Chinese Economics Thread

[ZeEa5KPul]

China is in serious trouble if it doesn't fix its population decline problem. Just like population growth, population decline could get exponential. Without population there is no country.

So, how long does it take for China to be "without population"? How long till it reaches zero?

I think Chinese government will slowly raise its desperation to fix the population problem with more and more harsh measures. First it will be enticement but slowly it will become mandatory to have children.

You have no idea the tools that are and will become available to the Chinese government to address this. The day will come when China is literally able to manufacture children. "Become mandatory to have children", how quaint.

 

[tonyget]

 

[Phead128]

Without population there is no country.

Bad is bad, good is good. This is not a very rigorous analysis bud.

 

[gadgetcool5]

Bad is bad, good is good. This is not a very rigorous analysis bud.

It seems obvious, but it is true. There is a reason why some people call what is happening in South Korea an auto-genocide. The effects are the same as a mass slaughter only with none of the negative moral implications. If you were someone who hated South Koreans, for example, and wanted them to disappear, but did not care to sully your conscience, you would find this utterly delightful.

 

[zgx09t]

China is in serious trouble if it doesn't fix its population decline problem. Just like population growth, population decline could get exponential. Without population there is no country.

I think Chinese government will slowly raise its desperation to fix the population problem with more and more harsh measures. First it will be enticement but slowly it will become mandatory to have children.

We can say current China's huge population size is the legacy of poverty. You can slice and dice in so many different ways, but it is what it is and what it comes down to.

So as China industrialize on massive scale, a lot of things change, regardless of personal like or dislike. There definitely is a correlation between industrialization and birth rate, even if there is any actual causation or not is up for debate. As China industrialize even more, trying to keep an old legacy is mostly best wishes, as the original natural ingredients for high fertility rates are not there anymore. So relatively poor and under-developed rural areas are naturally one of the prime targets to find some possible solutions. That's why China has plans for becoming an agri superpower, yes an agricultural superpower and attendant rural revitalization. Yes it's hidden in plain sight in the countryside, not in the big cities where women have degrees and cats. Migrants will go back to countryside if things are easier. Transportation and shelter are the most difficult hurdles for poor urban folks to move up their social mobility, hence the build up of massive rail system, public transit systems, now the bursting of housing bubbles. You can't do anything else if you're spending 4 hours of your time daily commuting between where you live and where you work. A mother of 2 doesn't have time to take her kids to anything of any interests on a regular basis if her work is taking 2 hour commute. Will it solve all ailments, no. But it helps. So when a guy comes in and say "hey what's the ROI for that?" you can pretty be sure that guy is so clueless and convoluted he needs to touch grass and be sent immediately to re-education camp long term. It's a new problem for China as she industrialize and gets richer each year. No other industrialized , or post industrialized countries solve that native population's fertility problem except immigration. China is trying to find the ingredients for sure, not the process itself yet. And once they find the necessary ingredients for industrial age, it would be China that solves the problem that no other has done, like any other things. And then scale it up, but it's still in the very early stage of finding out what are the missing ingredients.

If you are concerned about declining births, you can ask around in your free time anyone in those cohorts hey what's the hold up, and you can come up with a few missing ingredients yourself. Just common sense. CPC doesn't have a shiny ball that they can rub and solve all of it at one go, they put on the socks the same way we do, one at a time. Nothing special. Just common sense and breaking it down to simple pieces. Hope it helps.

 

[In4ser]

So, how long does it take for China to be "without population"? How long till it reaches zero?

You have no idea the tools that are and will become available to the Chinese government to address this. The day will come when China is literally able to manufacture children. "Become mandatory to have children", how quaint.

That implication is terrifying because what kind of children will they be? Growing up without any parents is likely to lead to stunted childhood development especially if it's done enmass. It's one thing for a few orphanages but when a substantial part of an entire generation, it's likely to lead to deep psychological effects growing up that we cannot begin to imagine.

Big changes like this are likely to lead to unintended consequences and can lead to disastrous results like the Great Leap Forward and a lesser extent the One Child Policy. There are lots of externalities you must consider when you trod the path of "growing" people in an artificial womb such as ensuring sufficient DNA diversity to avoid genetic defects and opening Pandora's box of going down the path of heavy eugenics.

China will have a lot of problems in the future but so will everyone else including population-heavy countries like Egypt, India, and Nigeria. However, China will have a lot of advantages that all-together separate it from America, EU, Japan, and S. Korea it like getting cheap energy that propped up Germany, with a deep connection to fast-growing regions like S.E. Asia and Eurasia, maintaining a strong technological base without financialization, growing and wide adoption of its currency and of course strategic independence and sovereignty from a foreign overlord. Together I think China should be fine even if its population declines relative to the rest of the world.

 

[Phead128]

It seems obvious, but it is true.

I'm alluding to the fact that a rigorous analysis needs concrete numbers for ideal population size, target TFR, over how many years. "Zero population is bad" is obvious but is stupid because it will take a thousand year before China goes to zero at current TFR.

There is a reason why some people call what is happening in South Korea an auto-genocide.

China is not at South Korea TFR levels so this comparison is irrelevant.

 

[supercat]

China is in serious trouble if it doesn't fix its population decline problem. Just like population growth, population decline could get exponential. Without population there is no country.

I think Chinese government will slowly raise its desperation to fix the population problem with more and more harsh measures. First it will be enticement but slowly it will become mandatory to have children.

Personally, I think there are 2 factors that mitigate China's demographic predicament. First, China has a huge base of population, more than 1.4 billion. Second, the rate of decline, at 0.1-0.2% a year, is rather small. It can be alleviated, or even reversed.

China is the world's sole manufacturing superpower
China is now the world’s sole manufacturing giant. As its recent success in electric vehicles demonstrates, its wide and deep industrial base can help it gain a competitive edge in virtually all sectors. The exceptions are the most advanced sectors, where the G7 countries still dominate.

Politicians who indulge in loose talk about decoupling from China need a clear-eyed look at the facts. As we have shown (Baldwin et al. 2023), all the major manufacturers in the world source at least 2% of all their industrial inputs from China. Decoupling would be difficult, to say the least.

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[TK3600]

You definitely need to curb youth unemployment because your current batch of workers are going to get old and leave the market eventually. When that happens you have no replacement. A lot of companies nowadays want a capable worker straight out of the box and provide no training. This is going to bite them in the butt a few years down the road.

I think this is the core issue. China as a socialist country might be the only one able to tackle this.

I am no economic planner, but I can say when every company wanting "at least 5 years of experience" for entry position, work pool will collapse. If that collapse happen, suddenly raise salary wont fix the shortage.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

That implication is terrifying because what kind of children will they be? Growing up without any parents is likely to lead to stunted childhood development especially if it's done enmass. It's one thing for a few orphanages but when a substantial part of an entire generation, it's likely to lead to deep psychological effects growing up that we cannot begin to imagine.

Big changes like this are likely to lead to unintended consequences and can lead to disastrous results like the Great Leap Forward and a lesser extent the One Child Policy. There are lots of externalities you must consider when you trod the path of "growing" people in an artificial womb such as ensuring sufficient DNA diversity to avoid genetic defects and opening Pandora's box of going down the path of heavy eugenics.

China will have a lot of problems in the future but so will everyone else including population-heavy countries like Egypt, India, and Nigeria. However, China will have a lot of advantages that all-together separate it from America, EU, Japan, and S. Korea it like getting cheap energy that propped up Germany, with a deep connection to fast-growing regions like S.E. Asia and Eurasia, maintaining a strong technological base without financialization, growing and wide adoption of its currency and of course strategic independence and sovereignty from a foreign overlord. Together I think China should be fine even if its population declines relative to the rest of the world.

It's not a first line measure, it's "break in case of emergency." I bring it up to dismiss the haters' fantasies that China will become depopulated.