just fine with a TFR of <1, because it is categorically harmful to the Chinese nation to harbor such delusions. The sooner people understand the urgency of the problem, the better equipped they will be to address it.
But you have always lacked evidence, provided poor evidence, and ignored direct counter-evidence to your arguments being wrong. And therefore, you can't make any progress.
The fact is that most people here would like China's TFR to be higher than it is, myself included. We've discussed many potential solutions. However, we do not accept the view that there is doom on the horizon, especially compared to our enemies and rivals. Raising TFR is a self-improvement project, NOT a desperate struggle to stay alive.
As much as it pains me to say it, we are probably living in the era of "peak East Asia." Japan is already in decline, while South Korea just hit the other side of the curve. China, the most important country in East Asia, still has about a decade of its demographic dividend left, while Vietnam and North Korea are both about ten to fifteen years behind China.
Just saw you edited this into a post from yesterday after I commented.
First of all, the peak of East Asia is entirely dependent on China. South Korea and Japan are antagonistic to the rise of East Asia because they're chained American mutts. The weaker they are, the stronger Asia is. Vietnam and North Korea are too weak to matter. China doesn't grow on demographic dividends because basically there is absolutely no positive correlation, time-lagged or otherwise, between China's TFR and its national power on the world stage. It's because your mind is simple that you cannot exit the thought of needing more people to have more strength.
You don't have to believe me; you just need to wait.
Needless to day, I don't believe you because your logic is broken while the logic against you is strong. Asking someone to wait 10 years to prove that you were right simply means that you cannot logically win the current argument and need to escape.