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Is this a symptom of demographic collapse? If China really shrinks by 300,000,000 over the next 50 years, visiting empty cities filled with mummified remains

Is this a symptom of demographic collapse? If China really shrinks by 300,000,000 over the next 50 years, visiting empty cities filled with mummified remains might be commonplace(economies can’t pivot fast enough to handling such a high death rate per active worker).

datameta 2y ago
Not that it nullifies the issue, but automation ought to be assuading their worries.
- mensetmanusman 2y ago
  Wall-E robots to deal with the dead?
roenxi 2y ago
I'd guess the answer to the question is yes (if someone is 70 with no children, it isn't a stretch to see how they might have no visitors for a month). However industrial societies are very efficient so I don't know what you mean by "can’t pivot fast enough to handling". China could easily handle high death rates per average worker, practically speaking there isn't an upper limit to how many deaths can be handled. Corpses are generally fairly cooperative and theoretically they'll even go away by themselves if left alone. It is caring for old living people that is the hard part.
- Qem 2y ago
  > However industrial societies are very efficient so I don't know what you mean by "can’t pivot fast enough to handling". I wonder how social norms could change if faced with a very large number of such cases. Perhaps people will relax social norms around mourning. Like, eventually becoming acceptable to have unclaimed bodies bagged and left in the curb to be collected by the same truck that collects municipal solid waste, to be landfilled.
  - throwawaymobule 2y ago
    Slightly less of a change, but something like this has happened before when the existing funeral system was overwhelmed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Necropolis_Railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Necropolis_Railway
  - vasco 2y ago
    When predicting changes in attitudes, it's always safer to assume changes will happen to behaviors that started recently than behaviors that started long ago. In the case of mourning, we've done it since before we could write, and many animals do it too, so it is unlikely we'd stop.
    - Qem 2y ago
      > In the case of mourning, we've done it since before we could write, and many animals do it too, so it is unlikely we'd stop. We and other animals tend to mourn those that we personally knew and were dear to us. This situation is a bit different, as it involves a surging share of dying people that were left with no close people to mourn them, or even simply notice their absence.
    - mensetmanusman 2y ago
      “Bring out your dead!” BANG
- thoroughburro 2y ago
  > Corpses are generally fairly cooperative and theoretically they'll even go away by themselves if left alone. This is dangerously incorrect, as India is continuing to discover. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_vulture_crisis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_vulture_crisis
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    I think "getting eaten by vultures" is (from our vantage point at least) pretty much the same as "going away by themselves if left alone". That is, it's not like you need to spend money or resources to deal with the problem, you just let nature take its course. All you need to do is not poison 99% of your vulture population, which is what India did. They learned their lesson, and based on your Wikipedia link, the poison is now banned and populations are starting to recover.
    - DiggyJohnson 2y ago
      Vultures consuming corpses before family or authorities are aware of the death is pretty much the least civilized norm I can image.
      - mensetmanusman 2y ago
        “ The opposite of a civilization in this context, where people neglect the elderly and let them be eaten by vultures without care or concern, could be described as barbarism or a dystopia. These terms often carry connotations of societal decay, where moral and cultural norms have broken down, and the community fails to uphold basic human dignity. “
        lotsofpulp 2y ago
        That’s too simplistic. The situation depends on multiple parameters, including rate of children (future workers) being added, rate of automation advancement, energy supplies, and changes in length of non productive years due to technological advances. It is obviously possible for old people to live too long so as to become a net cost to society, which means the resources used to keep them alive take from resources that could be spent elsewhere (such as on the young). In fact, that is the top political problem in almost all modern democracies, even though it is not stated that plainly.
Qem 2y ago
Guess it will become much worse in South Korea, with their 0.7 fertility rate. Many people going single childless today will become lonely elders 30 years from now. It will compound for all the single children, that will have almost no collateral relatives to check on them (no siblings, no nephews/nieces, et cetera).
pj_mukh 2y ago
Degrowth IRL.
newzisforsukas 2y ago
> economies can’t pivot fast enough to handling such a high death rate per active worker Why? People have died at relatively faster rates in populations throughout history.
- pjc50 2y ago
  The Siege of Leningrad killed 1.5 million people, roughly half the population of the city, over a period of roughly two years.
  - Qem 2y ago
    The survivors cohort left to rebuild probably was not composed mostly of retirement-age people.
    - lostlogin 2y ago
      It was also a vicious dictatorship, and the live tended to stay alive longer if they did what they were told. A feature of St Petersburg is the weather. It helped keep the place sanitary when corpses just froze.
- karaterobot 2y ago
  It seems like you're saying that 6 million excess deaths a year in a country has been the norm throughout history, but I don't think that's the case. Even if we just think about it as a percentage of the total population, 300MM into 1.4B is ~21% of total population dead in 50 years, which would be catastrophic for a country's ability to maintain its economy, among other things. It's not exactly as bad as the bubonic plague, but much worse than Covid in any country, and much worse than any wars I can think of, so I think it would have a pretty large effect.
  - maxglute 2y ago
    > catastrophic for a country's ability to maintain its economy Productivity of 10s of new STEM every few years > productivity of 300m of subsistence farmers / low skill workers in informal economy. Having a lot of surplus people helps in some domains of development / consumption, it's a drag in others, i.e. per capita food/energy security. Thinking about PRC being just 20% less crowded during holidays/events is still pretty stressful.
pjc50 2y ago
The current population of China in 2024 is 1,425,178,782, a 0.03% decline from 2023. I don't know where you're getting your alarmism from. If you bother to work out deaths per day in your scenario I suspect it's only a fraction of a percent higher. (People go absolutely bananas about fertility dipping briefly below replacement, as if this isn't a contingent phenomenon that can and will be changed as circumstances and population change)
- csomar 2y ago
  There is a demographic pyramid. Once the trend sets in, it’s almost impossible to reverse. You can see the pyramid now and get an idea how their population will look like. Current year growth is not informative.
- Qem 2y ago
  According to UN projections, by 2060 China's population will be shrinking by approximately 15 million people from one year to another. This is a lower bound estimate on the number of deaths/year there by then, as it includes the effect of births partially offsetting deaths. See https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/PopulationChange/156 https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/Popul...
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
  People go bananas about it because reversing below replacement birth rates is extremely difficult, basically has not been done in the modern era, and is one of the things that can lead to our economy and society collapsing, a la Japan.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    Japanese society collapsed? Didn’t seem like it when I visited a few years ago.
  - marssaxman 2y ago
    If Japan is an example of a collapse, bring it on! We could do far worse.
csomar 2y ago
Around 25% of china population is rural and working on agricultural. They can lose 300m and be completely unaffected if they succeed to move people around. You only need 1% of the people to feed the 99%.

datameta 2y ago

Not that it nullifies the issue, but automation ought to be assuading their worries.

mensetmanusman 2y ago
Wall-E robots to deal with the dead?

roenxi 2y ago

I'd guess the answer to the question is yes (if someone is 70 with no children, it isn't a stretch to see how they might have no visitors for a month). However industrial societies are very efficient so I don't know what you mean by "can’t pivot fast enough to handling". China could easily handle high death rates per average worker, practically speaking there isn't an upper limit to how many deaths can be handled. Corpses are generally fairly cooperative and theoretically they'll even go away by themselves if left alone. It is caring for old living people that is the hard part.

Qem 2y ago
> However industrial societies are very efficient so I don't know what you mean by "can’t pivot fast enough to handling". I wonder how social norms could change if faced with a very large number of such cases. Perhaps people will relax social norms around mourning. Like, eventually becoming acceptable to have unclaimed bodies bagged and left in the curb to be collected by the same truck that collects municipal solid waste, to be landfilled.
- throwawaymobule 2y ago
  Slightly less of a change, but something like this has happened before when the existing funeral system was overwhelmed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Necropolis_Railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Necropolis_Railway
- vasco 2y ago
  When predicting changes in attitudes, it's always safer to assume changes will happen to behaviors that started recently than behaviors that started long ago. In the case of mourning, we've done it since before we could write, and many animals do it too, so it is unlikely we'd stop.
  - Qem 2y ago
    > In the case of mourning, we've done it since before we could write, and many animals do it too, so it is unlikely we'd stop. We and other animals tend to mourn those that we personally knew and were dear to us. This situation is a bit different, as it involves a surging share of dying people that were left with no close people to mourn them, or even simply notice their absence.
  - mensetmanusman 2y ago
    “Bring out your dead!” BANG
thoroughburro 2y ago
> Corpses are generally fairly cooperative and theoretically they'll even go away by themselves if left alone. This is dangerously incorrect, as India is continuing to discover. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_vulture_crisis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_vulture_crisis
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  I think "getting eaten by vultures" is (from our vantage point at least) pretty much the same as "going away by themselves if left alone". That is, it's not like you need to spend money or resources to deal with the problem, you just let nature take its course. All you need to do is not poison 99% of your vulture population, which is what India did. They learned their lesson, and based on your Wikipedia link, the poison is now banned and populations are starting to recover.
  - DiggyJohnson 2y ago
    Vultures consuming corpses before family or authorities are aware of the death is pretty much the least civilized norm I can image.
    - mensetmanusman 2y ago
      “ The opposite of a civilization in this context, where people neglect the elderly and let them be eaten by vultures without care or concern, could be described as barbarism or a dystopia. These terms often carry connotations of societal decay, where moral and cultural norms have broken down, and the community fails to uphold basic human dignity. “
      - lotsofpulp 2y ago
        That’s too simplistic. The situation depends on multiple parameters, including rate of children (future workers) being added, rate of automation advancement, energy supplies, and changes in length of non productive years due to technological advances. It is obviously possible for old people to live too long so as to become a net cost to society, which means the resources used to keep them alive take from resources that could be spent elsewhere (such as on the young). In fact, that is the top political problem in almost all modern democracies, even though it is not stated that plainly.

Qem 2y ago

Guess it will become much worse in South Korea, with their 0.7 fertility rate. Many people going single childless today will become lonely elders 30 years from now. It will compound for all the single children, that will have almost no collateral relatives to check on them (no siblings, no nephews/nieces, et cetera).

pj_mukh 2y ago

Degrowth IRL.

newzisforsukas 2y ago

> economies can’t pivot fast enough to handling such a high death rate per active worker Why? People have died at relatively faster rates in populations throughout history.

pjc50 2y ago
The Siege of Leningrad killed 1.5 million people, roughly half the population of the city, over a period of roughly two years.
- Qem 2y ago
  The survivors cohort left to rebuild probably was not composed mostly of retirement-age people.
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    It was also a vicious dictatorship, and the live tended to stay alive longer if they did what they were told. A feature of St Petersburg is the weather. It helped keep the place sanitary when corpses just froze.
karaterobot 2y ago
It seems like you're saying that 6 million excess deaths a year in a country has been the norm throughout history, but I don't think that's the case. Even if we just think about it as a percentage of the total population, 300MM into 1.4B is ~21% of total population dead in 50 years, which would be catastrophic for a country's ability to maintain its economy, among other things. It's not exactly as bad as the bubonic plague, but much worse than Covid in any country, and much worse than any wars I can think of, so I think it would have a pretty large effect.
- maxglute 2y ago
  > catastrophic for a country's ability to maintain its economy Productivity of 10s of new STEM every few years > productivity of 300m of subsistence farmers / low skill workers in informal economy. Having a lot of surplus people helps in some domains of development / consumption, it's a drag in others, i.e. per capita food/energy security. Thinking about PRC being just 20% less crowded during holidays/events is still pretty stressful.

pjc50 2y ago

The current population of China in 2024 is 1,425,178,782, a 0.03% decline from 2023. I don't know where you're getting your alarmism from. If you bother to work out deaths per day in your scenario I suspect it's only a fraction of a percent higher. (People go absolutely bananas about fertility dipping briefly below replacement, as if this isn't a contingent phenomenon that can and will be changed as circumstances and population change)

csomar 2y ago
There is a demographic pyramid. Once the trend sets in, it’s almost impossible to reverse. You can see the pyramid now and get an idea how their population will look like. Current year growth is not informative.
Qem 2y ago
According to UN projections, by 2060 China's population will be shrinking by approximately 15 million people from one year to another. This is a lower bound estimate on the number of deaths/year there by then, as it includes the effect of births partially offsetting deaths. See https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/PopulationChange/156 https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/Popul...
aprilthird2021 2y ago
People go bananas about it because reversing below replacement birth rates is extremely difficult, basically has not been done in the modern era, and is one of the things that can lead to our economy and society collapsing, a la Japan.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  Japanese society collapsed? Didn’t seem like it when I visited a few years ago.
- marssaxman 2y ago
  If Japan is an example of a collapse, bring it on! We could do far worse.

csomar 2y ago

Around 25% of china population is rural and working on agricultural. They can lose 300m and be completely unaffected if they succeed to move people around. You only need 1% of the people to feed the 99%.