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Does their demographic cliff have any implication on a war over Taiwan? I would imagine at the moment that China can't spare young people for the time being.
by imbnwa 3y ago
Does their demographic cliff have any implication on a war over Taiwan? I would imagine at the moment that China can't spare young people for the time being.
- brucethemoose2 3y agoWell... China has a high man:woman sex ratio. Especially for young men. So unfortunately they do.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mytailorisrich 3y agoCurrently, China mainland's population: 1.4 billion (inc. about 240 million under 15, apparently), Taiwan's population: 24 million. They can almost literally throw millions of people at Taiwan if they want to, and will be able to do so for many years to come.
- tmn 3y agoThe point is that doing so would exacerbate their demographic cliff issue.
- mytailorisrich 3y agoConsidering the numbers I quoted, it would make little difference (which was the point of my reply).
- tmn 3y agoWhen the issue is already manifest, the margins presumably matter. But either way, the point was just to align the reply with the original comment's point.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rnk 3y agoDictatorships don't care. Look at Russia, it's much worse than China, Russia still suffers from ww2 losses. You can distract the people with a "good war". China has so many more people than Taiwan, they can waste a lot. What do they care, many of the leaders believe it's their destiny to be the world leader. That's not a unique view, a certain group of americans believe the same about the US too.
- Balgair 3y agoAprès moi, le déluge -King Louis XV of France to Madame de Pompadour, his favourite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apr%C3%A8s_moi,_le_d%C3%A9luge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apr%C3%A8s_moi,_le_d%C3%A9luge
- tmn 3y agoThis all may be so. I have no strong opinion on if they will or will not 'waste' their population. But it seems you and others are not addressing the subject issue of the demographic cliff. That point of the demographic cliff is that there are a surplus of old people and a deficit of young (economically productive) people to sustain those old people. Comparison to the population of Taiwan or others are irrelevant in a sense.
- Proven 3y ago[dead]
- maxglute 3y agoTW has worse fertility than PRC at any rate.
- kipchak 3y agoArguably it's the opposite - "surplus males" or "bare branches" are a problem which warfare fixes. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/our-security-threatened-too-many-men https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/our-security-threatened-t... https://kar.kent.ac.uk/11430/1/surplus_men_IS_article.pdf https://kar.kent.ac.uk/11430/1/surplus_men_IS_article.pdf
- TheLoafOfBread 3y agoBut also most of families are single-child ended. So every causality in such war would be end of only baby which family had. This could stir up some unrest.
- barryrandall 3y agoI think that would depend on how China expects the conflict to go. If they're expecting a USSR-Afghanistan-style conflict, dealing with several generations of war-broken and missing men seems like a disincentive. If they're expecting a Desert Storm-style conflict, I doubt demographics play much of a role at all.
- bshipp 3y agoI think the Chinese perspectives of how a war against Taiwan might proceed was dramatically altered after watching Russia get slapped around by Ukraine. I'm convinced it delayed any aggressive move by China against Taiwan by a decade, if not more.
- rnk 3y agoWe've got to make it 10 years from now for demographic change. Great fictional book about a possible 2024 era war, "2034: A Novel of the Next World War", Novel by Elliot Ackerman and James G. Stavridis. It's much more realistic than other novels. China sinks multiple aircraft carriers, they completely hack the us and turn off the power and telecommunications. Then the shit hits the fan. Maybe a limited nuclear exchange will scare the other side, the us and china start thinking.
- jltsiren 3y agoThere is a theory that the US loses every prolonged conflict by default, because taxpayers eventually lose interest in winning. China is probably watching the latest developments in US support for Ukraine with great interest. If the support proves insufficient for Ukraine to win, they may conclude that there is no need for a proper invasion of Taiwan. That there is no need for an all-out war. They could just isolate the island, try to shoot down every plane and sink every ship, and take whatever casualties Americans are willing to take. If their navy and air force can match their US counterparts, they just need to spend more and last longer.
- bshipp 3y agoUkraine is (and will continue to be for decades) a fascinating case study for multiple reasons, but most impressively regarding NATO support. Although headlines detail billions upon billions in spending, the vast majority of those expenditures from the NATO side were for the notional values of stuff that was already just sitting around. This has got to be one if the cheapest conflicts--from a taxpayer perspective--they've ever supported, which is amazing considering the success Ukraine has experienced in bringing Russia's military to its metaphorical knees. I think China would be far more aggressive with Taiwan if the West hadn't frozen Russia's central bank assets. That single move likely had the biggest impact in curtailing any expansionist dreams.
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoI think the 1 Child Policy means that China is a paper tiger. Every single casualty is the end of a Chinese family (more or less) - and this is in a culture that already strongly privileges male heirs
- maxglute 3y agoPRC's huge population denominator will still generate more fresh bodies per year to sustain modern war against any adversary. Especially against TW with even worse demographic trend. They face same recruitment issue as US - not enough technical talent wants to go into military to operate all the complex hardware that requires increasingly less manning. But in event of war, there's endless bodies to draft from.