Look, the senior "problem" is a problem only if China lets it be a problem. I don't recall seeing the article in the Chinese constitution that stated that senior citizens must be supported by the state as its highest priority at whatever cost. China will look after its old people as best it can, but it's an inescapable fact that a lot of them will just die poor. Tough, but those are the breaks. China is a developing country - why should we expect elderly standard of care to match that of developed countries?
The core of the demographic "problem" that China faces is an elderly bulge as a result of a previous youth bulge when the TFR fell from 6 to below 2 (and this was before the one child policy). The only solution is for this bulge to pass.
And there's another factor besides automation that people never consider - the possibility that aging itself could be comprehensively brought under medical control. That there could be medical procedures in the distant future (beyond 2050) that would keep people biologically young indefinitely. How does birth rate factor into a world where the death rate is near zero because no one is dying of old age anymore? This seems like science fiction now, but it's a relevant consideration on the timescales we're talking about (decades).
Maybe biological immortality will come to pass. Many people think it will, but we can’t rely on hopes and dreams.
China should not hope to become like Europe or it’s Anglo offshoots in America and Oceania. Sure, looking back and seeing the great things they did in the 50s and 60s, even up to the 90s in some areas (personal computing) is awe-inspiring, but they’ve really been declining since their relative overall technological and economic stagnation began happening in the 1970s. Certain industries and sectors have had spurts of innovation, but overall, they’ve been going in reverse relative to China since ‘78.
Instead of copying Western thought mindlessly like some cognitively insecure Asians, we should look to the objective truth. The objective truth is, Europeans and their offshoots in America and Oceania have had to mass import hundreds of millions of people of a different culture and mindset in the last 60-70 years because of their fertility policies. Korea and Japan are in the same shit for following the same decadent and ignorant Western social policies, but the latter refuses any immigration so instead it dies a slow death of consistent relative decline to pretty much every country on Earth, for every year, since 1990. Japan didn’t lose a decade. It lost its existence, unless it can somehow reverse its policies and get its people to make babies again. Seems hopeless but who knows.
On the other hand Korea has resorted to importing so many Southeast Asians that some demographers are predicting S. Korea will become minority ethnic Korean before the United Kingdom becomes minority British.
So basically, if you follow Western dogma, the consequences are replacing yourself with a people different from your own, who will probably end up disliking you and fomenting constant and never-ending dissent, OR even better going the Japan route of degradation, tentacle porn, mass suicide, insecurity and meekness, and worst of all, barren wombs.
One thing Mao definitely got right was that population friggin matters. We can thank him for this massive population boom which has resulted in 1.4 billion 105-IQ Chinese. I wouldn’t give that up. America will continue growing and China should maintain the >4 to 1 population disparity ratio with them.
Asians always settle for just winning. It’s like an insecurity. Oh we finally won against the Whites, it’s so shocking, we should just settle for that. Screw that. Press the advantage. If we could terraform Mars and the Moon, do it. Put a hundred billion Chinese there. That’s how the Whites have thought, never-ending mega projects of daring and adventurous thought. Never resting on their laurels. If there’s one thing I’ll admire them for once they are nigh-extinct by the end of the century it’s that.
To conclude, China’s population disparity with the West is a good thing. The excuse that population sizes’ affect national development has never been proven. It’s just a saying reinforced by Western liberal environmentalists wishful thinking.
I don’t say China should go and try to have 10 kids per woman, especially not right now. But those advocating for population decline are enemies of China. China should at the very LEAST maintain its population with a TFR of 2.1.
PS: The belief that India can’t develop because of its population size is ridiculous and wrong. Then how does China? Magic? India’s innate talent pool is just significantly lower, and the brain drain to America doesn’t help.
