A remarkably balanced article from the Western media. Perhaps they realise that if they push their propaganda lies too much, their middle-management midwits will start believing that China truly is about to collapse etc.
I didn't learn anything new, but a few things are worth highlighting.
- China's boomers are atrociously poorly educated. The youth are not. This means that productivity increases should be very substantial for decades as a far-better educated generation slowly replaces the old ones.
- The downside is that the newer generation may not be as willing to do "dirty" jobs as their aspirations rise.
- China still has ~25% of its workforce in agriculture. The average for high-income countries is 3%. The potential for mechanisation is very large.
- Despite very high investments, China's return on capital is still substantial, though it has fallen.
- China's population barely grew last year and will likely start declining this year.
All in all, a gradual move away from investment-heavy growth, which has been ongoing since 2010, is not as bad as many assumed. China's human capital improvement between the generations is going to be massive. American boomers were remarkably well-educated thanks to the GI bill. The same is not true for China.
The article's big emphasis on China's aging and soon-to-be declining population is a bit strange to me, given that America's population grew by just 0.1%. And as many people have pointed out, China is now a net-receiver of world talent compared to the mid-2010s. So immigration is unlikely to be as helpful to the US as in the past.
The big problem on the horizon is work that is hard to automate but low-skill. Some of that can be covered by domestic labour but not all, especially as the educational levels and aspirations of Chinese youth increases. This is natural. How many western youth want to be farm hands? The West has "solved" this by cheap labour migration. China is unlikely to accept large, low-skill migration.
