Goal should be a TFR of 2.3 or 2.4 until the number of women of childbearing age returns to a level capable of sustaining the world's largest population and again surpassing India, after inevitably dipping below India later this decade. China should maintain Asia's largest workforce in order to keep its position as the main economic center of gravity in Asia.
China demographics thread.
- Thread starter gadgetcool5
- Start date
PiSigma
"the engineer"
That's just a stupid idea. You are telling Chinese to birth more than India! If Indian women start having 6 kids, u want China to have 7.
The key is having a quality population that can be maintained and grow if there are adequate resources/jobs for them. If there are 3 billion Chinese and 3 billion Indian all just digging ditches for a living, then what's the point?
No it's not. Of course there are adequate resources. China's population today is higher than in the Qing dynasty, and the average person also lives far better off than them. Ironically when China had a smaller population most people were digging ditches. When China's workforce was at its peak, people were getting rich. The pie is not some fixed amount, it is something that grows over time. The same thing with jobs - there are more jobs when there are more people. People are the ones who create the demand for jobs.
Population is about relative power - the more people you have, the more your talent pool, the more your workforce, the more your tax base, the bigger your market, the larger your potential military - and the more powerful your country over time. Sure it's not the only factor but it's one of the biggest. China would never have been able to have an independent domestic and foreign policy free from Western vassalage without its large population.
PiSigma
"the engineer"
You need to learn some economics and science. It's never just population that determines the power of a country. The population needs to be well educated, how do you maintain a strong education system for 3 billion people without breaking the bank?
Also, how do you feed all these people, rich people require better food, and not the 1000 calories a day Indian take. China already is having problems maintaining the 90% food security.
Jobs don't just comes with people, look at India, they are 90% doing meaningless work just to keep people barely alive. Growth comes from the improvement of productivity of a populace, the more productive you are, the less people is needed to produce the same amount. So with a larger population, need to create more and more new industries to support those people, which requires again money/food to grow them in the first place.
A large population is not a larger tax pool if they are all stunted, malnutritioned and can't even write their own name, case in point, India.
Yes the pie grows, but only through higher efficiencies and productivity. The key is growing the population slowly, but growing the GDP per capita faster than population!
First of all, no one said 3 billion people. India's population will not reach near that. Secondly the more people you have, the more workers and teachers, and thus the bigger your bank. It's easy to maintain a strong education system for a large population. Thirdly no one said education wasn't important. But a highly educated population of only 10 million or even 100 million will not be able to be a significant world power able to stand up to the US. . Is Canada a world power? You need education AND population.
China's net calorie intake has been It is doing better than ever. For the 5,000 years of Chinese history, calorie intake has never been higher. If China has survived for 5,000 years up to now with far lower calorie intake, it will continue to survive. Furthermore is accelerating. China can easily maintain a population higher than India with a high calorie intake suitable for rich people.
No one's is saying you shouldn't become more productive. You can become more productive and grow your population at the same time. That way, you get the multiplier effect of more workers who are also more productive. That allows you to cut working hours and actually improve the quality of life, while still having a larger economy than with a smaller population.
You forget that with a larger population, you also have a larger workforce to support new industries. This is how countries build powerful economies. More people => more industries. Further with more workers and industries, you have higher tax revenue to support your people. As far as food, I already addressed that above.
Of course productivity and GDP per capita should grow. But so should population. For a civilizational state like China that seeks to maintain equality despite many opponents, it needs to maintain its relative population level compared to hostile great powers.
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The reforms needs and will be big to even sustain the births there are currently. Only Xi can do it.
Extremely grave problem. I find the government very lacklustre in adressing this problem.
PiSigma
"the engineer"
And for 5000 years China didn't have computers, they did fine, why need it now? There is a major change in caloric intake, because the body needs to do different type of work now.
China already have a very hard time educating people and the percent of university grads is very low vs US. China also have a hard time creating jobs for all those university grads, have you seen a job fair in china? And I'm not talking about useless degrees Canada/US like to generate like women's studies or LGBT studies bs.