Japans economy decline is not really because of debt if one looks from a higher ground. japan had a way higher GDP (size of economy) relative to its size of land and population.
Japan's economic malaise in the last 20 or so years are extensively commented and studied over that period. Your version is rather unique. Do you have any published economic analysis that supports it?
China's demographic problems are vastly exaggerated by the western media.
The one-child family planning policy came into mandatory effect in the 80's. It was relaxed in the 2000's and changed to two-children in 2015.
This means that the last generation of multiple children families were actually born in the late 70's and early 80's. The two-kids generation will enter the work force in late 2020's, well before the retirement age of the post-70's.
The issue is really about an aging population, the trend and how it would possibly impact the future economy. In the 1980s, the proportion of the working-age population (fifteen to sixty-four years) was more than 73 per cent of the overall population. Currently at about 68 per cent, the working-age population is expected to decline to about 65 per cent in 2020, and 60 per cent in 2035. It is expected that by 2015 the absolute size of the labour force will begin to shrink as more people leave than enter the workforce (World Bank,
China 2030, p. 8.).
The significance of these numbers become apparent when one compares the proportion of working-age people with formal retirees. When China embarked on reforms in 1979, there were about seven working-age persons to every retirement-age one. Today, the ratio is about 5.5 to 1. Current projections suggest that by 2035 there will be barely more than two working persons for every retiree. In other words, the old-age dependency ratio will be more than double over the next two decades ( World Bank,
China 2030).
The age profile of the working population also matters as workers are at their most productive and innovative from their late twenties to their mid-forties. This has been the basis for China’s ‘demographic dividend’, the massive productivity generated by the combination of declining fertility levels and a mass of young workers entering the workforce with relatively light familial responsibilities or burdens. In fact, one study estimates that the effects of a favourable working-age population alone accounted for between 15-25 per cent of per capita GDP growth in China from 1980-2010, and that this advantage is all but exhausted (Feng Wang, ‘Racing Towards the Precipice’,
China Economic Quarterly, June 2012).
Such trends cannot be arrested or reversed easily even with the recent change to the one child policy. China’s aging population is largely the result of an increase in average lifespan, which has increased from under sixty-five years in 1980 to the current seventy-five years. Fertility rates have also declined, from 2.63 children per woman in 1980 to about 1.5 in 2011. Wealthier cities such as Shanghai which has a reported fertility rate of only 0.6, the lowest of any major city in the world, provide evidence that emerging Chinese middle classes, like Western counterparts, are choosing lifestyle and career opportunities over larger families.
Just a reminder to the doomsday advocates, China has had a very bad time of debt crisis (if not worse than today) in the late 1990s during Zhu Rongji's premiership, the infamous "triangle debts". China survived it, I don't think today's situation is anything close.
Do you have any economic analysis that supports such a position?
The problem with Greece is that it doesn't have control over its currency.
That doesn't apply to either China or Japan.
Plus both China and Japan are large net exporters and also have very high levels of assets that the government could sell.
Do you have any empirical evidence to support your argument?
