The opinion piece comes amid growing concern about the country’s population crisis, which has pushed local governments to roll out a series of pronatalist policies to address the declining fertility rate and rapidly ageing population.
Births in China have been falling for four consecutive years since 2016 and hit a record low of 12 million in 2020. In some provinces, births are set to drop by close to 20 per cent this year.
Some demographers estimate China could go into population decline as early as this year.
I’ve been reading Zeihan for years. The population drop was never going to be a surprise to those who don’t lie for a living.
Money quote:
“This is what a country looks like when it is going out of history.”
Yep, China has a TFR of 1.60-1.70. Probably even lower. Back in the heyday of the One-Child Policy they would have been shouting this from the rooftops.
Taiwan 1.09, S. Korea 1.04, Japan 1.48
UK 1.7, France 1.8., Germany 1.54
Canada 1.47, Australia 1.65, US 1.8
India 2.2, Indonesia 2.3, Nigeria 5.3!
In 2070 biggest country in the world will be India, then Nigeria. China will drop by half to 750 million. US will slightly increase if immigration keeps up to historic rates. Littoral East Asia (that’s us!) and Europe will plummet drastically.
China’s demographic issues are a real worry for them. Not only is the population old, but it’s also poor and uneducated. As manufacturing goes away, it’s going to be really hard to find work for these people.
The government is well aware of this though, which is why they are restructuring their economy. Will see how that goes.
Not really , they just announced the reforms for the five year plan. Hard to say. Personally think they are overreaching and taking US decline for granted
If you keep setting new goals for the plan that isn’t working out, snot really a plan. Ad hoc central planning always ends of like this. The US is just milking the cow dry. Playing them out just like they did to the USSR, who look at that, is also suffering a horrid population decline.
Our species is insane. We are about to launch a new telescope that will make Hubble look like a child’s toy, so we can understand creation, but at the same time we have stopped creating people.
I hope there’s an afterlife where someone can explain what the hell is going on.
But to be fair the world has changed a lot and the US just had a violent insurrection and retreated from Afghanistan. There are obviously a lot of structural problems in America right now and it has fallen from grace in the world.
Everything is about reform and I think Beijing is underestimating US ability for reform.
