China's Self-Inflicted Demographic Disaster Is Here

[Eddie Teach]

You want your tales, you pay for it

You want your higher population, *you* pay for it

[Monoriu]

You want your tales, you pay for it

You want your higher population, *you* pay for it

That's not how it works.  Individual actions have no impact on the group outcome.  I want a bigger population, somebody else pay for it

[Razgovory]

 

[Martinus]

If you paid me $10 million, I would sire a child myself.

[Valmy]

If you paid me $10 million, I would sire a child myself.

That would be one lucky child

Oh wait just to sire it? How much more would I have to pay for you to raise it?

[dps]

If I were still single, I'd sire as many kids as you like, as long as you took financial responsibility for them and I got to pick the mothers.

[garbon]

If you paid me $10 million, I would sire a child myself.

That would be one lucky child

Oh wait just to sire it? How much more would I have to pay for you to raise it?

With 10 mil, I think I could afford to send it off to boarding school.

[Valmy]

If you paid me $10 million, I would sire a child myself.

That would be one lucky child

Oh wait just to sire it? How much more would I have to pay for you to raise it?

With 10 mil, I think I could afford to send it off to boarding school.

That isn't the deal

I wanted somebody for Marty to pass his knowledge of analogies to.

[grumbler]

If you paid me $10 million, I would sire a child myself.

That would be one lucky child

Oh wait just to sire it? How much more would I have to pay for you to raise it?

With 10 mil, I think I could afford to send it off to boarding school.

That isn't the deal

I wanted somebody for Marty to pass his knowledge of analogies to.

[The Minsky Moment]

Let's look at some facts.

Per the CIA Factbook, the PRC birth rate is 12.49 per 1000.  Which is exactly tied with the US, and just ahead of France and the UK.  In comparison, Taiwan - which has some cultural and geographical similarities, but does not have a coercive population control policy -- is at 8.47.  In terms of children/woman, it is 1.6 in the PRC, as compared to 1.12 in Taiwan.

Some speculations/proposed interpretations:

+ Although the PRC population control policy is a horrific policy, it's not clear at least at this point that is a the key influencer, or even a significant one, on the rate of births and population growth.
+ PRC demographics suggest future challenges, but not insurmountable ones.
+ Recent economic data in the PRC - slowing top line growth rates, slowing investment rates, high wage growth, movement of cheap labor production to Vietnam/Burma/etch., - all are suggestive of a transition to higher productivity production and ultimately a higher consumption/investment mix.
+ Such transitions can be very tricky and it is still very early stage at the PRC.  So it could fail or go massively wrong. 
+ OTOH PRC has handled other tricky economic transitions remarkably effectively since 1979 so I would hesitate to pronounce doom and gloom.

[Monoriu]

Let's look at some facts.

Per the CIA Factbook, the PRC birth rate is 12.49 per 1000.  Which is exactly tied with the US, and just ahead of France and the UK.  In comparison, Taiwan - which has some cultural and geographical similarities, but does not have a coercive population control policy -- is at 8.47.  In terms of children/woman, it is 1.6 in the PRC, as compared to 1.12 in Taiwan.

Some speculations/proposed interpretations:

+ Although the PRC population control policy is a horrific policy, it's not clear at least at this point that is a the key influencer, or even a significant one, on the rate of births and population growth.
+ PRC demographics suggest future challenges, but not insurmountable ones.
+ Recent economic data in the PRC - slowing top line growth rates, slowing investment rates, high wage growth, movement of cheap labor production to Vietnam/Burma/etch., - all are suggestive of a transition to higher productivity production and ultimately a higher consumption/investment mix.
+ Such transitions can be very tricky and it is still very early stage at the PRC.  So it could fail or go massively wrong. 
+ OTOH PRC has handled other tricky economic transitions remarkably effectively since 1979 so I would hesitate to pronounce doom and gloom.

The fact that China's birthrate is about the same as the US birthrate is cause for concern.  China is no where near as developed as the US.  In other words, China still has a long way to go but now has far fewer human resources at its disposal.  Also, the US receives a lot of immigrants, whereas China is not exactly a target for immigrants.  Lots of Chinese want to move to the US, but the reverse is not true.