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Don’t forget the big problem China will eventually have to deal with: their single child policy is coming to a head with their aging workforce. When the chicke

Don’t forget the big problem China will eventually have to deal with: their single child policy is coming to a head with their aging workforce. When the chickens come home to roost, they’re going to have to figure out who is going to replace the retired population, and nobody’s in a rush to immigrate to China.

ecshafer 5y ago
There are quite a lot of people who try to immigrate to China. If China opened up, they wouldn't have a shortage of immigrants. There are immigrant communities from all over already there. China is dealing with their one child policy, they have put the cap at 3 children iirc currently, and are also making policies against things like abortion and divorce. Which may not be the correct move, but I do see more laws incentivizing children coming.
- riffraff 5y ago
  > There are quite a lot of people who try to immigrate to China. Do you have a source i can read about that? I'd be interested to know more about this.
- finiteseries 5y ago
  There are 1.4 billion people in China, and ~1 million immigrants pre pandemic. The number of new migrants required would be astronomical in a country already struggling with food and energy insecurity. It takes 20 years to make a 20 year old consumer while the rest of the population ages 20 years. Seems a bit optimistic and wishy washy to say the least.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    > The number of new migrants required would be astronomical in a country already struggling with food and energy insecurity. Interesting. You could be referring to several European countries, including the UK. Also interesting: the Plague was largely responsible for the ending of serfdom, by greatly increasing the bargaining-power of peasants. I have wondered whether COVID might eventually precipitate similar tectonic social changes.
    - finiteseries 5y ago
      The UK doesn’t suffer from either of food or energy insecurity and only has 68 million people with decent demographics. There are more people over the age of 65 in China than the total population of the UK and France combined.
  - alfiedotwtf 5y ago
    China struggling with food insecurities? IIRC China have taken over the Netherlands as the world's largest producer
dirtyid 5y ago
>replace the retired population Why replace anyone? The alternative is to ramp down to a lower population baseline and deal with the transition. 800M Chinese by 2100 is still plenty. Reality is right now there's 100s of million undereducated/undertrained Chinese who can't be integrated into modern economy - they're net drains. And even current system is struggling to employ millions of STEM graduates. PRC doesn't need immigration, just clamp down on top level brain drain and setup foreign worker program to take care of the aging - plenty of cheap ASEAN labour. Bonus side effect of less people = more self sufficiency and freedom to conduct assertive foreign policy. There's few upsides to maintaining and trying to increase living standards of 1.4B people with PRC resources.
- adventured 5y ago
  That's the correct answer. I never cease to be astounded that so many people don't seem to grasp that you can increase output per capita, productivity per capita, as the population contracts. The focus should be on improving the quality of life of the people, not on expanding the economy in absolute terms. China would be better off with 1/2 the people at the same GDP (ie ~700m people at ~$24,000 per capita GDP). Population contraction is desirable in many cases, so long as you can continue to increase productivity per capita. China has a long ways to go yet in terms of potential to raise their per capita economic output, if they're willing to pair that with a contracting population. And the lightening (from depopulation) on their resource needs is a huge help, it makes their situation so much easier.
  - hackerfromthefu 5y ago
    As the population ages, will older people be able to retire? In that case their productivity transforms to a negative, needing to be supported by the remaining workers.
    - adventured 5y ago
      China's output per capita is so mediocre (~$12k GDP per capita) there is a lot of room to outrun the worker contraction and retirement context. Although I'm skeptical their increasingly rigid economy, courtesy of Xi transporting them back in time to a worse system of stricter command & control (vs a more liberalized approach), will be capable of it. Their productivity doesn't transform into a negative. To deal with more aged persons, they need to bolster output and taxation on that output, such that society builds a social safety net for the retired. China has room for increased taxation on various aspects of wealth and income in their nation (their wealth has ballooned massively in the last 10-20 years obviously), along with higher personal income tax rates in general. Increasing productivity and automation frees labor to be devoted to other things that society needs. For example their farming system is very ineffecient, they have far too many people working in farming producing far too little (compare it to the US, South Korea or Japan). If you bring that up to where it should be, some of that labor becomes available to take care of the elderly, paid for via taxes. Now apply that to everything else in China that still needs modernized, made more efficient, automated.
blackoil 5y ago
Considering that Europe/Japan haven't completely collapsed it is a solvable problem. Increasing automation, moving people away from agriculture an d moving low value labour intensive work to South East Asia and Africa are obvious steps.
- throwaway473825 5y ago
  Western Europe has a lot of immigration and the population is actually increasing. Japan has stagnated for about three decades now.
gameswithgo 5y ago
Those of you who seem to think a nation has to grow populations indefinitely or fail, what is the long term end game in your mind? Hope that your nation wins the inevitable global resource war?
NicoJuicy 5y ago
Indeed. There's a large telegram group of engineers fleeing out of Russia. Almost all want to flee/relocate Europe/US/Canada. Turkey, Georgia, ... Come in after. I literally saw 0 requests for China.
- SXX 5y ago
  It's simple. 90% of people feeing know English to at least some extent, but almost no one know Chinese. Also regardless of what Russian regime propoganda trying to sell we all grown on western culture and want to live in western world. People who wanted to live in Asia moved to Thailand / Vietnam / Bali long ago.

ecshafer 5y ago

There are quite a lot of people who try to immigrate to China. If China opened up, they wouldn't have a shortage of immigrants. There are immigrant communities from all over already there. China is dealing with their one child policy, they have put the cap at 3 children iirc currently, and are also making policies against things like abortion and divorce. Which may not be the correct move, but I do see more laws incentivizing children coming.

riffraff 5y ago
> There are quite a lot of people who try to immigrate to China. Do you have a source i can read about that? I'd be interested to know more about this.
finiteseries 5y ago
There are 1.4 billion people in China, and ~1 million immigrants pre pandemic. The number of new migrants required would be astronomical in a country already struggling with food and energy insecurity. It takes 20 years to make a 20 year old consumer while the rest of the population ages 20 years. Seems a bit optimistic and wishy washy to say the least.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  > The number of new migrants required would be astronomical in a country already struggling with food and energy insecurity. Interesting. You could be referring to several European countries, including the UK. Also interesting: the Plague was largely responsible for the ending of serfdom, by greatly increasing the bargaining-power of peasants. I have wondered whether COVID might eventually precipitate similar tectonic social changes.
  - finiteseries 5y ago
    The UK doesn’t suffer from either of food or energy insecurity and only has 68 million people with decent demographics. There are more people over the age of 65 in China than the total population of the UK and France combined.
- alfiedotwtf 5y ago
  China struggling with food insecurities? IIRC China have taken over the Netherlands as the world's largest producer

dirtyid 5y ago

>replace the retired population Why replace anyone? The alternative is to ramp down to a lower population baseline and deal with the transition. 800M Chinese by 2100 is still plenty. Reality is right now there's 100s of million undereducated/undertrained Chinese who can't be integrated into modern economy - they're net drains. And even current system is struggling to employ millions of STEM graduates. PRC doesn't need immigration, just clamp down on top level brain drain and setup foreign worker program to take care of the aging - plenty of cheap ASEAN labour. Bonus side effect of less people = more self sufficiency and freedom to conduct assertive foreign policy. There's few upsides to maintaining and trying to increase living standards of 1.4B people with PRC resources.

adventured 5y ago
That's the correct answer. I never cease to be astounded that so many people don't seem to grasp that you can increase output per capita, productivity per capita, as the population contracts. The focus should be on improving the quality of life of the people, not on expanding the economy in absolute terms. China would be better off with 1/2 the people at the same GDP (ie ~700m people at ~$24,000 per capita GDP). Population contraction is desirable in many cases, so long as you can continue to increase productivity per capita. China has a long ways to go yet in terms of potential to raise their per capita economic output, if they're willing to pair that with a contracting population. And the lightening (from depopulation) on their resource needs is a huge help, it makes their situation so much easier.
- hackerfromthefu 5y ago
  As the population ages, will older people be able to retire? In that case their productivity transforms to a negative, needing to be supported by the remaining workers.
  - adventured 5y ago
    China's output per capita is so mediocre (~$12k GDP per capita) there is a lot of room to outrun the worker contraction and retirement context. Although I'm skeptical their increasingly rigid economy, courtesy of Xi transporting them back in time to a worse system of stricter command & control (vs a more liberalized approach), will be capable of it. Their productivity doesn't transform into a negative. To deal with more aged persons, they need to bolster output and taxation on that output, such that society builds a social safety net for the retired. China has room for increased taxation on various aspects of wealth and income in their nation (their wealth has ballooned massively in the last 10-20 years obviously), along with higher personal income tax rates in general. Increasing productivity and automation frees labor to be devoted to other things that society needs. For example their farming system is very ineffecient, they have far too many people working in farming producing far too little (compare it to the US, South Korea or Japan). If you bring that up to where it should be, some of that labor becomes available to take care of the elderly, paid for via taxes. Now apply that to everything else in China that still needs modernized, made more efficient, automated.

blackoil 5y ago

Considering that Europe/Japan haven't completely collapsed it is a solvable problem. Increasing automation, moving people away from agriculture an d moving low value labour intensive work to South East Asia and Africa are obvious steps.

throwaway473825 5y ago
Western Europe has a lot of immigration and the population is actually increasing. Japan has stagnated for about three decades now.

gameswithgo 5y ago

Those of you who seem to think a nation has to grow populations indefinitely or fail, what is the long term end game in your mind? Hope that your nation wins the inevitable global resource war?

NicoJuicy 5y ago

Indeed. There's a large telegram group of engineers fleeing out of Russia. Almost all want to flee/relocate Europe/US/Canada. Turkey, Georgia, ... Come in after. I literally saw 0 requests for China.

SXX 5y ago
It's simple. 90% of people feeing know English to at least some extent, but almost no one know Chinese. Also regardless of what Russian regime propoganda trying to sell we all grown on western culture and want to live in western world. People who wanted to live in Asia moved to Thailand / Vietnam / Bali long ago.