China's demographic catastrophe: Could half the population disappear?

[@robertmartin3753]

Sad, but the handbook of life says " you reap what you sow"

[@winglo1697]

They sow lots of rice and they eat a lot of rice.

[@robertmartin3753]

@@winglo1697 Asian ,college boy , or both?

[@robertmartin3753]

@@winglo1697 Asian college boy ,or just wannabe funny guy?

[@robertmartin3753]

@@winglo1697 thousands of people trying to be funny,this your attempt at an application?

[@bobmorane4926]

How abt S Korea, what did they sow to deserve this ? Oh u didn't know. They will probably lose half of their 50 or so million population b4 China. What will be left ? Same with Japan, what did Japan sow to deserve this ? And Italy which has been trying to sell its homes for $1.00. What did they sow to deserve this ? Ppl living in a glass house shouldn't throw rocks at others ... Just saying. Better to stare at your navel !!!

[@vanestidragon6681]

How could they make a video about child policy in China and not mention the female infanticide that resulted?

[@hecate235]

That's what I wondered. I guess it would be because of all those men doing the research.....

[@patriciarobinson5909]

I know! Hard to have children without girls!

[@smrk2452]

Ikr 💯

[@thereseogorzaly2496]

Yes!

[@mikeym.1461]

@@hecate235 try to not be an asshat...

[@hydroac9387]

Also effecting the birth rate: * Small (even tiny) apartments. China's big cities have some of the highest property values in the world. This does not promote big families. * Hukou system, which limit benefits such as education to established residents of a city and punishes migrant workers. * Not enough women. During the 40-year run of One Child families generally selected son over daughters. This leads to a gender imbalance, further driving down birth rates * Female preferences. Women do not like traditional family structures, where the men make most of the decisions and the women take care of the household. * No births outside of wedlock. The Chinese are famously family oriented, and having a birth out of wedlock brings shame on a family.

[@Noam_Chompski]

This is a problem everywhere. Building for short term profit while ignoring long term gain

[@chriswatson1698]

@Dances-st6id And the Chinese people will be vastly better off.

[@Willsmiff1985]

@Dances-st6idno, that would be South Korea. China bad too, but we all gonna eat the demographic crow in the end

[@valetudo1569]

The interesting thing about the Female preference is - The men, of course, have the opposite preference. They, by and large, like/expect the traditional structure because it benefits them more.. its a clash of the genders. If males were willing to be more open-minded and progressive, more females would probably be willing to pair-bond.

[@fdm2155]

China has also experienced a significant wave of migration abroad in recent years. Particularly true for wealthier families. I haven't seen any numbers lately just that cities are emptying out of well to do locals and foreigners.

[@pettypractice7872]

I am Chinese. I wish to say that this demographic trend change will be economically painful in the medium term, but overall beneficial in the long term (50+ years out). Our country’s geographic conditions (fresh water volume, land area suitable for agriculture, per capita protein production) simply cannot support more than 800 million people comfortably, and we have been at demographic overcapacity for decades which have brought incredible damage to our geographic heritage. For the sake of our posterity I hope that their lower numbers will enable them to enjoy more prosperous lives and restore natural beauty to our landscapes and environment.

[@mateomaderas5504]

@@pettypractice7872 well said, most countries are overcrowded right now. If you can avoid overpopulation then the future will be better.

[@irenerosenberg3609]

I would love to know how the sustainable number of people was calculated. Mainly, because I would like to know what that number is for the entire planet.

[@kifi672]

@@irenerosenberg3609 it makes no sense to talk about the whole planet. Some places can sustain lots of people, others can't. Access to water, food, shelter do vary with geography, natural resources and economy.

[@loveleov]

@@irenerosenberg3609this has been calculated. Just google it.

[@exuconton]

What about India?

[@yehuihe1825]

This again. demographic issue is global. Not just China. Here in Amsterdam government had to close 50 schools in a single year. Everywhere now is like that

[@purpurina5663]

Except Muslims 😬

[@quinnh4313]

@@purpurina5663 Iran's population is already declining and the muslim fertility rate decreases when they move to non-muslim countries. They will face the same problem, just slower

[@CordeliaWagner1999]

In Germany I see 🧕🏾 with at least a toddler, a Baby in a Baby cart and pregnancy womb. They breed like 🐇

[@hecate235]

It's because the Baby Boomer cohort is ending. Their children had fewer children, so the need for schools on every other block is going too. Lower populatios also mean less stress on the environment, and high wages. Which is one reason why governments are all screaming, corporations won't be able to bully workers into substandard wages and living conditions. Lower profits, until they go to an all robot work force.

[@_Julia.K_]

@@hecate235 Governments are screaming because of population aging. Number of elderly people per one worker increases with every generation. In theory, less workers mean higher wages. What we actually see is corporations would rather shrink their production/activities than raise wages. Populational decline is not new. It's been happening for decades. Do you see much increase in wages and living conditions? Housing crisis is so deep as never before.

[@masterchinese28]

The one-child policy was built on assumptions that were no longer valid long before the policy was reversed. In 1980 81% of the Chinese lived in rural areas and only 19% in urban areas. Simply put, farmers like having more children to help on the farm and they have the space to raise them. Children were an asset, not a liability. Today 65% of the Chinese population lives in urban areas and space to raise a child is limited and expensive. Also expensive are the higher and long-lasting costs of raising a child. Raising that child might only have an economic return if they support their parents in retirement, but there is no guarantee. Beyond the out-of-pocket expenses, there are opportunity costs for careers interrupted or reduced by child rearing. On the whole, children are an economic liability and not an asset to the modern, urban parents. i.e. The government had assumed that its citizens still saw having children from the view of the agrarian society it had when the policy was enacted and not from the reality that has been spurred on by their own push to have people move to cities and enter the global workforce.

[@khersonskiyarbuzkhersonski2460]

Why are the Anglo-Saxons always trying to impose their model of government around the world? Why does democracy a priori mean military-political cooperation with America? Why did America appropriate the concept of democracy to itself?

[@Ruth-os4mi]

Interesting.

[@chrishart8548]

If the children they had are working like slaves how would they look after them in retirement anyway. I can't look after my 83 year old dad wile I'm still working full time. And I doubt I will even be able to retire anyway. If I could retire he would be 115 by then.

[@Trueye-sl2mr]

The one child policy only applied to urban areas and Han people to alleviate deficits in housing, schools, services. etc. It did not apply to rural areas and ethnic populations. The Uighur population has grown twice as fast as the Han population, Policies in China are mainly driven by white papers submitted by all walks in life. The government is well aware of the aspirations and problems of its citizens. Policies are made and enacted after due discussion and deliberations. The policies are constantly monitored, adjusted and reviewed to ensure that the policies work well. The process is not perfect but very, very good as testified by the good governance in China and steady progress for decades.

[@churblefurbles]

Proving the point against "walkable cities"

[@zapfanzapfan]

Population halving by the end of the century is a very optimistic view, that assumes birthrates of 10-ish million per year will last the rest of the century. If people born now on average have 1 child then birthrates in 2050 will be 5 million per year, if they in turn have one child then birthrates in 2080 will be 2,5 million per year...

[@Frisco1717]

Yes Chinas population might actually halve by 2075 or even 2050 if the birth rate continues to drop

[@geofflepper3207]

Yes - seems certain that each cohort of Chinese people will be at most half as populous as their parent's generation. That's not even considering the fact that emigration from China is vastly greater than immigration to China. There was a report saying that Chinese demographers are afraid that China's population will fall to 525 million by the end of the century. And that's a old population of 525 million people with relatively few people in the workforce - They estimated a workforce of only 230 million people. 525 million population in 2101 certainly seems a more realistic number than 700 million. And it could be even lower if the Chinese fertility rate continues to fall which seems likely as young Chinese people are overwhelmed looking after a rapidly growing number of elderly people. By 2030 China will have a higher percentage of people over age 60 than the United States and the gap between the two countries in that statistic will grow over time. And China is still a relatively poor country where few people have decent pensions. When a person has two parents and four grandparents to worry about all on their own because of the one child policy they aren't going to be thinking of having many children or possibly any children at all.

[@Lisargarza]

@@geofflepper3207You raise many interesting points, particularly the fact that one child in China has two parents and four great grandparents (and up to eight great grandparents, although that’s not as likely.) Seeing to their needs can become a second full-time job which a sibling could help halve. But I’m sure China will come up with some innovative solution, such as not allowing people to retire until, well… ever.

[@tritium1998]

​​@@geofflepper3207 China doesn't depend on demographics. You do, even for other countries and immigrants to sustain you. Your financial comparisons don't mean anything when you have less science and technology going on while you brag about being supposedly richer with your inflated prices of goods and services.

[@martynhaggerty2294]

The irony is that it would have decreased anyway without all the cruelty. Just look at japan and South Korea.

[@stone-hand]

By the time they introduced the one child policy fertility had already gone down to 2.4 kids per woman and was going down, so ... Yes. On the other hand, Chinese families would have still preferred males to girls and preferentially aborted these latter anyway. The policy made things starker, and robbed China of a decade of decent demographics, but some elements of the cruelty are as much a product of Chinese traditional culture as much if not more than of governmental policies.

[@SwedishSinologyNerd]

That's just the communist MO tho innit? Arrive at the same place as liberal countries, only slower, more expensively and with billions more dead.

[@pipiqiqi4010]

@@stone-hand you are wrong, the mindset of people had changed, the new families are more like a girl instead of a boy. the families around me, they really want to have a baby girl, because the girl is much better to their parents when their parents are old. and the families have a girl is much happier than the families just have boys.

[@geofflepper3207]

​​@@pipiqiqi4010 There are reports that in North America now girls overall do significantly better at school than boys and girls now have the opportunity to enter any field they want. If a girl is more likely to become better educated and get a higher paying job that's one reason why some people might prefer to have a girl. Articles have titles such as "Why are boys having so much trouble at school?". Obviously it's a generalization and does not apply to all boys and girls. Don't know if girls are doing better at school than boys in other countries. Another thing is that some traditional male jobs are threatened by technological change. If trucks become self driving that would take away one of the most common types of jobs for men. On the other hand with high population growth and the need for more housing there is huge demand for skilled tradesmen such as carpenters, plumbers and electricians

[@pipiqiqi4010]

@@geofflepper3207 what you said is suitable for China as well. for example, there are more girls in university than boys in China, even the post bachelor education, there are more girls. apart from the education, there are more and more female truck drivers in China as well, even the females in construction site are more and more, their skills are good as males.

[@neilog747]

The biosphere is singing. But the corporates are squealing. This so called-catastrophe is highly revealing!

[@cmaven4762]

The irony of all this hype about Chinese population is that a generation ago this population decrease would have been viewed as a success story.....

[@tritium1998]

Back when they considered people wanting less kids as a sign of being richer, but it was always going to be politically incorrect to announce a bigger country than Japan being fully developed. Even Japan scared them.

[@GnomesRox]

It still is a success story if you don't frame economic success around Ponzi schemes that are unsustainable.

[@DD-sr9xm]

It’s mostly a function of urbanisation. In rural areas, children are assets. They are free labor, then later in life they are care providers. In urban areas, children are liabilities. They require getting a larger flat, child care, private school. China saw the most intense wave of urbanisation in human history. In 2000, 2/3 of Chinese lived in rural areas, but by 2015 it had flipped, 2/3 of the population lived in urban areas. Furthermore, that 1/3 of the population that moved to cities was mostly 15-35 year olds, the cohort which contributes most to child birth.

[@anhangamirim]

None of those options are good. It is not hard to think in a third way where children are view as people, not commodities. But we must get rid of capitalism first.

[@NelsonMills-r3m]

All of Moa's great initiatives were abject disasters. Millions dead and displaced; and now a demographic death spiral.

[@irenerosenberg3609]

And yet, some people still think that centralized government is a good thing.

[@user-gp9mk7wm1s]

You forget about US led embargo. China was completely destroyed after WW2. Their gold reserve was stolen by KMT which fled to Taiwan. The West denied China import of fertilizers, agricultural and farming, fishing equipments.

[@SiriusGoddess555]

@@user-gp9mk7wm1sDon’t blame others. Mao and the communist party made so many ridiculous policies that led to the disasters. Those policies were meant to sustain their own powers.

[@aykay7828]

My Indian friends in New Delhi are GenX. They come from a upper middle-class parents who have seven children. My GenX friends have two adult daughters who have one child and zero child. Why? Because their daughters and husbands are engineers, traveling to Europe, their own a fenced-in townhouse and are friends with a management-class people.

[@anhangamirim]

Also cause women are treated worst than cows in India. So women is running away from men.

[@PungiFungi]

Like having the population being reduced is a bad thing.

[@michaeldeierhoi4096]

The decline in population is a good thing in the long term for the world and the environment. On the other hand a declining population leads to less revenue from the working population to sustain the country. And fewer people to care for the aging population. This is more of a concern in western countries like Italy.

[@PungiFungi]

@@michaeldeierhoi4096 so ultimately, the economy is like a pyramid scheme.

[@ddoppster]

@@PungiFungi Not really a scheme, as all countries are bound by the numeric equations. What will have to change, going forward, is measuring prosperity and well-being by growth, we need new ways to look at economic health.

[@diamondjim7560]

In this case it is. As older people live longer, more younger people need to support the social structure. While this is China’s problem it also exists in Japan and Europe. Older people living longer and retiring early places more burden on the pool of younger workers. This is less of a problem in the US because we have significant immigration of young people. The second problem specifically in China was the forced One Child Policy. Cultural pressures lead more families to want boys rather than girls. Nature balances close to an even number of male to female births. China has a large abortion rate. As the boys grew into young men the prospect of marriage became more difficult. The girls that did grow up had a large selection of bachelors to choose from leaning towards the more successful men and often choosing Western men over their own. There are considerable numbers now of middle aged bachelors that are limiting their interests to continue to work. China’s population time bomb is real and will affect its geopolitical interests as the 21st century unfolds.

[@occamraiser]

@@PungiFungi No, one generation pays for its children, then in its old age the second generation repays that generosity. Your comment seems to imply YOU FINANCED YOUR OWN CHILDHOOD?

[@bloggalot4718]

This article never mentioned young people ‘laying flat’ to show how they will not join the status quo and want change.

[@mateomaderas5504]

It’s not a catastrophe to lose population. We can’t just keep filling up the world with people. China will be a happier place not to be so crowded.

[@elah1023]

World will be happier place with not so crowded China. ;)

[@maureenmckenna5220]

World population is a problem in the long run. But, the demographers know there is a fine line between too many and not enough people. There are failing countries mainly because the number of people in that country is falling, and some dramatically. This makes the economic picture very difficult. People are going to intrude on the world at large because that is what we do. At some point, there will be too many of us, but that is in the far future. China is going to have to face economic challenges and abandoning their global dreams, if it doesn’t have the population to support it. They also know what famine and starvation mean, so it’s a fine balance they haven’t maintained.

[@danz1182]

It is more complicated than that. Overall, there is nothing wrong with fewer people, the problem is the ratio of contributors to dependents. People are living longer into their less productive years so the decline in births is exacerbating an accelerating growth in the portion of the population that consumes more than it contributes. Over the long term, that simply is not sustainable.

[@maureenmckenna5220]

@fotter9567 You do understand the demographic picture they are referring to. Yes, too many people often leads to negative outcomes for everyone, food, medicine, education. China, of all nations, knows this all too well, with starvation a not very distant memory. The issue is all about percentages. How many young versus how many old. China’s population is shrinking. Health care has improved and they are living longer. As they age, and the younger generation has fewer children, it is easy to see how there will be too many elders and not enough young people to support them, with far fewer births. China’s population is predicted to fall to 800 million people by the 2080’s. They can easily project birth numbers for the future based on population numbers now. And that is not likely to change. Chinese people who live in cities, are still only having one child, and are reluctant to increase that due to the cost of raising that child. India has now outpaced China in population. So, it’s not a case of too many people in China, it’s a case of too few, doubt they would be encouraging people to have more children if it wasn’t an issue.

[@Stafford674]

One of the effects of free market capitalism combined with individual liberty is that as populations get wealthier families get smaller. We see this happening in Europe. The important point to note is that this is a process that occurs without the intervention of government, who will inevitably make the wrong decision; see for example the Communist Party in China 1949 to date.

[@karsinds]

All East Asia has a similar demographic problem even with no one-child policy, like Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. It is a much larger problem, probably an issue for the Humanity as a whole.

[@AllRise87]

Yes, but obviously worsened in the case of China via artificial means.

[@mikepotter5718]

It's not a problem.

[@hecate235]

I remember when the world population hit 2 billion. Now we're at 7 billion. Too many. If we don't control ourselves, Nature may do it for us. One or two bad pandemics would solve the problem -- at the cost of billions of lives. Which would you prefer?

[@_Julia.K_]

@@hecate235 With the rate 1.1-1.5 children per average woman we are very good at "controlling ourselves".

[@_Julia.K_]

@@mikepotter5718 It is already a huge problem. By the time you retire (or better say won't be able to go to work, because retirement won't exist in the near future) it will be a disaster and systemic collapse of our society.

[@rodronognec]

The only problem is for the big companies because there will be less people to take advantage of.

[@JustaRemf]

Growth isn't always a good thing. Why would somebody think the earth has the ability to sustain limitless population sizes?

[@olddog-fv2ox]

Correct, people plagues are very problematic

[@SeptemberMeadows]

It's not so much the quantity of people but what those people do. If you took 8 billion adults, have them stand side by side, 6 inch gap back and front, those 8 billion people would cover an area the size of the state of Arizona.

[@brianhalberg131]

​@@SeptemberMeadows And that doesn't even consider the challenges and logistics required to get all of those people to Arizona!! You'd need to plan carefully and put in extra roads, you'd have to issue billions of visas and some people near the start of the "stand equally spaced on Arizona" project could be standing there for years before you get the last person in place. The real question becomes, "Why Arizona?" It has few international airports and no seaports. In addition, the state is quite rocky and mountainous and people will struggle to stand there. Perhaps Kansas, or another prairie state would be better. However, looking at...huh? What? Oh. Nevermind.

[@CordeliaWagner1999]

So all humans can STAND in Arizone. But people need food. Housing. Infrastrukturen. 8 Billion is already far to much.

[@anguscampbell1533]

@@CordeliaWagner1999 The earth's population went from 4.5 Billion in mid 80's to 8 billion end of 2023. You are right. That isn't sustainable.

[@avagrego3195]

Wise woman don’t want to bring children into this chaotic world

[@dianetm8557]

I understand your comment. But this wise woman had four sons. They are my joy. Their wives my friends. They have wonderful friends and work lives. When I had them there was suddenly someone on the planet I loved more than myself. It was good for me. But it takes all kinds to make the world go round.

[@charlied4547]

The other consequence of the one child policy was more male births. If an expectant mother was told she was going to have a daughter, many would abort that birth until the fetal was male.

[@6140LIBRA]

It's only a crisis if you plan on operating a consumer-driven economy. The Oligarchs worldwide just want a higher birthrate for the new serfdom, not for supporting old people if they can no longer keep up work wise.

[@patrickfitzgerald2861]

The global gangster capitalists understand that their days are numbered. The whole Ponzi scheme is about to collapse.

[@loveleov]

Babies to feed the wars is what they want. It was the same in 1900

[@Eva-eg4ve]

Quality is better than quantity! USA has only 350million people. But her GDP is 8 times of India whose population is more than four times of USA. How many people from India want to immigrate to USA And how many people from USA Want to immigrate to India?😮 What is the problem of having only 800 million people in china? If it makes Chinese have better living standards! 😊 In 1949 china‘a population was only 549 millions. It increases to 1.4 billion within these 75 years. So even half is much more than 1949

[@goncalovazpinto6261]

What is the problem of having only 800 million people in china? You have to understand demography to understand why it is a problem. It's not so much the absolute number of people that is the problem, it's WHO is missing and how fast the loss is. China will loose half of it's population in record time and that half will be mostly the younger cohorts. And to make it worse, the're loosing more women than men. If you have a situation where there is a population collapse that is indiscriminate of age, like the black death, for example, you get a smaller population at the end but the age structure is the same. Every line in the population pyramid contracts, but the shape of the pyramid remains the same. This is not what is happening to China and other countries. When you look at a population pyramid you have to imagine the lines going up as time passes, and shrinking slightly as they move up, because there is always some mortality at every age group. Each new generation in China is much smaller than the previous one, because the fertility rate is so low (probably under 1.0) so this becomes a vicious cycle. One generation of 100 people produce the next generation of 50 people, which produce the next generation of 25 people, and so on. They're now saying that South Korea, with the lowest fertility rate in the world, will have only 6 grandchildren for every 100 people alive today! The problem is twofold: one aspect is that, at present, the absolute number of people that are replacing the older generation is too low, because there will not be enough people to keep everything running in an infrastructure built for 1.4 billion people plus the added weight of so many old people to care for, the second problem is long term as isn't tied to the number of people but to the fertility rate; if it continues to be so low (and it's actually getting worse, not better or stable), they will halve their population in ever shorter periods of time... I hope you understood that it's not the actual size of the population that matters so much, it's how it got there and where it's going in the future.

[@HKim0072]

Let’s be real. No one knows if their data is correct today. Even their own government officials. _For instance, the statistics bureau said China had 15.23 million births in 2018, but the Health Statistics Yearbook compiled by China’s health care authority, which cover new births in all hospitals, showed that there were only 13.62 million. The hospital delivery rate is 99.9 per cent in China, which may account for some of the discrepancy of 1.61 million births. But this still doesn’t account for the bulk of the 1.61 million “births”._

[@reinhardtburger7108]

I going to tell you a secret, relying on government statistics isn't the only way to track this. You can roughly approximate the population thru other means. For example I believe the Japanese looked at the salt consumption across the china they came to the conclusion china is missing 10 million people. Using electricity supply and consumption u can track roughly predict economic activity and also population size.

[@justinpetersen5273]

Yeah, well they over counted their population by millions working class people also: so they are definitely more screwed than we really think

[@sethleblanc4698]

@@reinhardtburger7108that’s very interesting.

[@churblefurbles]

@reinhardtburger7108 At that population its margin of error, junk science.

[@zacklewis342]

The number of mobile phones that simply stopped being used during Covid (unreported deaths) was in the tens of millions. They likely have 1 to 1.1billion population right now. And half as many 5 year olds as 10 year olds (birth rate cut by half in less than one generation). All of that right before an unrecoverable economic meltdown. China had one chance to industrialize and blew it big time.

[@Stafford674]

A good example of why governments should not be allowed to make important decisions over the lives of their citizens. Its not just that they get it wrong. They do, but when they get it wrong the effects are so much greater.

[@Shiryone]

The catastrophic floods due to improper water management are not helping either....people are dying losing their homes and livelihood and farmland.

[@vipermustang42]

Absolutely. I think China can easily find themselves at half a billion by about the 2050-2060 window.

[@pipiqiqi4010]

the first birth peak is around the 1958, and these people has been getting to the end of their life, so the death number will raise in these years. and on the contrary, the new birth rate is declining significantly due to the economic pressure for the young generations, so the total number of the population will decrease significantly in the next few years.

[@geofflepper3207]

Yup. Those people born in 1958 have been retiring in recent years and thus the number of people in the Chinese workforce has been quickly declining - decrease of 40 million or so workers from 2019 to 2022. And in ten to fifteen years those same people born in the late 1950s in large numbers are going to start dying in large numbers though not before they create a huge elderly Chinese population that needs to be looked after.

[@pipiqiqi4010]

@@geofflepper3207 so the pressure for the current young generation is more and more high in the next decades, and the second birth peak people are getting into retirement. the third and the fourth is on the way in the next decade. however, the society in China is not good to young generations, some can't find a job after they pass their 35, so i don't think the future would be better and better.

[@AsurmenHandOfAsur]

Not 2100 but 2050 or earlier.

[@markmorgan6741]

One child meant that most parents wanted and achieved a male child. Many men now have to go overseas to find women to marry.

[@danielbenner7583]

I remember just five years ago, China’s statistical bureau and family planning commission were predicting the population wouldn’t decline until 2030. Then the population started to decline in 2022. I think they, and many other countries, are underestimating how quick population decline will be. Meanwhile, China in particular really lacks a robust healthcare system for its ever growing elderly population. I hope they invest in this in the future, but doesn’t look like they are, or if they are, only at the margins…

[@strangenessEPR]

At certain point all those “useless” retired people will be “too many” for the regime. Not giving any ideas but we know what kind of things the CCP is capable of doing.

[@stone-hand]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yi_Fuxian Have fun.

[@jerryrichardson2799]

China has seriously underinvested in its people, even less than the US has, which is saying something. It's worth noting that a number of countries that _did_ seriously invest in their people are facing demographic problems similar to China's, however. A key difference between South Korea and China is the Koreans aren't having the deflation and growth problems the Chinese are having.

[@jerryrichardson2799]

​@@stone-handThank you.

[@danielbenner7583]

@@jerryrichardson2799 I agree for the most part, except South Korea has already experience mild deflation, and soon it’ll be just as entrenched as it is in Japan and China.

[@Piden-l4b]

Even half is still more than most other countries. It’s time to change the type of Economy. Many other developed and industrialized nations had to go through this change.

[@derekwhittom1639]

The issue isn’t the total population, it’s how many of them are old. Japan has a lot of ways to save labor, unlike China, and Japan needs to employ people uselessly to keep unenployment low. Unemployment in China is high and they employ more people to do useless things than even Japan, where it’s endemic. 500 million over 60s and 200 million 40-60s and 100m 20-40s is a recipe for destruction.

[@L98fiero]

@@derekwhittom1639 But then, China has adopted robotic to a greater extent than any other country, will that offset the demographic changes? Regardless of how badly you want this to be true, these fortune tellers have been wrong about China more than they've been right. Remember two years ago when the big news was that China wouldn't be producing 5nm chips for a decade, and the current wishful thinking is 5 years for 3nm, the door of which they are knocking on as we speak while they are actively working on photonic chips.

[@pettypractice7872]

评论区总算遇到你一个明白人

[@RD-jc2eu]

@@L98fiero lol... that's fantasy talk.

[@rongendron8705]

I'm 78 & when I was young in the early 1950's, China had a population of 500 million, India had 300 million & the U.S. had little more than 160 million! The entire World's population was only 2 billion! Today, some 70 years later, we are approaching 8 billion! China & all other countries, including the U.S., should be severely restricting its population, to survive into the future!

[@_Julia.K_]

No need to severely restrict anything, people already stopped having children. And it is the biggest threat to our future. 1.1 child per family means socio-economical collapse is imminent. Many people question 8 billion number. Bureaucrats inflate numbers everywhere, not just in China.

[@chopsieflores4844]

People up in arms about Americans not having kids. There's a reason. Like the Chinese gentleman in the above comment said, we don't have the resources to continue growing at the pace we did in the 1940-70s. We just can't. Christian Fundamentalists want a world for the rich, food satiated, roof over head group and the rest of us will be poor, homeless (and it will be against the law to be homeless), food poor. This is a world-wide issue just like climate change.

[@EduardQualls]

*We know that the "1.4 bn" number is far too large, by at least 250 million.* Chinese Communist provincial leaders have been overstating the population of their regions and cities for decades, simply because that population-number is the basis for how much money they get from the Central Government. (This parallels their highly inflated GDP estimates [currently c. 60% overstated], on which the political advancement of CCP officials depends.) *It is far more likely that the current (2024) population of the CCP is barely over 1.1 bn, and that this number will fall below 900 million within the decade. **_There is no reason to trust CCP statistics._* One must also remember that the plague is still active in many regions of the CCP, hidden by CCP-orders to doctors to disguise its diagnosis as colds or flu, to hide it from the public and international health-watch organizations.

[@DotaBillfuc]

lol😂

[@DK-ev9dg]

How the fuck you know they are overstating? Simply because you hate China and people like me will trust you? Overstated and you cunning guy!!!

[@frankblangeard8865]

By the end of the century... When someone predicts what could happen by the end of the century you know that they can say anything. They will never be asked to explain why they were so wrong.

[@geofflepper3207]

Though in 2013 South Korean demographers tried to predict the South Korean fertility rate every decade for the rest of the century and guessed that in ten years in 2023 the rate would be 1.4 - it turned out to be 0.72, about half the rate they guessed back in 2013. So I suspect that already people are questioning them about how they could be so wrong about the 2023 fertility rate.

[@zacklewis342]

The end of the century is only one average human lifespan away. Demographic numbers are destiny, and we know what the current numbers are with high accuracy.

[@gems4u990]

Always disastrous when government tries to play god. The ancients knew that when the Genesis story was written

[@amunra5330]

This will be good for China actually. I have been to China a couple of times and the amount of people there walking in the cities is insane. I am not sure why people having a smaller population is bad thing.

[@DailyEnhancer]

Not really. You see the entire social system we built so far is like a grand ponze scam. There has to be people keep taking over and over to work and pay taxes to sustain that system. Pensions and Medical Insurance will be unsustainable within a decade. No children, no young people, no labors,no taxes. The structure can’t even remain current status because the demography not just declines rapidly, it can’t even stay the same level as before. It’s good for the nature, but for a society it’s a disaster

[@KVUAA]

It's not about having smaller population. But the demographics where old people become the majority, this is a huge problem because they are less productive and most are in pension.

[@amunra5330]

@@KVUAAwhy do you think China is investing heavily into robotics and AI? There ports in Qingdao that is 100% automated

[@geofflepper3207]

​​@@amunra5330 That may be true but who is going to look after the vast number of elderly people in rural China whose children have moved to the city and who have little or no pension?

[@lindatullos9430]

@@KVUAA China doesn't have pensions for a large number of its older population. It even passed laws requiring grandkids to take care of grandparents because they don't have a national social security program. That is for party members and people in the right places in cities. (i.e. not migrants from the rural areas working in cities). Not true socialists at all. Americans have more socialist programs than China does. China is only a about te people who have been vetted for their party getting ahead. (that's the crony model of elites have used it for thousands of years) it isn't socialism at all. They even were super capitalists when it suited them as a ruling party.

[@Anthony-db7cs]

Why do you people think having unlimited population growth isn't a catastrophe? I'd argue subsaharan african population growth is even worse.

[@WilliamSantos-cv8rr]

Well being inept to understand basics of cause effect is a catastrophe in itself for a human being. Nobody is talking about it because it is not going to happen. What we can see everywhere is that population trends down as soon as they urbanise and leaves absolute poverty. In the other hand the catastrophe of societal collapse due to institutions failures caused by rapid shrinking populations is real and for some countries it is going to happen in no more than a decade.

[@Neji641212]

The point of the video is not that having unlimited population growth isn't a catastrophe. The issue with China is that instead of maintaining constant population by slightly decreasing fertility rate, they changed one catastrophe to another one by falling into too small fertility rate which is hardly reversible, especially when people cultural habit of not having children is hard to change. That will lead to drastic population decline.

[@sulner9997]

How many land space sub Saharan Africa has compare to it's population, you did say indian subcontinent over 1.4 billion people smaller than Australia continue sub Saharan is 1 billion 5 times the area of India stop picking on africa

[@Anthony-db7cs]

@@sulner9997 because they’ll be begging for help or migrating to other countries because they can’t handle the amounts of people they’re bringing into this world. Absolutely reckless.

[@Ranaimuye]

What is the population density of SS Africa? Express your self in numbers.

[@chriswatson1698]

A worker/dependent ratio of 1:1 is generous. My father supported himself and 5 other people. A child is 2 dependents: the child himself and the adult who cared for him.

[@chriswatson1698]

@@let0atreides I have seen a graph showing Australian dependency ratios since the 1960s. Our dependency ratio was higher in the 1960s than it is now.

[@chriswatson1698]

@@let0atreides It is deceitful to refer to the "aged" dependency ratio. Workers have to support children, their mothers and the unemployed and the disabled and sick. If workers are not supporting children and their mothers, we can certainly support the elderly. Children don't just need food and clothes. They need expensive education, and an adult to supervise them and provide them with domestic services.

[@chriswatson1698]

@@let0atreides Does the cost of a child include the loss of earnings of the mother?

[@jandrews6254]

A retiree such as a grandparent helps care for the child while both parents work. Putting a child into childcare/before and after school care costs a fortune and negates most of one of the parent’s income. Grandparents are the stopgap, taking up some of the burden for the parents. Don’t ever think a retiree is just soaking up financial handouts, without them you’d lose one of the working parents.

[@chriswatson1698]

@@let0atreides I know many retirees (in Australia) who are self -supporting. Some are still economically active and several make it possible for their children to be double income households, by being available to care for the grandchildren when they can't be in school or day care. Others work on a voluntary basis.

[@comchadelalora]

So be it. Mother Nature is wise and maybe this is for the best of humanity.

[@hamzamahmood9565]

Mother nature? No, this was the work of CCP. Forcing hundreds of millions of abortions using the cruelest means imaginable is the opposite of mother nature.

[@muhcharona]

Yes this is a bottle neck selecting for fertility, simple as.

[@user-gp9mk7wm1s]

As a teenage, if I spend on an expensive pair of shoes, my parents will scold me. Does this necessarily mean my parents are in financial hardship. Same when Xi Jingping told the Chinese people not to waste food, Western and Indian propaganda start saying that there is a food shortage in China. Chinese people tend to act proactive rather than to wait for things to get worse. Regarding the demographic issue in China, more likely the CPC government have painted a more pessimistic image purposely to push the population to react

[@nicholasmaude6906]

The PRC doesn't just have an impending demographic catastrophe it also has an impending economic catastrophe which will make things worse, the PRC is probably going to collapse sometime in the next ten years.

[@ahnafzaheen6593]

is that your opinion.

[@nicholasmaude6906]

@@ahnafzaheen6593 It's the opinion of anyone who has been paying attention, Peter Zeihan for example is of that opinion, long term China is screwed.

[@turkmusik]

Declining population and lots of vacancies means cheap apartments on the way, soon. Already vacancies in first tier cities can exceed 25%.

[@richdobbs6595]

Nah, people will not drop rents since then they won't make enough money to cover the mortgages. They will leave them empty. The government will probably dynamite nearly complete structures to keep the real estate market from "collapsing". When the south lost the American Civil War, the availability of mansions on plantations that were no longer profitable didn't mean different people moved in or that they were converted apartments. Nearly all were not maintained and quickly fell into ruin.

[@Krzysiex7pl]

There is already a rapid decline in housing prices in China

[@InformedKiwi]

There has been so much over building. There are so many apartments that are worthless. They will never be occupied. The shrinking population is actually worse than the corrupt statistics from the CCP. Each year there will be less and less houses required as the population shrinks.

[@justinpetersen5273]

Retiring at 50 I bet they worked the crap out of them. Slave labor

[@vhateverlie]

Well they started work at 8 y/o probably...

[@ZawTunAung-ng4ww]

In India probably

[@babysisdolls3336]

once you teach society that children are a burden ....it is hard to unteach it.

[@Delosian]

You say it is a catastrophe, but what if China doesn't want to be overpopulated? Same with Japan, with 126 million people living on an island only 41% larger than New Zealand (with a population of 5.1 million). Also, no country should have "global aspirations", Expansionism is what caused WW2.

[@PeterRiello]

It's not merely the number itself. New Zealand is in better demographic shape than Japan, despite having a population about 1/25 of Japan's. This is because the age structure of a population is also very important. Having 350 million working age people (a truly massive number) is actually very few when you compare that to a retired population just as large, people who those workers will have to support.The real kicker is that once a country goes through the fertility crash that leads to such a disproportionate amount of retirees, it seems to be irreversible. Because of these reasons, it is impossible for a country to think "Let's just allow the population to drop a couple hundred million to more manageable numbers, then focus on maintaining that population," because the age pyramid will be totally out of whack by then and the government will not be able to get people to have the 2 children necessary just to maintain the population.

[@chriswatson1698]

@@PeterRiello Workers don't just support retirees. Workers support children and their mothers or the other adults who supervise or teach the children. Workers also support the unemployed and the disabled or sick. The dependency ratio is higher in a young population.

[@reinhardtburger7108]

The last countries to be going through population decline is in africa. In other words they will be the last people to have expansionist ambitions. So do you want a nother bronze age collapse, that is exactly how that society collapsed.

[@2Oldcoots]

During what years did female child infanticide exist as official policy in Communist China? Why didn't your provide this in your video?

[@uptoolate2793]

In actually, I'd bet the numbers are a lot worse for china. Id also bet its not common knowledge in China just how much trouble they've made for themselves.

[@geofflepper3207]

People say that unlike western politicians who think in terms of the next election Chinese leaders have a plan for what will happen over the next 25 years. I'm not so sure. I think that in 25 years China is going to be in a major demographic crisis with a greatly larger population of elderly people and a greatly diminished population of workers to look after that elderly population ...and China is still relatively poor. The Chinese government can see the huge increase in elderly people coming like a tsnumi they see on the horizon but there is nothing they can do to stop it. Three hundred million Chinese people are hitting retirement age in just the next ten years. Things are going to be a lot worse in China in 30 years.

[@CarlosRodriguez-hb3vq]

Projecting the population of an entire country out to the end of the century is sloppy statistics. Could anyone have predicted their current situation back in 1950?

[@thereseogorzaly2496]

Infanticide that occurred because of the Chinese governments limit on allowable children a family could have is horrific !

[@iceblock-z41]

It is refreshing to see someone talking in 'births per year' and not fertility rates. Fertility rates are largely useless information as they are multiplied by the gerarational turn around.

[@hamzamahmood9565]

What do you mean? Births per year can be very misleading as Chinese births can easily exceed America's since they have 1.4 billion people, even though their fertility rates are so much lower. You need fertility rates if a society has an aging problem, like China does.

[@justinpetersen5273]

@@hamzamahmood9565 too bad there’s 40 million men in China that ain’t gonna have wise because there is no women. Nice try pal.

[@ruifenghuang1029]

@@justinpetersen5273 13% of US populations and blacks, 7% US populations are gay but 10 million gender difference is HUUGE

[@campion04]

There is no stat, if accurately tracked and defined as avg number of children per woman, that is more important for the survival of a civilization than this. Whatever are you talking about?

[@jobloluther]

You don't know what you are talking about

[@ksrithan]

Thailand's situation is and will even more severe!

[@GermanTaffer]

No , please compare the population pyramids of South Korea and Thailand.

[@davidshi6861]

As Martha Stewart says: It's a good thing.

[@garypowell1540]

This rubbish about Urbn kids being too expensive to bother with is simply not true. I live in South London and have 6 children, Both of my maternal grandparents were one of 9 children and were also brought up in South Central London. ALL repeat ALL of my mother's countless cousins now own their own nice homes in the Surrey suburbs and have large families of their own. My six children are doing just fine or better and cost me virtually bugger all to raise. So they share rooms and go without a few things, but good parents are good parents, you don't need loads of money or a big home. What precisely made the Chinese go from having loads to having virtually none is their problem it does not have to be yours. I suspect it was a range of reasons, unremitting state propaganda and intimidation being the main ones.

[@patrickgallagher9069]

Development of a middle class and prosperity for more people also causes people to have fewer children.

[@iceteazen]

the problem with how CCP run their country is China is not fit for immigration.

[@hamzamahmood9565]

The only problem is, the 1 child policy was enacted in 1979, well before China started rapidly industrilaizing. The CCP forced the birth rate down artificially, and when they lifted the 1 child policy the Chinese middle class was too developed to recover the birth rate. So it continued to drop to this day

[@irenaskrzynska1938]

If India begins to develop rapidly economically, its population growth will slow down.

[@baha3alshamari152]

​@@irenaskrzynska1938 Actually India economy is growing and living standards are improving which is why they have declining birth rates

[@WeTan-d6i]

@@hamzamahmood9565 but with more than 10milion college graduates graduating every year,China's low-end labor market is already oversaturated If there's no family planning,then Chinese society will fall into an even more serious internal competition of social Darwinism

[@MelodyMan69]

The Great China achievement.

[@ojiij94102]

Letting policies enter into the house and beds of their people always ended fatal.

[@Lifeinbelize]

Very interesting. Thank you

[@wmoy8507]

This is the same problem for all the Asian Tigers. These countries also do not know how to solve their declining population also.

[@muhcharona]

You don't have to, you simply have to hold the line on the border, based on evolutionary selection the fertile will become the majority.

[@carkawalakhatulistiwa]

Ever contry not just China

[@michaelgothenburg364]

No, no, no. People want to immigrate to most western countries so they easily solve their problem with immigration. There's a reason it's easy to immigrate when you're young and gets really difficult when you turn 30. The countries with problems are xenofobic countries no one want to immigrate to like China, South Korea, Russia, Japan.

[@pbworld7858]

True, but then we won't have a China-bashing video.

[@alexjgilpin]

False. The fertility rates in significant countries as of 2024: South Korea (0.9, the lowest in the world), China (1.2), US (1.7, but the US has *BY FAR* the highest immigrant population in the world, more than replacing the lost population - 50 million people, Germany is second with 15 million), Cambodia (2.3, the stable population rate), Niger (6.6, the highest in the world).

[@geofflepper3207]

Not every country. Some countries still have high fertility rates. And some countries such as Canada and Australia and the United States have low fertility rates but still have quickly growing populations because of immigration.

[@DK-ev9dg]

Clowns!! Most of the world has demographic probkem.

[@marcusgibson3899]

All wrong: half a population would enrich the remainder as China has far far too many people. Yes, the Old people will suffer but a stabilisation programme is essential for the decades to come. Anyway, 2000 CCP members own $7.2 trillion in national assets they have stolen..

[@bartekjedrzejewski7594]

Great video

[@waynemcauliffe-fv5yf]

Good to hear

[@maurycyj]

China's population is not problem. Problem is population of India and Africa .... from 700 to 1200 mil and from 250 to 1000 mil in 40 years ...

[@jeffyoung60]

In the 1960s, Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, absolute ruler over all Communist China was terrified of a Malthusian population overpopulation bomb. He envisioned a horror like something seen out of the 1973 dystopian sci-fi movie, "Soylent Green" or the episode of the original Star Trek where an overpopulated planet has billions of people rubbing shoulders with each other all over the place. Mao feared starvation and overpopulation preventing Red China from moving forward. Even the World War II period which saw a Chinese population somewhere between 400 and 450 million people as excessive. Chinese overpopulation and famine were already seen as twin-joint problems at the turn of the 20th century in 1900. If Mao Tse-Tung were still alive, this is probably what he wanted to see, Red China's population crashing to manageable levels. Perhaps Mao wanted to stabilize the Chinese population around 500 million souls, more or less. As a result I don't see the Communist Chinese political leadership looking at this demographic crash as a problem but as the solution their former Great Helmsman intended.

[@emanuelb3456]

We are at the brink of the AI era. The AI will work instead.

[@canyonroots]

The population has surpassed its maximum level of stress as tens of billions people are tearing humanity apart. We were told to read 'Population Bomb' in high school for the final exam. I didn't read it but passed with flying colors. I already knew at a young age, that large crowded cities breed fear and diseases.

[@michaeldeierhoi4096]

The underlying problem with world population is that it has grown far to fast to be sustainable. When a country experiences very slow if any population increase then replacement of the older generation happens naturally. Native and aboriginal popuations around the grew at a very slow rate and thus replacement was stable. It was western Europe where populations grew fastest with dense congregations in a few cities. This rapidly becomes a complex sociological matter when looking at how the repeatedly conquest of specific areas led to migrations and people often congregating in cities just to find work to sustain them. And how did that dynamic affect population growth? Slower population growth is I think the necessary key to stable populations. That and the end to one country seeking to initiate war with another country for the purposes of gainjng land, resources or simply power.

[@stevechance150]

Peter Zeihan has been saying this for three years.

[@Benzknees]

Given the world is overpopulated and over-polluted, every country needs to follow China's example on this.

[@Umrao979]

why do you delete comments?

[@Laggie74]

KZbin has AI deleting comments. Mine gets deleted all the time.

[@jerryrichardson2799]

​@@Laggie74Mine too.

[@thomascuvillier7250]

b/c youtube is better at deleting innocent user comments than thong bots and other financial scammers.... Their antispam sucks. Avoiding edits seems to help.

[@drmodestoesq]

@@jerryrichardson2799 I'll third that. I often avoid making long well argued comments. What's the point. KZbin will just delete them.

[@thesheepthemightythecrazy]

@@drmodestoesq lol, you make anything the censorship AI doesn't like, it disappears. So much for freedom of speech right?

[@dingodog5677]

Chinas not alone in population decline. In most advanced nations, child births are below replacement numbers. The decline is not due to the one child policy but a general increase in wealth and the breakdown of the family unit (nuclear and extended).

[@andrewst9797]

A smaller population is not the problem nor is the lack of high paying jobs. Long term stability and inexpensive opportunities for young people to reduce their depressing struggles is the key. As is DEMOCRACY and the RULE OF LAW. Local services, products, produce and industries give meaning to a society, not endless aggression, fear, hate, greed and jealousy Quality architecture and town planning is fundamentally important. It creates good healthy conditions to raise families whose children see a future at home and a meaningful sense of place for themselves. But not every village must survive nor should it if there is nothing to do there. Reestablishing wild nature, sustainable farming traditions and practices should also become a national goal for the country.

[@richrogers2157]

However all of these workers will be replaced with robots, no matter what the power structure looks like by then the nation should be a powerhouse in manufacturing once again.

[@muhcharona]

Robots building robots are coming, all previous projections are simply out of date.

[@jigar1p]

Decreasing population that is aging will inevitably reduce economic consumption. Old people don’t need new clothes or new housing. They need to be cared for when they retire. Inflation created by central banks cannot keep pace with the decline in the number of consumers.😢

[@boonthongudomporn6921]

500 millions or even 400 millions of population is just about the right size for China and the CCP must make sure that it can afford to pay those unemployed the basic cost of living - foods and shelters to maintain social cohesion.

[@MrCenturion13]

The population is dropping waaay faster than that.

[@shawngrinter2747]

China is currently the second largest by population, if it HALVED it would STILL be the second by population.

[@henkheemskerk4437]

The problem you forget is the epidemic there were millions of death

[@尤一]

can you really precisely predict case after several decades?

[@geofflepper3207]

In 2013 South Korean demographers tried to predict population trends for the country for the rest of the century. They predicted that ten years later in 2023 the fertility rate in South Korea would be 1.4. Instead it was half that in 2023 at 0.72. If they were that wrong about the fertility rate in just ten years rhen I have no faith that they or anyone can predict the fertility rate in 50 years. I've heard of population forecasts for China that assume that in a couple of decades the fertility rate in China will start to recover and go up again. I don't understand what basis demographers have for making such an assumption. I see no reason to think that China's fertility rates will go back up - quite the opposite if anything. It seems that China is following in the path of South Korea lagging jury a bit behind but going in the same direction - down.

[@L98fiero]

Yes, you can really precisely predict case after several decades, the problem is predicting it *BEFORE* the several decades. As NIels Bohr commented, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future!”

[@whatrtheodds]

Well i mean it wasnt sustainable to just keep growing either. So it had to drop at some point. Not a good thing for having workers to support older people, but good for not turning the world into a giant Sardine can.

[@rodica69]

China will be fine. We need to worry about the EU and USA, though.

[@haroldbridges515]

The long-standing preference of Chinese parents for boys is not merely due to misogyny. The only source of support for retired Chinese comes from their male children, since there is no national pension system. That's also the reason for the extremely high household savings rates which are "precautionary savings" against the vicissitudes of old age. During the one-child era the parent generation was doubly screwed, without a pension and if the only child turned out to be a girl, without any external support in retirement.

[@ss-ds2dn]

But why couldn't women get those jobs? Because of misogyny.

[@haroldbridges515]

@@ss-ds2dn Jobs? What jobs? Who was talking about jobs?

[@ss-ds2dn]

@@haroldbridges515 you were, when you mentioned only sons being able to give "support." You obviously meant financial since women are expected to do the actual caregiving

[@haroldbridges515]

@@ss-ds2dn Not as I understand it. The women move to their husband's family. The son typically provides all the support including caregiving that the parents are ever going to have, not the daughter.

[@ss-ds2dn]

@@haroldbridges515 I've consistently heard the opposite 🤷‍♀️

[@hollyjhager]

How could a reliable report on Chinese demographics not even touch on how the 1-child policy has skewed the sex ratio in a way that there are so many fewer women/potential mothers in China now?

[@WeTan-d6i]

U haven't analyzed the current employment pressure in china,now many young people sometimes have to work 6days a week and more than 12hours a day to make ends meet

[@Studentofjesuschrist]

This is a good thing, maybe people will see the government is wicked and need to be redone

[@earlp6731]

Read Peter Zeihan. He explains this in depth. Numerous other countries demographics are similar to China

[@skylinefever]

Can anybody think of a good reason to give Jack Ma and Xi Jinping more subjects?

[@patrickfitzgerald2861]

Nope.

[@muhcharona]

Bad takes, they aren't the ones mass importing the 3rd world to become it.

[@michaelmartin5632]

On the other hand, China's present population is straining all resources and may require conquering neighbors to obtain more resources. Example: Japan 1930s.

[@marcionphilologos5367]

The demographic catastrophe is projected to come after 2070. So, the Centre of Eastern Studies pretends to know the birth rate after 2040 (IT IS EXPECTED TO GO UP, BECAUSE WORK WILL BECOME UNPOPULAR) EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT AFTER 2030 ALL HARD LABOUR (ALSO IN AGRICULTURE) WILL BE REPLACED BY ROBOTS AND AUTOMATION. JOBS ONLY EXIST IN THE SERVICE INDUSTRY. AND THIS COMBINED WITH ALL CHINESE WOMEN WORKING MEANS THAT NO CATASTROPHE IS IN SIGHT. Thereby millions of young Asian workers of Vietnam/ Thailand/ Indonesia/ Philipines will migrate to China.

[@MD97531]

What a load of wishful thinking, China is going off a cliff. The great rejuvenation is ironically the faster ageing population in the history of the world

[@iceteazen]

immigrate to the US actually. CCP policies and mass immigration doesn't blend well.

[@KJSvitko]

Population needs to be in balance with jobs, resources, nature and the environment. Having a bigger population in any country than the country can support makes no sense. Access to food, water, shelter, energy and jobs should guide population levels. The worlds population is still expected to add another billion people to feed, clothe and produce pollution. Humans are crowding out all other species of plants and animals. Education and birth control are key to reducing poverty and hunger. Having a child that you can not provide for yourself is cruel and irresponsible. We need solutions not just sympathy. Endless population growth is not sustainable on a finite planet. Every country needs to "TRY" to be more self sufficient. When there are not enough resources to sustain a population something has to give. Countries need to focus on quality of life for their citizens and not just quantity of life for cheap labor. Why import fossil fuels when wind and solar energy can be produced locally and solar energy can power electric vehicles. We need solutions not just sympathy.

[@pipiqiqi4010]

what you are saying, that's what China is doing right now. but everyone blames China, it really doesn't make sense

[@JS-jh4cy]

Yes

[@TonyMidyett]

Infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible.

[@winglo1697]

China has catastrophe for the past 5,000 years. But one day, China will lead the world in every aspect.

[@Gman979]

Don't look at quantity only, health and mindset matters too. Lol

[@jpv-yw2ok]

And they thought they were so clever.

[@jerometaperman7102]

It seems to me that there is something similar in the Great Leap Forward and the One Child Policy. That similarity is that they didn't think things through and consider the unintended consequences. The Great Leap Forward was screwy to start with because they did things like take people out of agriculture and put them to work in backyard steel mills in order to be able to report higher levels of steel production which, they thought, would be a measure of modernization. They got the steel production numbers they wanted but very little of that steel that was produced by amateurs was actually usable in industry. In the meantime, not enough food was being produced, which led to famine. As with a lot of cultures in the world, the traditional Chinese valued boy babies over girl babies so the One Child Policy led to selective abortions, girl babies being adopted outside China, and even infanticide. Now they have a dearth of women of childbearing years and those they have seem to be in no hurry to have babies.

[@Hedgewisekat]

If massive populations are such a good idea... why does the USA not have at least a billion people?

[@PlanetCHINA.1]

They are not fertile enough and too many genders, many can't breed 🤭

[@JeanJacquesNantel]

What is the problem when a population has more than doubled since 1949 (the year Mao took the power) only to decrease by half in the following decades? Demographically, China will be returning where it was seventy years ago. Was China sick when it had half the population it has today? Modern Chinese became so rich that they became too many for the natural environments that support them. It's normal, wise and quite healthy that they let their population decline. From now onwards, depopulation will become the new normality all over the planet.

[@sharptoothtrex4486]

Unless the Chinese leader learns to act more like Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, including toning down this harsh censorship and laws nonsense must work this way. Nevertheless, the Chinese leader cannot act like Ebenezer Scrooge and Veruca Salt until he learns treating everyone fairly, equally, gratefully, cooperative, and helpfully fixing his worse mistakes he knows better.

[@Gman979]

It's is a problem not limited only to China but most developed countries. Singapore is there too.

[@Krzysiex7pl]

The problem in China is far bigger because of the one child policy and culture, that it started. While in western countries less people tend to have babies, they marry later and because of that have less babies, it's still more common to meet a family with two or three children or that will have two or three children, than with only one child. In China you have all the bad cators from the west, but also almost nonexistent 4-5 person family