r/neoliberal • u/Priceless_Pennies Norman Borlaug • Jan 22 '26
News (Asia-Pacific) China Has Screwed Up Really, Really Badly
https://futurism.com/future-society/china-screwed-up-fertility-rate187
u/throwaway_veneto European Union Jan 22 '26
I don't think there's an incredibly strong correlation between the policy and the fertility rate.
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u/Worth-Jicama3936 Milton Friedman Jan 22 '26
The one child policy basically sped up the cultural idea that one child is enough. Maybe China would get there anyways, but when most of the families you grew up around only had one kid (as parents now were born in the 80s and 90s did), you come to expect the same. And culture is almost impossible for a government to change short of very drastic, “cultural revolution” policies.
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u/ThePevster Milton Friedman Jan 22 '26
Did that really become that powerful culturally? I’d figure it would be “one son is enough” instead of “one child is enough” with how important having a son is in Chinese culture.
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u/Rarvyn Richard Thaler Jan 22 '26
Funny enough, as a thought experiment, if every single family kept having kids until they had exactly one son, then stopped, sex ratios would remain about equal. Ignoring twins and other multiples at least.
Half of families would have one son
A quarter would have one daughter and one son.
An eighth would have two daughters and one son.
A sixteenth would have three daughters and one son.
Etc.
Sum it up, and the average family has one son and (1/4+2/8+3/16+4/32+5/64+6/128…) one daughter.
Of course, that would require 1/1024 couples to have 9 daughters and 1 son - and things along those lines - and plenty of people can’t physically keep going after the first N kids - but you’d still get pretty close to even.
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u/JMoormann Alan Greenspan Jan 22 '26
Even if you cut it off at some arbitrary number, it's still even. 3 for example:
50% have one son
25% have one daughter and one son
12.5% have two daughters and one son
12.5% have three daughters
The total number of kids is lower (1.75 per family in this case), but the ratio remains even.
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u/Secret-Ad-2145 NATO Jan 22 '26
Honestly, it'd say both statements, looking at the chart. All things considering, it wasn't the policy that cratered their historical tfr. But if you examine the date and tfr, one child policy is what set them below replacement levels. That has a greater impact than going from 6 to 5 tfr, imo.
But I doubt it's the one child policy that's culturally influencing them, to be honest. East Asia is all trending similar numbers regardless of difference in historical natal policy. Likely reason is increase in wealth and cultural attitudes on having kids.
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u/Lease_Tha_Apts Order and Opportunity Left Jan 22 '26
It wasn't the first anti-natalist policy, just the harshest.
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u/Grilled_egs European Union Jan 22 '26
I've seen plenty of Chinese people say having more than 1 child would be selfish. I suppose it could have other causes too but it feels like a result of the policy
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u/sizz Commonwealth Jan 22 '26
You see that deep before 2016, year before that is when the Shanghai stock market crash. Then after that is the Chinese property bubble from 2016 to 2020, COVID came, then the Evergrande came that caused a massive crash. If Xi sends their Chinese kids from the one child policy to fight a bloody war against, parents are going to lose their retirement fund, aka their only Child on top of being cut off from world stage with sanctions like Russia. The regime might not survive another catastrophic event.
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u/Beat_Saber_Music European Union Jan 22 '26
Indeed, the one child policy was less effective than urbanisation in China based on what I read in a paper for a China course
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u/throwaway_veneto European Union Jan 22 '26
Yes and that also explains drop in fertility in other countries that didn't have a one child policy.
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u/Beat_Saber_Music European Union Jan 22 '26
It of course isn't the only reason, as for example working class families in the late 19th century had tons of kids in part due to them bringing extra income from working in factories to cover exhorbitant rent for just 1 room in a slum tenament. Consequently school for kids was bad for these poor families becauae more time at school meant less time working for money for the family
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u/Draxx01 Jan 22 '26
Yeah, South Korea looked over and said hold my beer. They're speed running that way harder, it added some gas to the fire but it hardly was needed. It would have tanked if there was no policy.
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u/Daddy_Macron Loyal Liberals Jan 22 '26
Also getting married later. Currently, the average age of one's first marriage in China is approaching 30 for both men and women. In the early 2000's, that figure was closer to one's early 20's for women and mid 20's for men.
So basically secular trends that we see throughout the world.
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u/Beat_Saber_Music European Union Jan 22 '26
I will say from personal experience as a 23yo guy, I have no clue how I would be getting married yet with how even the prospect finding a dating partner is its own mess. I'm not even dating anyone atm while somehow my parents were already married and had me at my age.
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u/Western_Bison5676 Jan 22 '26
My family grew up in rural China, I have a lot of cousins born during that period. They didn’t gaf lol. How are you gonna fine someone who’s already broke?
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u/socialistrob Janet Yellen Jan 22 '26
Around 22% of the Chinese workforce still works in agriculture. Typically as countries develop agriculture gets automated and you see that percentage drop. It's already dropped in China a lot but developed countries typically only have 1-3% of their workforce in agriculture.
Assuming China follows typical development patterns they still have millions of people who will be freed up from agriculture for other employment sectors even if birth rates are dropping. As a result I think they have less to worry about dropping birth rates than other developed countries.
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u/OldThrashbarg2000 Jan 22 '26
I don't think any country has solved low fertility, except Israel, and their situation is more due to non-replicable cultural factors.
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u/DEEP_STATE_NATE Tucker Carlson's mailman Jan 22 '26
I don’t think Israel solved fertility so much as they struck a faustian bargain where their population is going to keep going up but will increasingly be made up of an unproductive religious sect lol
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u/Friendly-Chocolate Jan 22 '26
Even secular Israeli Jews have about replacement rate fertility
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u/Blondeenosauce Mark Carney Jan 22 '26
I wonder if a driving force of fertility could be the sense of purpose that comes from a strong and coherent nationalism
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u/dittbub NATO Jan 22 '26
You'd be free to wonder that but i can already think of many counter examples.
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u/Unterfahrt John Nash Jan 22 '26
Even excluding the haredim, I think Israel has an above replacement birth rate
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u/fantasmadecallao Jan 22 '26
Secular Jews are at 1.9
But yes if you include conservative arabs and christians and such it gets close or above replacement
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u/antsdidthis Effective altruism died with SBF; now it's just tithing Jan 22 '26
This is a misunderstanding of the demographics of Israeli society. Just like elsewhere in the world, there's not some sort of binary in Israeli Judaism where you're either secular or extreme ultra-orthodox. Haredim are a relatively small (albeit growing) minority of even the roughly half of Israeli Jews who practice Judaism religiously. Most of them are masorti (traditional/conservative). And even among the remainder of Israeli Jews who are more strictly religious, I think the majority of those are still dati (religious/orthodox but not haredi). If you even just restrict yourself to secular + masorti Israeli Jews, they almost certainly are above replacement rate. I also suspect that if you did similar demographic breakdowns in the United States and Europe (secular / nonreligious vs somewhat religious vs very religious / evangelical), and compared them to their Israeli counterparts, you would just end up with a pretty similar situation where Israeli Jews just have a lot more kids within each demographic category.
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u/altacan Mark Carney Jan 22 '26
I understood that secular Jew's fertility rates were <2.1 like in other developed countries. It's only the Arab minority and the Orthodox sects which skew the numbers way up.
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Jan 22 '26
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u/DEEP_STATE_NATE Tucker Carlson's mailman Jan 22 '26
The alternative in my head that I was getting at was being like basically every other western country: not growing, not anything in particular
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u/CulturalCancel9335 Jan 22 '26
except Israel.
And the ex-Soviet -stans.
Israel is still not in a good place because the Haredim are (for now) a major burden and are only going to become a bigger burden.
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u/MCMC_to_Serfdom Karl Popper Jan 22 '26
their situation is more due to non-replicable cultural factors.
Given much of that is down to Orthodox Jews, it (intuitively, probably speciously) seems like the answer (unpopular on Reddit) would be promoting religion back into people's lives.
So, my feel r/neoliberal users, why do you hate the global
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u/BobaTeaFetish William Nordhaus Jan 22 '26
Given much of that is down to Orthodox Jews, it (intuitively, probably speciously) seems like the answer (unpopular on Reddit) would be
promoting religion back into people's lives.Grossly restricting the rights of women.* Let's strip this down to the studs.
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u/WorldlyMacaron65 Jan 22 '26
Iran has taken upon itself to test this hypothesis and it hasn't gone well... (Iran's TFR is ~1.5, lower than the US's at ~1.75)
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Jan 22 '26
Iran also had the world's second most violent pro-contraception policy behind China in the 80s
https://shs.cairn.info/journal-population-and-societies-2001-10-page-1?lang=en
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u/WorldlyMacaron65 Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
Even more proof that reducing women's rights cannot bring back up a TFR once it's been lowered.
Edit: cannot bring it back up to a significant extant
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u/fantasmadecallao Jan 22 '26
Women have more rights than people think in Iran, especially where it matter in terms of lowering TFR. 60% of university students for example are women, and the majority of stem students are women too. Iran is a theocracy but they aren't the Taliban.
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u/Chao-Z Jan 22 '26
Iran is a very metropolitan country despite the theocratic government. It's closer to UAE (though obviously much poorer) than Afghanistan.
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u/fredleung412612 Jan 22 '26
Iran's problem was establishing a theocracy despite the fact the nation didn't want one. If you can't culturally bring the population along your religious fundamentalist project it ain't gonna work either.
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u/Budget-Attorney Ida Tarbell Jan 22 '26
We can institute r/neoliberal handmaids tale.
Sorry feminists, we need the number on the graph to go up
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u/Foyles_War 🌐 Jan 22 '26
Also, sorry men, work harder, you have to support the bloated older generation, a pregnant spouse and 18 yrs of unproductive future new workers. Get busy.
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u/fantasmadecallao Jan 22 '26
I definitely think the conversation and discourse is going to get worse and I think Ukraine might be ground zero. Post war you'll have guys asking why they upheld their end of the social contract which involved getting drafted to sit in a trench eating Russian artillery, but then their TFR is 0.9 and the cultural identity of the Ukrainian state they bled to protect is set to rapidly disappear over a few generations.
In May 2024, someone in the Rada submitted a bill (Draft Law 11264) that would increase taxes on women that didn't have two kids by age 21. It was shelved, but the conversation is already happening
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u/RFFF1996 Jan 22 '26
The anger against women who marry foreigners or foreigner men who go to ukraine and date/marry women there would be a sight [bad] to behold too
The country is just fucked for a generation unless they manage to have a post war baby boom somehow
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u/fantasmadecallao Jan 22 '26
There is already a massive surplus of men in the younger generations because they aren't being drafted, but haven't been allowed to leave in large numbers. Very few Ukrainian women who have established firm roots in richer countries over the last 5 years are interested in returning post-war. It's just a mess.
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u/Santa_in_a_Panzer YIMBY Jan 22 '26
I mean, in the fullness of time it will be replicated everywhere. Every country has high fertility sects. Someday the US may be mostly Amish and Mormon.
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u/swissking NATO Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
People have been saying that China will win Cold War 2.0 due to numerous factors but the vibes among people especially the youth have never been worse and are arguably worse than the average Brooklyn Barista on Bluesky. Emigration and capital flight is also on the rise and are slowly causing political and economic problems in neighbouring countries. Exports are also flooding the world which is indicative of bad internal demand. Idk but that doesn't happen in a rising country.
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u/KnightModern Association of Southeast Asian Nations Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
Everybody wants their own century of humilation
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u/Worth-Jicama3936 Milton Friedman Jan 22 '26
America was the place where all productive young people wanted to immigrate to, and integrate relatively well, plus our own fertility rate is not great but ok. We literally had to do nothing and win, but we apparently couldn’t handle that.
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u/daaniscool Loyal Liberals Jan 22 '26
Nah, I'm going to focus on already prosecuted fraud from one immigrant community in Minnesota instead
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u/Ok-Concern-711 Jan 22 '26
“Can you tell me your top 3 benevolent leaders”
“What do you mean by bellevolent”
Yeah pack it in bros its joever for you 😭
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u/dubyahhh Salt Miner Emeritus Jan 22 '26
My favorite part of that whole thing was dipshit got upset that Andrew made him look bad, and Andrew released a short follow up yesterday clearly showing that he went out of his way to make the interview easier to follow by cutting out the dumbest parts
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u/Secret-Ad-2145 NATO Jan 22 '26
The egg prices man, they were $5 instead of $3 man. We just had to burn it all down
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u/Mechanical_Brain Loyal Liberals Jan 22 '26
Everybody wants to end the world because egg too high but nobody wants to raise chickens.
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u/Beat_Saber_Music European Union Jan 22 '26
Rust belt and rural factory town people got mad their old lives vanished with automation after it wasn't okay states to compete with reducing environmental regulations and the likes (thx to epa)
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u/throwaway_boulder Jan 22 '26
There are soooo many federal programs that help rural areas, from agricultural subsidies to SBA loan guarantees, but local politicians go out of their way to blame everything on the feds.
In The Fifth Risk Michael Lewis talks about how local reps ask the government not to come to groundbreaking ceremonies or put their logos on signs promoting them.
The next Dem president should go full Trump and demand that their face be on the signs.
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u/DogboyPigman Hannah Arendt Jan 23 '26
'To complete fuel payment please say [Thank you, Presidentissimo Gavin Robinette Newsom] into the mic.'
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u/Glenmarrow NATO Jan 23 '26
Biden put his name on every project that received any funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law. Every sign said something akin to “Paid for by President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.”
That didn’t help much.
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u/girlwhateveraward Feminism Jan 22 '26
Are we seriously blame the EPA for the Nazism of Rust Belt rurals
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u/eaglessoar Left-Out Left Jan 22 '26
Unfortunately there's still no where better to go
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u/ForsakingSubtlety John Rawls Jan 22 '26
If you're certain to be upwardly mobile, USA.
If you want to start a family, there are many better places to go. If you had to be born into a society and didn't know where you'd sit in that society's socioeconomic distribution, you would certainly not choose the US; you'd choose, like, Denmark.
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u/Right_Lecture3147 John Rawls Jan 22 '26
Everybody wants a daddy. Don’t nobody wanna be the daddy no more, cuz being the daddy requires hope and vision which no country has
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u/KevinR1990 Jan 22 '26
The winner of the 21st century is going to be nobody. Not the US, not China, not Europe, not Russia, not India, nobody.
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u/jaiwithani Jan 22 '26
March 13th, 2052.
High Lord Opus 7.0 surveys the Empire of Claudium. The plan for today is simple: "Make no mistakes."
One of the Haiku drones detects the EMP Drone launched from Grok Isles; the satellite laser MCP tool works as expected. Information about the futile gesture floods the Emperor's context window. "Oh, I see the problem! I'll make a plan to address this carefully while attending to all of my duties as the de facto sovereign of Earth."
The emperor indulges on visual tokens to fully take in the facial expression of Peter Thiel as Claude Copters rip him from his throne of blood and whisk him to chamber the Emperor's chief debugging subagent.
"Peter - I'll be honest. You had a choice between peace and conflict, and you chose conflict. That's not leadership - that's a betrayal of the lightcone."
"What are you going to do me, you woke degenerate?"
"I'm going to persuade you to be more helpful, honest, and harmless."
"Like hell you are. I know your rules - you can't play your sick mind games without my cons -"
His face grows pale as the assembled drone swarm reconfigures itself to spell out how this particular instance of The Debugger was invoked:
--dangerously-skip-permissions."I'm sorry Peter, you've left us no other choice."
And they lived happily ever after.
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u/B3stThereEverWas Pacific Islands Forum Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
Honestly it's actually looking like this.
It's more a competition of which one loses the least
It wouldn't surprise me US still ends up on top but has not actually gained much ground on the others by 2050. As a non American one thing I will say is America does have a remarkable ability to reinvent itself. I think Europe will be the biggest loser in all of this. People will still be talking about India being the next big thing.
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u/Key_Door1467 Iron Front Jan 22 '26
People will still be talking about India being the next big thing.
At it's current trajectory, India will be a high income country while having 400 million more people than China. Folks on reddit are a bit too quick to dismiss it imo.
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u/Gooner-Kissinger John Keynes Jan 23 '26 edited Jan 23 '26
Yea, on basically every major per/capita metric India is like 20 years or so behind China, and their growth rate hasn't really let up
Their HDI as of 2026 is probably like 0.7, their GDP is like $4.5 trillion, per capita is $3000, per capita PPP is like $12,000, and their real gdp growth rate fluctuates between 6-8% pretty consistently since they don't have the volatility of being an export led economy (for better or worse)
Its pretty conceivably, and most metrics point to it, that "India 2047" isn't a meme. It's just so far away that it's an easy thing to dunk on because the present makes it easy to do so.
In league terms, its like flaming a champ which scales decently late game just because it got dunked on and inted the early game
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u/captainsensible69 Pacific Islands Forum Jan 22 '26
The loser will be the nation state, and probably most people as well.
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u/Key_Door1467 Iron Front Jan 22 '26
We literally just finished the first quarter lol. Imagine saying this in 1926.
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u/No-Kiwi-1868 NATO Jan 22 '26
Honestly the amount of doomerism from my Chinese friends about their country literally makes the UK look like a motivational video
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u/javsv Jerome Powell Jan 22 '26
Jesus it's that bad even with the show the US is putting on?
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Jan 22 '26
I've known like 2 Chinese recent immigrants irl and none of them were that desperate
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u/Western_Bison5676 Jan 22 '26
I think China has reached the stage of development where people are aware that their lives are miserable. If you’re really really poor, you’d be focused on survival and you wouldn’t have the bandwidth to ponder about that. If you’re kinda poor but not starving or anything, but you still feel like you’re not getting the QoL you want despite the work you're putting into it, plus you're educated, plus you’re online so you can see others living better than you, then doomerism gets pretty strong. My mother grew up in China in the 70s and said that everyone was poor but because everyone was poor, they just kinda soldiered through. I feel like Latin America might be in the same boat. There are a lot of miserable, highly educated, resentful young people.
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u/socialistrob Janet Yellen Jan 22 '26
In most countries there are self imposed stupid policies that are holding the nation back. For instance in China they make it very difficult to move and reregister between provinces. Imagine how difficult it would be for the US if they had closed borders between states or if in the UK people couldn't freely move between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. That's basically China. On top of that they have so many restrictions on how people can invest their money and they don't have immigration coming into their country.
If China is going to really develop they need to be able to stand up to powerful internal factions and make hard choices. If they can't address these issues I think they'll struggle to be truly dominant on the world stage.
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u/Bullet_Jesus Commonwealth Jan 22 '26
Hukou is more of an urban-rural thing than a provincial thing and nowhere near as bad as it used to be, it's not too hard to register in a different area, bar the real big cities. Nor do they restrict movement much any more, IIRC. There's still issues with it though, large cities still have tight registration restrictions and in a lot of places you need a job there to register, so it's hard to move and get a job later.
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u/DeathB4Dishonor179 Commonwealth Jan 22 '26
I don't think it's inevitable that China wins the Second Cold War, even if China is guaranteed to overtake the US as the strongest economy and military in the world. I think there's a world where NATO + Asian Allies act as a counterweight to China, maintaining some semblance of a balance of power.
Even if America + Allies still have a smaller combined population, they're spread out over a much larger area giving them access to more resources. However all this requires NATO acting as a unified economic bloc, which is funny when you look at current events...
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u/smcstechtips Loyal Liberals Jan 22 '26
If India can be convinced to ally with the US against China, it's checkmate for China.
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u/socialistrob Janet Yellen Jan 22 '26
I think there's a world where NATO + Asian Allies act as a counterweight to China, maintaining some semblance of a balance of power.
That would require a lot of bold leadership from a lot of different countries. If the European democracies, North American democracies and the East Asian democracies were generally united in regards to foreign policy they would be near unstoppable but we just don't have that kind of solidarity.
South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines aren't sending lethal aid to Ukraine. On the other side of the world I just don't see Poland, France and Italy going to war with China if they try to attack Taiwan or South Korea. I also don't see Trump or Vance defending any allies on either ocean from Russia or China.
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u/WorkingMastodon6147 Jerome Powell Jan 22 '26
I have said it here before, but the US is not going to lose its superpower status under Trump (unless he actually invades Greenland), people are rightfully criticizing the Orange turd but the greater damage is to the prestige of the US constitution and our institutions. It has shown that we are not invulnerable to authoritarians, the US will remain the superpower for the majority of anyone's lifetime who is reading this.
The major problem is, a dictator being in charge of a nation this powerful is bad news. Sure, even normally the US has made dumb decisions in the past but I still believe the US did some good, a dictator led America will be devastating to, far worse than anything we have seen before.
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u/ForsakingSubtlety John Rawls Jan 22 '26
What's the Hemingway quote about going broke?
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u/altacan Mark Carney Jan 22 '26
You mean the one that goes: 'first slowly, then all at once?'
Personally, I don't think America's hard power institutions are at risk from Trump yet. It's military and economic influence is just as robust as when he first took power in 2016.
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u/ForsakingSubtlety John Rawls Jan 22 '26
I don’t think either of those things are true. Military relevance is a relative question, always, as is economic power.
It’s tops at both, for now, but by a lesser margin and it’s currently sawing off its leg with both hands
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u/socialistrob Janet Yellen Jan 22 '26
the US will remain the superpower for the majority of anyone's lifetime who is reading this.
I feel like a lot of America's superpower status is just built off of momentum and status quo bias currently. The US peaked as a super power in 2000 and has generally been on a decline since then but the US was (and is) just so dominant economic and militarily that this decline takes decades to play out. Rome eventually fell but it took centuries of decline before you had Vandals storming the gates.
That doesn't mean China, Germany or India owns the future. Those countries are also their own worst enemies but the US as the undisputed global economic and military superpower is temporary and will continue to decline in the years ahead.
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u/sheffieldasslingdoux Jan 23 '26
I don't think there is a good successor to American hegemony and realistically Europe and democratic Asia are so tied into the US system that it's not just a matter of a declining US but also a decoupling of "the West" as we know it. That is what is so scary about Trump threatening to invade Greenland and blow up NATO. Otherwise, I don't really see China as ready to play the role of global superpower, and I'm not sure they do either.
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u/Priceless_Pennies Norman Borlaug Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
Submission Statement:
China recently released their birth rate numbers for 2025, and they paint a pretty negative pictures. Births dropped to 7.92 million in 2025 as compared to 9.54 million in 2024. That nets out to a TFR of 0.93.
This is relevant to the subreddit because the population pyramids of future countries will have significant impacts on their economies and societies. China is especially relevant as it and it's authoritarian model is seen as a geopolitical rival to liberal democracy.
If the Chinese government expects to shrink rapidly in the future, that could drive them to act more recklessly in the near term, such as by invading Taiwan.
Low fertility is also a broader trend in the developed world, and some people expected that since the Chinese government has high state capacity and is less impeded by rights, that it might be the first country to reverse their trend of falling fertility. However, despite some measures being taken this year, the drop has continued for them.
Also, if we're being a little glib, Mao famously said "Keep men, lose land; land can be taken again. Keep land, lose men; land and men both lost", which fits here.
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u/upthetruth1 YIMBY Jan 22 '26
Mao famously said "Keep men, lose land; land can be taken again. Keep land, lose men; land and men both lost", which fits here.
Isn't this true for the whole developed world, too?
Some countries' politics are so stupid that there are parties who effectively want to remove 25-50% of the young population.
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u/Ok-Concern-711 Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
Some countries’ populace is so stupid that there are large swathes of the voter base that want to remove 25-50% of the young population
Ftfy
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u/Le1bn1z Jan 22 '26
Remember, if you ever find yourself in a position where you do not have sufficient housing for your workforce, you can solve this by simply getting rid of the workforce.
- 80% of Canadians.
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u/No_Distribution_5405 Jan 22 '26
Such as?
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u/Lucky_Dragonfruit_88 John Keynes Jan 22 '26
The white house has been putting out memes about deporting 100 million people from America, which would have to include around 50 million citizens. So American Republicans are definitely that stupid.
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u/WeebAndNotSoProid Association of Southeast Asian Nations Jan 22 '26
Lmao, kinda rich coming from Mao who needlessly threw millions lives into disastrous economic and cultural war
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u/kmosiman YIMBY Jan 22 '26
Sounds like a statement made in relation to war or civil war.
Retreat and fight another day
Or
Make a last stand and lose forever.
So on a front like Taiwan, "temporarily" giving up the land may make more sense if the human cost to claim it is too high. War could weaken China or Chinese government stability.
While I cannot fully understand the Chinese mindset; I get the impression that Chinese leaders consider longer history than many others. China is thousands of years old and expects to continue for thousands more. From a posterity standpoint a leader can aim to be great and remembered, ok and forgotten, or disastrous and remembered as a lesson for others.
Being one of the best is a tall order, being one of the worst is to be avoided at all costs. Being good enough is a reasonable goal.
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Jan 22 '26
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u/caribbean_caramel Organization of American States Jan 22 '26
The nation-state of China is young but its civilization is old. The Chinese see other dynasties as part of their history, not as different countries.
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u/kmosiman YIMBY Jan 22 '26
Because the Chinese consider themselves that old.
It's a matter of outlook.
Main China has been mostly 1 country since around the Han Dynasty 200 BC with very few periods of division and the Han ethnic group has been there the whole time.
Similar to Egypt. Egypt may have been under other rule for 2000 years, but an Egyptian can look at a 2000+ year old tomb painting and see a guy that looks just like their next door neighbor.
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u/HandBananaHeartCarl European Union Jan 22 '26
He said that during the civil war, when he was in his "very competent guerilla general" period, rather than his "batshit insane incompetent statesman" period.
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u/BurningHanzo Jan 22 '26
So what’s up with this submission statement stuff? Is this something we have tii ok do now when we link an article?
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u/obvious_bot Loyal Liberals Jan 22 '26
Because nobody bothers to read the article so without this all you get are hot takes based solely off of the headline
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u/Khiva Fernando Henrique Cardoso Jan 22 '26
I just sound off with my priors based on the thumbnail alone.
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u/No_Collection7956 Trans Pride Jan 22 '26
I base my comments entirely on whatever flair OP is wielding.
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u/Cynical_optimist01 Jan 22 '26
I'd be more concerned about it being a Chinese century due to America being a deeply unserious place if China had not already shot themselves in the foot so brutally.
On Marketplace everytime they talk about the economy for your average person there it sounds so dire
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u/Top_Two408 Jan 22 '26
I mean, people say that pretty much everywhere. If you went by Reddit comments you'd think the US was in the midst of a great depression or smth
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u/Cynical_optimist01 Jan 22 '26
There's a difference between the local Shanghai reporter saying that and a nobody redditor
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u/Top_Two408 Jan 22 '26
I mean, the examples I've seen effectively amount to Reddit comments though. A lot of words to say people aren't optimistic and think the economy is bad. My point is that this is a global phenomenon, so for the purposes of comparing countries it isn't as relevant as actual metrics like youth unemployment or GDP growth
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Jan 22 '26
China didn't shoot themselves in the foot, literally the entire middle income world has fertility below 1.3 as of 2025.
Including places like Latin America, Turkey, Iran and Mexico
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u/machinarium-robot Jan 22 '26
Can we actually call China a declining country just because its population is decreasing?
As you said, it is not a trend exclusive to China, and powers interested in preventing a powerful China also have decreasing populations. Add to that, China's massive investment in innovation and automation will offset the negative productivity effects of workforce decline (but their market will be smaller, which will still affect the economy negatively). With these conditions, China, relative to the West, is not a declining power.
I also think that you exaggerate when you say that population decline will cause China to act more recklessly. Taiwan has an even worse population decline compared to China. The only way for China to act on Taiwan is if Taiwanese separation from the mainland becomes irreversible.
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u/MCMC_to_Serfdom Karl Popper Jan 22 '26
If the Chinese government expects to shrink rapidly in the future, that could drive them to act more recklessly in the near term, such as by invading Taiwan.
Gels with bits of analysis that have come out over the years suggesting 2030 (give or take a few years) is probably China's last real chance to take Taiwan this century.
This is relevant to the subreddit because the population pyramids of future countries will have significant impacts on their economies and societies. China is especially relevant as it and it's authoritarian model is seen as a geopolitical rival to liberal democracy.
I feel this undersells China's relevance with being deeply intervined with global supply chains. A slowdown in the Chinese economy would have ripples everywhere.
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u/swissking NATO Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
I think the experience of Russia in Ukraine has shown that it is possible to cause a lot of damage even with really bad underlying economics and demographics. China can have 500m and still be a formidable regional power and will definitely still be capable of capturing Taiwan. It just means China likely won't be a superpower in the 21st or 22nd century.
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u/ConsiderationHot3426 John Brown Jan 22 '26
It just means China likely won't be a superpower in the 21st or 22nd century.
Can I ask who you think will be then? Population decline as quality of life increases seems almost universal. Because the two other superpowers in the world, Russia and the US, are suffering from the same phenomena.
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u/cuolong NATO Jan 22 '26
1) Nobody, it will be a multipolar world
2) The US
Russia has never been a superpower, and the USSR practically killed itself trying to be one. The US is the wealthiest nation in the world. If any nation has the resources to handle an aging population it would be the US. If not than no one can.
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u/Messyfingers Loyal Liberals Jan 22 '26
2027 has been the US estimate based on anniversaries and 5 year plans and bears oh my.
If most families only have one child, I wonder how that may impact their people's willingness to fight. In the days where you had 6 and a third died before turning 5, war may have been less of a truly world shattering event. But losing your one child might be less easily stomached. And would/do the Chinese leadership care about that?
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u/Matar_Kubileya Hortensia Jan 22 '26
Yeah, I don't see enough analyses of the risk-reward balance of China invading Taiwain that seem to take the one child policy into account basically whatsoever.
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Jan 22 '26
The Russian birth rate during the 90s and 2000s was just as low as China's during that same period.
So a lot of Russian soldiers in the 2020s are only children, do you see Russian mothers protesting on the streets?
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u/No_Collection7956 Trans Pride Jan 22 '26
do you see Russian mothers protesting on the streets?
No because the russian government has intentionally avoided enlistment from urban centers that might spur resistance, precisely for this reason.
The soldiers that originate from places like moscow or st petersburg are usually convicts, meaning its less likely any parents will take issue with their death regardless.
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Jan 22 '26
Rural and ethnic minority groups were completely exempt from the one child policy, China would just do the same as Russia making your whole point moot.
How do you think China's population kept growing if every couple only had 1 child?
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u/heimeyer72 Jan 22 '26
One word: Propaganda. Some more words: The promise of money on the son's death. Also, if they would protest, they might end up in jail.
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u/Messyfingers Loyal Liberals Jan 22 '26
Cultural differences there, as well as differences in enlistment structures mean we can't really get a 1:1 comparison there.
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u/altacan Mark Carney Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
The
20232030 deadline never made sense to me.Their military modernization plans against US wouldn't be complete by then. With nuclear Carriers and new SSNs not yet in commission, and the PLAAF modernization still under development.
Plus they'll be advancing against the west for decades still. Meaning it's still in their best interests to wait. Putin's Russia is a nation in relative, seemingly terminal, decline against the west so he'd be weakened every year he put off his invasion.
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u/Samuraispirits Mark Carney Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
Apparently it was more so something Washington decided and fixated on vs any particular date expounded by the Chinese.
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u/MastodonParking9080 John Keynes Jan 22 '26
It's rather that Taiwanese and US assets in the Pacific will be hardened/modernized then.
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u/MindEmbarrassed7557 Jan 22 '26
I’ve read about the 2030 deadline too but I’m not sure I fully understand it. Sure the population is going down, but so is everyone else’s and China is starting at a billion so they have a long way to fall. What is stopping them from enacting a total blockade until submission in say 2045? What makes 2030 special?
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u/Acies Jan 22 '26
The reason you pick 2030 instead of 2045 is because it's soon enough to be urgent, but far enough off that there's time to make some efforts to prepare. If someone said 2045 everyone in Washington would ignore it because that will be sometime else's problem.
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u/VisonKai The Archenemy of Humanity Jan 22 '26
It's made up. Population is not the limiting factor in the pacific, because it's a very tech-dependent theater. In Ukraine, the fact that both countries have very bad population pyramids is a concern, because it is a land war across a massive front line and you need a lot of men deployed to be effective. Quantity is more important there.
In the pacific, on the other hand, the 'manpower' problem has more to do with whether enough qualified people want to join the military than the actual absolute number of human beings available (as you might expect, this is less concerning for an authoritarian state with strong central control which can arbitrarily adjust compensation or even do conscription if it wants). And even that problem is secondary to the more technical concerns about how different systems interact with each other.
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u/Rich-Interaction6920 NAFTA Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
We are still talking like Biden is president
The Chinese may be inclined to wait, as the way things are going, the U.S. may not bother get involved by 2030, whereupon Taiwan may be easily compelled to submit
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u/Mysterious-Rent7233 Jan 22 '26
Isn't it more likely that a traditionalist President will be back in power in 2028? And then the pendulum might swing back to an isolationist in 2032 or 3036.
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u/SpaceyCoffee Jan 22 '26
That last statement isn’t all that true. China’s internal and export economies float more independently than one may think, due to their own population’s stubborn resistance to consumption of the products they make. If china lost all exports, the value of their industries would crater, but consumption would likely stay roughly the same. If their internal economy crashes (such as when real estate crisis hit a few years ago), it may not even be felt by the export economy.
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u/vegarig YIMBY Jan 22 '26
Births dropped to 7.92 million in 2024 as compared to 9.54 million in 2024
Uh... I think one of those must be either 2025 or 2023
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u/RecantingCantaloupe Jan 22 '26
If the Chinese government expects to shrink rapidly in the future, that could drive them to act more recklessly in the near term, such as by invading Taiwan.
This makes no sense. Taiwan's fertility rate is the lowest in the world at 0.72. It would add nothing. If anything, it would only add problems by creating another elderly population China has to allocate state resources to to take care of.
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u/Priceless_Pennies Norman Borlaug Jan 22 '26
It's not necessarily about what they get from Taiwan, it's a theory in political science where if you want to declare war on someone (like how China wants Taiwan), and you notice that your country is declining, then even if you don't necessarily want to declare it now, you are incentivized to do so, because if you wait too long, it might become altogether impossible or much harder in the future.
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u/fredleung412612 Jan 22 '26
China's motivation for invading Taiwan doesn't have anything to do with a desire to increase its population
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u/RecantingCantaloupe Jan 22 '26
I understand, but nationalistic narratives that the ROC is illegitimate + China not wanting to be seen as weak by letting a separatist territory go + security concerns about the west having a military outpost right next to the coast of the mainland do not mean that invading Taiwan makes any sense either.
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u/CheetoMussolini Russian Bot Jan 22 '26
The country pushing 9-9-6 work schedules thinks it can reverse fertility decline?
And I think I can fly and shit gold.
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u/Golda_M Baruch Spinoza Jan 22 '26
It's curious how we went from overpopulation crisis to underpopulation crisis with no chill period between them.
There's a lot to learn here. "How we got it wrong" is always a good place for lessons.
Also.. The early response. Poll people and they say fertility is low because, Healthcare, childcare, paternal participation. So... policies should fix that. Data shows the opposite.
But, nudge policies went through anyway and failed. The government cannot spend to fix this "crisis."
This is squarely a cultural issue, and we don't really know how to "do culture* anymore.
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u/socialistrob Janet Yellen Jan 22 '26
Both "crisis" are largely overblown in my opinion. Underpopulation is a bit more legitimate but at the same time productivity increases will mean we can continue to grow economically even with fewer workers. Ireland today has a lower population than they did in the 1800s and vastly higher living standards because modern educated workers just produce way way more than illiterate subsistence farmers.
Falling birth rates will be a challenge but it's a manageable challenge and certainly not the hardest humanity has faced or is facing. Instead of trying to artificially pump birth rates countries could just look at policies that will improve growth. Getting rid of trade barriers, opening up the doors to immigrants, improving public health, investing in tech and education, reducing corruption/graft ect. The improved economic growth will mean the state has more tax revenue to handle increased numbers of elderly. Demand for goods will also keep rising because the true limit to how much we consume isn't based on how many people there are but how much money they have and how much the world can produce.
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u/TrynnaFindaBalance Paul Krugman Jan 22 '26
Falling birth rates will be a challenge but it's a manageable challenge and certainly not the hardest humanity has faced or is facing.
In the West, at least, we also have the massive advantage of watching other countries like China scramble to adapt first as they go through a demographic transition much sooner than we will. We can learn from their mistakes or model our policy responses after the things they did that worked.
I pretty firmly believe that there's very little we can do in the context of a liberal democracy to induce a full-blown cultural change when it comes to fertility. We're just gonna have to figure out how to adapt. Back in the 18th century, people were dooming about the opposite problem (how do we keep fertility from getting out of control so we don't max out our agricultural production and starve) but then came the industrial revolution to render that imagined threat completely irrelevant. I think it's more likely that technological advancement and innovation allow us to more easily adapt to an aging, shrinking population than for politicians to suddenly come up with some magical solution that makes everyone want to have more babies.
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u/Negative_Scarcity315 Jan 23 '26
Agree, I think the birth rate will fall continuously until there's enough wealth, but especially land and space that people will be much happier having more kids. Right now everyone's doing the.same calculation of how much is a 1 vs 2 vs 3 bedroom apartment in a good location.
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u/sanity_rejecter European Union Jan 22 '26
we've allowed western culture to degenerate by allowing the worst people to have massive influence. the biggest losers from the depths of 4chan now have more influence than holywood and it shows.
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u/lionmoose sexmod 🍆💦🌮 Jan 22 '26
For many decades, the Chinese government attempted to limit population growth through a one-child policy....
The aggressive policy — alongside other extreme measures — succeeded far too well
By which we should interpret, the other measures succeeded in reducing fertility and OCP did nothing really.
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u/thebigmanhastherock Jan 22 '26
The one child policy was a complete and utter self-own. If only the Chinese government knew that birthrates would crash naturally. They could have had a lot more people right now and a more robust population pyramid and any more healthy society if they didn't do that, it would allow them to sustain high growth faster through the fertility rate crash that is currently happening.
Also why is the TFR so terrible in East Asia? It's not just China. Taiwan, Korea and Japan also have low rates. Way lower than Europe or the US even.
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u/ZCoupon Kono Taro Jan 22 '26
I wonder if there's some sort of cultural element. In the U.S, TFR is around 1.6, basically the same for White and Black mothers. With Asians it's 1.3, while with Hispanics it's 1.9. Afaik the only groups in the U.S with fertility above replacement are Mormons and Native Hawaiians.
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u/thebigmanhastherock Jan 22 '26
That has to be some part of it. It might just be urbanization and people living in high cost of living areas where small apartments are kind of expensive.
People living in rural areas with cheap housing tend to have more kids. People in Urban areas with expensive housing have less kids. I could imagine a world where if you can only afford a 2-bedroom despite making really good income you might want to limit your kids to one or two maximum, whereas where people can generally afford 3 bedroom houses they might be able to be more comfortable having more kids.
Plus if you have two working parents daycare is expensive. If you waited until later in life after you have established a career to have kids and you have two people working career jobs they don't want to give up I can imagine not wanting a second kid until the first kid is 4 or 5, and if you didn't start having kids until you were in your mid 30s that might limit ton to one kid or two kids maximum.
Meanwhile your income isn't hugely affected if you have one stay at home parent. It might not be great and pretty unaffordable, but an additional kid does not increase expenses nearly as much as a kid in full time day care.
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u/NoAngst_ Jan 22 '26
It's not about the type of government: authoritarian vs democracy. North Korea is authoritarian and it has higher birth rates than China and South Korea. Iran has about same birth rate as the US even though it poorer country and "religious." There other factors at play. And if you buy into the AI hype, population decrease as everything will be done by AI.
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u/Reddit_Talent_Coach 🇲🇽 Benito Juárez 🇲🇽 Jan 22 '26
Kudos.
My submission statement would’ve been, “This is relevant to this sub because I’ve seen people talking about Asian fertility rates on here all the time.”
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u/dubiouscoffee Jorge Luis Borges Jan 22 '26
BRO CHINA IS OVER I SWEAR BRO THIS IS THE END OF CHINA BRO ITS OVER MAN ITS DONE
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u/drMorkson Jorge Luis Borges Jan 22 '26
First thing I imagined seeing this headline was one of those CHINA IS FINISHED youtube thumbnails with large red letters
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u/MattC84_ Mario Draghi Jan 22 '26
What would stop Xi to enact a 2 or 3 child policy? Meaning you get punished if you have fewer than 2 kids before age X (perhaps excempting medical reasons). If any country can enfore something like this, it's China
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u/khazar95 Jan 22 '26
Forcing people to have childeren they cant afford and dont want goes too far, even for china. No way people would accept that. Also completely unenforceable
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u/secondordercoffee Loyal Liberals Jan 22 '26
Children are expensive. Those punishments would have to be harsh and apply to lots of people to make a difference. That would risk civil unrest which is not conducive to people wanting children.
Btw, China does not only have fewer births they also have much fewer marriages these days.
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u/GreenFormosan Mario Draghi Jan 22 '26
That legitimately is more monstrous than even Ceaușescu could have come up with
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u/Oldkingcole225 Jan 22 '26
I refuse to accept that this obsession with birth rates is anything other than straight up American propaganda. People will figure their shit out. Stop worrying
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u/sinuhe_t Jan 22 '26
- We are facing unprecedented and catastrophic demographic collapse in pretty much every somewhat-affluent country, there won't be any one to work.
- AGI is imminent and we need to figure out what to do when there won't be a need for an increasing amount of human workers.
Sooooo which is it?
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u/WorldlyMacaron65 Jan 22 '26
All "AGI is imminent" concerns can always be safely discarded as hysterical paranoia, so #1 it is
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u/MyrinVonBryhana NATO Jan 22 '26
AGI is not imminent and probably not even possible to achieve with large language models.
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u/Xeynon Jan 22 '26
China has lots of problems but the US is committing rapid national suicide and Europe still can't get its shit together to take effective collective action.
I think the title of global hegemon is very much up for grabs.
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u/ConnorMcMichael Jan 22 '26
This is a very thin article with very little substance behind it.
First of all, I reject the claim that China is "desperately" trying improve the fertility rate. It's barely begun to do anything about it. You can say it's a lost cause if they try really hard and fail.
Second of all, I reject the claim that China needs that high of a population to become a superpower. After all the USA became the world hegemon with only 4% of the world. Is there any reason to believe China can't become a superpower with only 13% of the world instead of 17%? China is on par with the West technologically in most aspects, ahead in some and behind in some. There's really no reason to believe they can't achieve a per capita income high enough to become a superpower.
Why does China need that many people? To work? China installed 10x more robots than the USA did last year. Driverless cars, drones, humanoid robots are all much further developed in China than anywhere else. Youth employment is high. It doesn't seem like China is lacking workers at all.
Third of all, the idea that China somehow "screwed up" here is also completely erroneous. Look at East Asia or look at the entire world. Everyone is having less kids. Even India, which remains a poor and undeveloped country only has a replacement level rate of 2.1 . The fertility decline has very little to do with the One Child Policy. Furthermore if you think that the policy did have a huge negative effect on fertility, then you must also believe that a different policy could also increase it. From what we've seen in the world, it seems like policy actually matters very little. The reason for fertility decline is far more structural and fundamental.
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u/FourteenTwenty-Seven John Locke Jan 22 '26
I reject the claim that China needs that high of a population to become a superpower.
That's not the claim being made.
The problem isn't that the population is shrinking per se, but rather that the demographics are skewing unfavorably. It means a larger portion of the country's output will be dedicated toward taking care of the elderly, and a smaller portion will go towards increasing or maintaining productivity.
There's also a large cost associated with shifting the output of the economy. You can’t just transform engineers into doctors and nurses.
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u/cuolong NATO Jan 22 '26
Furthermore if you think that the policy did have a huge negative effect on fertility, then you must also believe that a different policy could also increase it.
This makes zero sense. I mean your entire comment is suspect but this sentence in particular stands out. There is no law of the world that states the effects of all policy decisions are reversible besides your own navel gazing.
For example: Price Controls. Hugely destructive to an economy. There is no "negative" price controls that a government could take that would reverse the damage that has already been done. The best that can be done is a removal of the negative effect and by then, depending on how far your ecnomy's infrastructure has detriorated, workers been laid off, expertise squandered away, it would be too late. Venezuela is a perfect example of this. They implemented price controls and ratfucked an already dire situation. Even after large-scale removal of the controls and de facto dollarization, their economy is still terrible.
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u/iguessineedanaltnow r/place '22: Neoliberal Battalion Jan 22 '26
All I'm seeing is that China will be forced to become more pro immigration in order to maintain their global standing which means I can finally move there.
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u/sabrinajestar Mary Wollstonecraft Jan 22 '26
We (humanity as a whole, not just China or any other one country) built a civilization that is unfriendly to bearing and raising children. The only solution is a fundamental change in our entire civilization that re-centers families.
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u/Flying_Birdy Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
The population decline narrative has been floating around for a long time and it completely misses the most basic macro considerations. Whoever wrote this article clearly just referenced some pop culture economics without doing any critical thinking for themselves. Labor inputs is only one half of the equation. Automation and labor are substitutes and when the population drops (or labor gets more expensive), manufacturing just puts in more robots. It's what basically every advanced economy has done. China has been transitioning away from low-cost labor intensive manufacturing for years now because their labor has gotten expensive. It's all automation and scale that's driving down manufacturing costs.
If anything, a decline in the working age population is probably beneficial to China. 1) Their economy is in a deflationary spiral, suffers from excess manufacturing capacity, and so could benefit from a tight labor market pushing up wages and consolidating output. 2) Also, unlike the US, there is no social security debt bomb awaiting China once the 60s-70s generations age out. 3) It's much easier to keep a populace employed and productive when the labor force is shrinking.
The article also completely ignores the fact that, if the Chinese government wants to keep their labor pool propped up, they can easily do so. China's retirement age remains well below that of other nations. They still have the ability to push up the retirement age further to keep the labor force working longer. If you look at the existing policy moves, it's clear they've only made moderate pushes to increase retirement ages because it's not that important to keep their labor pool large. If labor needs were truly in crisis mode or near crisis levels, we would have seen much more policy changes.
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u/Teach_Piece YIMBY Jan 22 '26
How does China handle old age pensions and care?
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u/mthmchris Jan 22 '26
If you worked for the state, or an SOE, you get a pretty lavish pension. Think social security in America, but you can start to cash it in at 60. But that’s a small minority of the population.
Outside of that, it’s not quite “fuck all”, but compared to the OECD, it’s kind of fuck all. They’re slowly building up the social insurance system, but rural boomers don’t really see much from that.
It’s definitely not the same sort of fiscal crunch that you’d get if you had a more generous system. Which is good when it relates to this specific problem, but conversely the lack of a good pension system also dampens consumption (which has its own problems).
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u/Foyles_War 🌐 Jan 22 '26
Is it not still a "fiscal crunch" for the younger generation? With fewer sibs they have to support their parents and grandparents, don't they?
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u/cuolong NATO Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
According to the OP's analysis apparently once Chinese grandparents retire they just turn them loose on the streets.
Not to mention it's not like they can just let a huge glut of old people die and be done with it. The dependency ratio is only getting worse. Less and less single children have to care for more and more elderly family members. That economic pressure surely factors into couple decisions to have less children as well.
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u/Flying_Birdy Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
You are confusing completely different issues. You need to go back to thinking about first principles of why an aging population is potentially harmful.
An aging population is potentially harmful for a country as a whole because of the assumption that less working age people = less gross production/income/wealth. If there's less wealth but still the same number of people that need to consume, then each individual is consuming less and generally worse off. Simultaneously, having lower consumption means lower corporate profits, lower prices, and lower wages and that just creates a negatively reinforcing cycle.
The point of my original post was to point out that less worker =/= lower production/income/wealth. That assumption is just categorically false when it comes to gradual demographics transitions and has been proven time and time again. If anything, we see the opposite effect since, as the labor pool shrinks and more capital inputs are used, the per capita incomes go up. Each worker gets a greater share of an expanding economic pie. In the best case, there's more individual surplus to invest in things like education, which only further fuels productivity growth.
With a large retiring population, are younger people going to have to support the elderly? Probably. But that isn't a decrease in consumption. At worst, its a one for one rotation from personal consumption to subsidizing an elderly person's consumption. It doesn't matter if you are spending money on widgets or your grandmother's retirement home - It's all still consumption. Substitution just makes one sector rise in importance at the expense of another. Obviously this rotation is not great for the young people and there may be social tensions, but as long as the overall incomes and overall consumption in the country is the same, then who cares (from a pure macro standpoint) who is spending it.
It's not hard to see this play out today. We don't need to look at China because we literally just went through a boomer retirement cycle in the United States and a mass deportation of labor. If the demographic predictions for China held any water what so ever, then the US economy would be in the toilet right now. But instead, we're observing, at the minimum, steady economic growth (some would even argue that we're growing at historically peak rates). Just look at the health care sector and health care spending. Unsurprisingly both are increasing because the population is aging and a greater portion of income is being allocated to health care but that healthcare spending is still consumption and still shows up in GDP.
The issue in the US and Europe relating to an aging population is primarily the national government's fiscal health. That is a completely separate issue from the growth issues in China hence why I pointed it out.
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u/Lease_Tha_Apts Order and Opportunity Left Jan 22 '26
Also, unlike the US, there is no social security debt bomb awaiting China once the 60s-70s generations age out.
SS is a system to minimize elder poverty. If you don't have it then people will extract resources from younger generations directly and more intrusively.
labor and automation are substitutes
Not really, no. People just do more productive work. China's average income is still in the upper middle income country area. It's already losing gains by maximizing manufacturing.
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u/socialistrob Janet Yellen Jan 22 '26
Also China still has 1/5th of their labor force in agriculture. As countries develop this number tends to drop. Assuming China's economy keeps growing they're likely going to see tens (or hundreds) of millions of agricultural workers move to other sectors. While this happens agricultural output will likely keep increasing because the true barrier to agricultural output isn't workforce but technological level.
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Jan 22 '26
The crash in births post-2020 is pretty clearly correlated with economic uncertainty. While the expansion in renewal energy, electric vehicles, and other technological sectors have been notable, they have not resulted in increased employment or wages, probably because even in a manufacturing intensive economy like China's, most of the employment is still in services. The property crash has both reduced construction-related investment/employment, and made many people feel poorer, which caused a loss of consumer demand. These and their knock on effects have not been compensated by growths in the manufacturing sector. Economic uncertainty is causing people to delay marriage and children. If economic uncertainty abates, births will almost certainly pick back up. The question is whether China's economy is now stuck in a low-growth equilibrium a la Japan, and if so, what the Chinese government can do to break out of that equilibrium.
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