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> China has a vast hinterland of rural Chinese, much larger than the Phillipines or Vietnam could supply Whose fertility has for the last several decades taken

> China has a vast hinterland of rural Chinese, much larger than the Phillipines or Vietnam could supply Whose fertility has for the last several decades taken a historically massive hit from one child, sex-selective abortion and the policy of taking young rural women to single-sex urban dorms to provide their once cheap labor. A rural region with increasingly middle aged farmers with a rapidly shrinking highly gender imbalanced youth is not a recipe for medium to long term abundant labor supply. Certainly, China’s economy is a profligate debt fueled fever, however, their biggest bill coming due is the demographics.

SamReidHughes 5y ago
They're doing okay on the TFR front compared to South Korea, Taiwan, or Japan. And their past birth rate being <2.0 helps a lot to limit the likelihood of revolution and keeps them from consuming all their natural resources. The problems you describe are financial. The misallocation of resources associated with the debt fueled fever is a spent cost. They can deal with the population pyramid by letting the old be poor.
- nyokodo 5y ago
  > They're doing okay on the TFR front compared to South Korea, Taiwan, or Japan. According to highly suspect official Chinese statistics. > The misallocation of resources associated with the debt fueled fever is a spent cost. It’s not a sunken cost because it’s ongoing and must be ongoing as if it ended the whole Chinese economy would sink. > They can deal with the population pyramid by letting the old be poor. They’re not exactly rich to begin with. Or by poor do you mean let them starve? Nor is that a recipe for staving off revolution!