China's Demographic Collapse Is Not Happening - Yet

[jogo]

Its reasonable to predict for 2050, but all those demographic predictions for 2100 are useless just like demographic prediction of over population from 1920 turned out to be bs.

[MASMIWA]

One thing missing from the equation is the fact that China is moving from a labor intensive workforce to a technology intensive workforce. That means fewer workers are needed and their incomes are much higher.

[jasonjean]

One of the biggest contributing factors, not discussed in this video, is automation and A.I. China is a world leader in both, and is automating its factories more quickly than any other country.

[Austrolopithe]

I'm somewhat confused about where the author of the substack article is getting the 'it'll be fine until the 2050s' thing from. According to the charts the substack author includes, the working-age plateau will only last until 2026 before it starts to decline again. Sure, China's in a better position than Japan in terms of dependency ratio, but Japan is screwed.

[ramsaYt]

Who in China will pay for support of 3 children and their (stay at home) mother?

[michaelsomething]

China has 1.4 billion. Worse case scenario, it dropped down 50%, and it has 700 million, which is still more than the US. As long they dont have demographics where the young paid for the elders. China will be fine. China has sovereign wealth fund that is wroth trillions. The whole world can pay for their elders retirement.

[Taum]

You said that there are many video on the Topic already and then wasted half of your video rehash what others say. Not to mention that your main point doesn’t contradict theirs, either…

[liyuanqian]

There's also a sizable overseas Chinese working or doing business in China, and will continue to do so.

They're not likely to naturalise to PRC citizenship but will be a significant contributor to the economy.

There will be less low-skill worker supply but that is one area technology can mitigate.

[roegoleg]

These issues affecting China will be multiple times worse in the Western economies where governments that have no ways or means to fix.

[cabasadefogo]

Excellent video. A few additional points. 1) Detailed in by Cambridge university, it is now clear that China had about 10 million women it rediscovered because they were never counted in the census. They were the cohort born 1980-1990 during the height of the 1 child policy. Many parents, especially rural simply just didn't report their daughters.
2) As China gets wealthier, increasing Chinese men are also getting foreign wives, from south east asia, russia and ukraine.
3) It has been proven in multiple studies in Japan and S. Korea that the reason ppl are not having more kids has to do with societal structure. Meaning how friendly the local environment (employer policy, access to state sponsored child care, social support from other parents etc). When these factors are favorable, couples naturally will have more kids. China has embarked on a full spectrum policy change to address every one of those factors. Additionally, the current planned real estate burst was done to lower real estate price which is an impediment to young couples getting a home, a social pre requiste in China to marriage. Same goes with the crackdown on after school tutoring services which essentially destroyed a multibillion dollar industry overnight is to equalize the educational opportunities for less affluent families.
4) Finally let's touch on GDP. If you ever visited China the last several years, the per capital GDP in China just doesn't jive. Ppl seems way wealthier. This is proven by the FED"s own data which shows that while americans in total have 600 billion in savings. The Chinese population in total have about 19 Trillion USD in savings. That is a per capital saving of $1714 in US vs $13571. Also monthly trade surplus for China (verified by counter party bank ledger) has grown from 2017 at the start of trade war of 17 Billion USD/month to 100 Billion USD/month. That is the trade surplus of China as a whole trading with the rest of the world. Further when you look at per capital electricity consumption, meat consumption, new car buying etc, all of these are about half of US per capital. Which translate into a gargantuan real economy GDP compared to the US. Why is there a mis counting? It is because China does not count services incurred by business large or small at all. It is considered an expense that is subtracted from the productive economy figures. Whereas the US counts everything including projected income that isn't earned.

[nickjacobs]

China can also draw from a much larger rural population that it can draw into cities, into more "productive" work. Agriculture in China will become more capital intensive, requiring fewer workers, faster than the perceived automation in cities will. Unlike Western countries, who have already hollowed out their rural populations.
China's massive investment into capital goods will continue to facilitate more economic growth into the future.

[billybobhobnob]

Robotics and AI will make a huge number of workers less important but what China will need is a people who consume more.

[defintity_]

This channel is typically good, but I think they just brush off the significance of the structural issues that China is facing. Pretty much all modern developed economies were fully rich by the time their aging happened (Ex. Japan and Germany had 80-95% of US GDP per capita) The population aging and decline was also extremely slow, taking place over numerous decades, whereas China is going to experience this in a much shorter amount of time. In addition, while real estate and investment are massively unproductive and have seen slowdowns, consumption and productivity had been slow as well. For example, Chinese retail sales growth has been on a steady decline since 2008, and is now growing slower than the US rate, with TFR (productivity) growing slower than the US rate as well.

This is happening when China's GDP per capita is 15-25% of US GDP per capita. Keep in mind South Korea's GDP per capita growth was above 6% for 53 years, while China is going under after 20. (And this is while China's average growth rate even for that period was much lower.)

[tas]

This was weak. 5 minutes of background, 3 minutes of describing the conclusion of someone else’s blog post. Data all taken at surface value.

[ju]

It took you over 5 minutes to get to the point in a 10 min video 😂

[nbödŷFŘ_]

as a chinese born american, the part abt the gen alphas are actually true...
i have like- 20-30 cousins in china, and they're all gen alphas😭 one of them in beijing literally has a boyfriend💀🙏

[andrewrogers]

Clearly this video doesn’t understand how demographics work.

China has been beneath replacement level since 1991, and they have a lower fertility than even Japan. The one child policy didn’t help given that it basically leads to multiple men who can’t get pregnant are left not being able to provide more children to the workforce.

Having a larger population doesn’t actually solve a demographic crisis, it makes it worse. More older people means more young workers that have to provide for their pensions and the old.

I mean this isn’t just me saying this, China themselves dropped the one child policy…

[ryanmckenna]

Well said. Everyone loves exciting stories. This seems more realistic.

[ryeclansen]

Actually a drastically lower population, like 50% lower, is not necessarily a bad thing for China, nor all the other countries of the world. More and more work and production is being done by robots, machines and AI, even elderly care. As we get older and live longer and healthier lives we can be productive longer and be OK without a big young population taking care of us. Continuous and ever expanding economies should not be the end goal in itself. The world as a whole might not be able to handle that. Less people means less pollution, more green space, more space for animals to flourish, that makes our lives better. Even with 50% of its present population China would still outnumber the USA and could still very well be super power. Just having a massive population doesn't mean you will be a well off country or even a super power. Just look at India, and some other nations that have a large population but struggle with providing for them all.

[DSDecay]

You put too much hope on upcoming alpha generation, assuming they'll start families, etc. But why would they want to? They'll face huge economical pressure, they will also have completely different mindset. My bet - the snowball will not be stopped. And all social scientists/analysts are skeptical about the potential of alpha gen to reverse the trend. So odds of full recovery are below 30%, and for partial - around 50%. That is given they will not solely rely on alpha gen but make some good steps themselves from, like, right now.