Chinese Economics Thread

[tamsen_ikard]

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

This is summarizing a serious problem to its absolute essence. What is the biggest source of China's power. Its large population of one single ethnic group composed of 1.3 billion people unified under one single country, single culture, centralized government with absolute power.

This large mass is what gives China the power to compete with the collective west. The fact that China's population is larger than the whole west combined is what gives it importance. If China had all these characteristics but only had the population the size of Japan for example, then it would be nothing. It would have the importance of Iran for example, an annoying nuisance but not of central importance for the whole world.

China needs to keep this level of population to be able to gain and maintain its superpower status. Without it, no matter how rich or how advanced it becomes, it will not have global impact.

So, China keeping its population size is absolutely critical to the global balance of power.

Chinese Government will slowly realize this as well and will not be able to just stand idle while China's population keeps declining and their collective power slowly reduces. They will have to take action. Just like growing military power is a national duty for the government, maintaining and growing population size will be of absolute importance as well.

 

[Phead128]

This is summarizing a serious problem to its absolute essence. What is the biggest source of China's power. Its large population of one single ethnic group composed of 1.3 billion people unified under one single country, single culture, centralized government with absolute power.

This large mass is what gives China the power to compete with the collective west. The fact that China's population is larger than the whole west combined is what gives it importance. If China had all these characteristics but only had the population the size of Japan for example, then it would be nothing. It would have the importance of Iran for example, an annoying nuisance but not of central importance for the whole world.

China needs to keep this level of population to be able to gain and maintain its superpower status. Without it, no matter how rich or how advanced it becomes, it will not have global impact.

So, China keeping its population size is absolutely critical to the global balance of power.

Chinese Government will slowly realize this as well and will not be able to just stand idle while China's population keeps declining and their collective power slowly reduces. They will have to take action. Just like growing military power is a national duty for the government, maintaining and growing population size will be of absolute importance as well.

Need concrete numbers, tell me the ideal population size, target TFR, over how many years. Not verbal diarrhea with zero intellectual rigor that essentially boil down to "balance is balance, bad is bad, gud is gud." which is abstract and unmeasurable.

 

[tamsen_ikard]

Need concrete numbers, tell me the ideal population size, target TFR, over how many years. Not verbal diarrhea with zero intellectual rigor.

China needs to maintain its current population size. 1.4 billion. Anything less and they lose their collective mass and power. US is growing its population size due to immigration, EU is getting a lot of migrants. They will also gain population as well. By the end the of the century US population size could be 700 million. If China continues its current trajectory of decline, they might also get to 700 million. By then no matter how advanced China is, they will lose in terms total GDP, military budget and various other indicators to the west for sure and most likely will lose to US as well.

 

[donjasjit]

China needs to maintain its current population size. 1.4 billion. Anything less and they lose their collective mass and power. US is growing its population size due to immigration, EU is getting a lot of migrants. They will also gain population as well. By the end the of the century US population size could be 700 million. If China continues its current trajectory of decline, they might also get to 700 million. By then no matter how advanced China is, they will lose in terms total GDP, military budget and various other indicators to the west for sure and most likely will lose to US as well.

No way USA is getting a population of 700 million.

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Even with immigration, it will struggle to maintain the population it already has. Immigration has it's own problems and dilutes the essential character of the nation. Have a look at Sweden and the problems they are facing.

Besides as countries like China, India, Indonesia etc get richer America will find it much harder to attract top quality talent.

 

[tamsen_ikard]

No way USA is getting a population of 700 million.

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Even with immigration, it will struggle to maintain the population it already has. Immigration has it's own problems and dilutes the essential character of the nation. Have a look at Sweden and the problems they are facing.

Besides as countries like China, India, Indonesia etc get richer America will find it much harder to attract top quality talent.

It might be a problem for other countries, but US is by nature an immigrant country. They assimilate people by second generation into english speaking, thanksgiving celebrating Americans very quickly. Most of the migrants are hispanic these days anyway, which have a european culture and mostly white racial background. So, they won't have much problem to assmilate into the mainstream.

 

[Phead128]

China needs to maintain its current population size. 1.4 billion. Anything less and they lose their collective mass and power. US is growing its population size due to immigration, EU is getting a lot of migrants. They will also gain population as well. By the end the of the century US population size could be 700 million. If China continues its current trajectory of decline, they might also get to 700 million. By then no matter how advanced China is, they will lose in terms total GDP, military budget and various other indicators to the west for sure and most likely will lose to US as well.

How did you arrive at 1.4 billion as the ideal population size? Did you do research into what Chinese scientist believed was the ideal population size? (

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)

There is not an linear 1:1 relationship between population and GDP. For example, GDP increased 225X when population increased only 2X from 1964 to 2022. That's because technology exponentially increased productivity and thus GDP beyond an 1:1 linear relationship.

Finally, when One Child Policy was initiated enacted, it was estimated that the population will decline with the goal of stabilizing to 1 billion people, ideally around 700 million. So decline was a feature, not a bug.

 

[azn_cyniq]

It might be a problem for other countries, but US is by nature an immigrant country. They assimilate people by second generation into english speaking, thanksgiving celebrating Americans very quickly. Most of the migrants are hispanic these days anyway, which have a european culture and mostly white racial background. So, they won't have much problem to assmilate into the mainstream.

Are you from the US? Most of the Hispanic migrants here are of indigenous ancestry. That doesn't mean that they can't assimilate, but it is wrong to say that they are "mostly white"

 

[azn_cyniq]

Here is an article by tamsen_ikard, just so other members know where he stands

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[Phead128]

For the record, Chinese scientist thinks 700 million is the ideal population size that China's natural resources can sustain.

The government's goal is to keep the population to 1.2 billion by the year 2000 and either maintain that as a stable population, or, ideally, to reduce the population to 700 million, deemed the optimum population that China's natural resources can sustain.

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This means decline is the intent. Whether it can stabilize the TFR to maintain 1 billion or 700 million is the issue (i.e., irreversible or reversible instaneous TFR rate) not the fact that the population is decline, which is the actual intent of the policy.

 

[azn_cyniq]

Now I understand why tamsen_ikard said that "Taiwanese people hate China to the core, thats the fact. They hate being called Chinese. They had extreme superiority complex combined with fear of the rise of China which they hated." I was confused by that statement, because it could not be further from the truth.

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He probably thinks that the people on r/taiwan are representative of the Taiwanese people. The vast majority of them aren't even Taiwanese LOL