Refuting propaganda does not mean that the demographic trend ceases to exist. It's true that there is a cottage industry of doomsayers, and nation-based agendas

Refuting propaganda does not mean that the demographic trend ceases to exist. It's true that there is a cottage industry of doomsayers, and nation-based agendas that criticize Japan and praise China, but we still have the raw numbers indicating that Japan will be one of the first if not the first laboratory where we can see and understand the effects of rapid aging and worker imbalance. This will be relevant because the EU and China will have to deal with this too. It does not mean that Japan is doomed, but rather that some policy will have to be implemented and some large change to the structure of the economy will have to happen in due time. The thing with demographic problems is that they are background noise for a very long time and then suddenly become a much bigger problem. You can verify this yourself by playing around with some simple math such as having a cohort of 100 people at t0, set an average expectancy, and seeing the effects of different birthrates as time goes on.