[_ptgt]

One of the biggest (possibly THE biggest) economic issue facing China in the near future is a demographic crisis resulting from the One Child Policy. A large part of China's economic growth has been the result of the growth of its workforce. Historically, Mao believed "people are power" and encouraged high birth rates--leading to China's gigantic present-day population. This has worked out great in making China an attractive place to manufacture.

As a reaction to the population explosion though, the CCP imposed the One Child Policy in 1980 (1979?). Consequently, China will now start to face the aging and shrinking workforce problem that has slowed Western economies in recent years--except China's version of the problem will be MUCH worse due to the extreme nature of its fertility swings. In fact, I believe the size of China's labor force hit its peak a few years ago.

In addition to the shrinking workforce, a historically rapidly aging society will have to face an explosion in healthcare costs... which tend to be a drag on the economy (though are obviously necessary). Furthermore, China doesn't have the retirement home infrastructure that the West has, which will absolutely need to expand as China has a huge retiring population who have few children compared to the rest of the world.

[mistermann]

Is it not true though that a massive portion of the country remains unindustrialized, so even if on a percentage basis the population is aging, in absolute numbers there will still be plenty of young people from the farms that could take the place of the current manufacturing workforce?

[Baeocystin]

It is not. It is also a matter of education: many of the rural poor would simply not be able to take over non-manual-labor jobs. The severe sex ratio imbalance that resulted from the OCP has also had significant, negative effects on relationships in general.

https://www.economist.com/news/asia/21648715-distorted-sex-r...