[eloff]

China doesn't have another generation. They'll be going into a very stark population collapse that's worse than what Japan is experiencing now, where adult diapers outsell baby diapers. I expect that China's economy and influence will take the shape of an upside-down U, with the peak in the next decade. If they're going to move on Taiwan, they cannot wait forever. They came close to catching up the US, but I don't think they will achieve it.

[ChuckNorris89]

>They'll be going into a very stark population collapse that's worse than what Japan is experiencing now, where adult diapers outsell baby diapers.

As opposed to most of Europe ...

Also, the quality of your human capital is more important than just having a large unsustainable population growth without much marketable skills or know-how on the international scale. Otherwise parts of Africa and Asia would be economic super powers by now.

[eloff]

Europe doesn't have a population collapse. They make up the difference with immigration, as does Canada and the US. Japan and China do not.

[ChuckNorris89]

Most immigration to Europe is incredibly low-bar unskilled economic chancers interested in exploiting the welfare state, not skilled workers, doctors and engineers like you get in US and Canada which have stricter immigration policies.

[tsimionescu]

That is patently false. Especially the Western and Northern EU countries have a massive influx of high-skill workers (doctors, programmers, engineers) from both Eastern EU countries (which will dry up sooner rather than later, to be fair, with terrible population growth already happening for more than a decade in places like Romania), but also from neighboring countries - Turkey being the largest source.

Even the so hated "refugee crisis" from Syria saw mostly middle-class Syrians moving to Europe (putting it in fear quotes since the whole of the EU had fewer refugees than Turkey alone to accept).

[ChuckNorris89]

>Especially the Western and Northern EU countries have a massive influx of high-skill workers (doctors, programmers, engineers) from both Eastern EU countries

That's mostly false. I haven't met a single programmer from Romania in Austria or any dev from turkey who wishes to emigrate here. Non-EU skilled people I met all want to move to low tax high salary places like Switzerland, UK, Netherlands. Having an open borders immigration policy is discouraging for those with skills who can afford to shop around for the better option vs economic refugees who shop around for the country with the most welfare.

If I look at the immigration statistics here, most immigrants are refugees from Africa, Middle East, and East Asia, not doctors and engineers with visas, those are only a tiny minority of the total immigration.

[tsimionescu]

You may not have met them, and Austria may not be very attractive for this type of immigration, but there are significant populations of them. Remember that BioNTech (who created the European Corona vaccine) was in fact founded and is operated by Turkish immigrants to Germany.

> Non-EU skilled people I met all want to move to low tax high salary places like Switzerland, UK, Netherlands.

The Netherlands at least is still part of the EU. You'll also find plenty of high-skilled migrants in Ireland as well, and France and Germany also attract quite a few.

Note that language concerns and attitudes towards foreigners, especially foreign workers, are a huge part of how many people come to work in a particular country. Ireland and the UK have a huge advantage here purely by virtue of speaking English, as does France for the populations in North Africa. The Netherlands are very open to using English in business, even though their own language is quite obscure. German is less internationally spoke than English or French, but it is not that obscure either.

[Gareth321]

I am generally in favour of tightening migration laws in general around Europe, but even I can admit that this isn't accurate. Many European countries are wonderful places to live and raise families. Canada and the U.S. absolutely compete with the U.K., Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and even France and Germany, on skilled workers. The U.S. offers the best wages, and people motivated primarily by wages will try the U.S. first. But there are lots of people who either don't make the H1B cut, don't want to be beholden to political whims during the arduous trek to citizenship (which can take a decade or more, with multiple gates), or (and this one is a big one), are turned off by U.S. education, violence, crime, health outcomes, lack of social safety nets, and politics.

All that said, Europe is going to have to become much tougher on refugees in the coming decades. I foresee a re-negotiation of the various refugee conventions written at a very different time in history.

[ChuckNorris89]

Why isn't this accurate? I never said Europe is not a great place. I said that the statistical majority of immigrants moving here are mostly low skilled refugees in the tens of thousands a month, rather than the much needed doctors, nurses, teachers and various workers and engineers wich are very few of the total immigration population.

[ethbr0]

While that may be true today, that's where future doctors, nurses, teachers, and various workers and engineers come from.

Young people + a functioning and accessible education system is what produces highly skilled workers.

[dougmwne]

In my city we have medical students coming to study from all over Asia and Africa. They will become doctors, surgeons and other specialists. Many will use this as a stepping stone to stay in the EU. What you said is flat out false.

[ChuckNorris89]

I know that, I know some of them myself, but I never said that no doctors from outside the EU ever immigrate here. What was your point?

And how big is the % of medical professionals or medical students among all the total (legal and illegal) immigration into the EU? 0,000001%?

[tsimionescu]

The more important stat is what the distirbution of immigrants vs natives working as doctors or nurses in the EU is compared to the distribution of migrants vs natives in the total population. I believe you will see that migrants are generally over-represented in Healthcare compared to their percentage of the total population, and similarly in certain other industries.

I have not been able to find very recent data, but here is a paper from 2007 [0], showing that the percentage of physicians working in the country at that time who were migrants either from inside or outside Europe was well over 5%, with significant outliers such as the UK (30%), Ireland (30%), Norway (15%). In Austria it was 5%, though most migrants were from other rich EU countries.

[0] https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/...

[pempem]

Immigration is incredibly key to this. There are a number of nations where young people outstrip elderly populations and allowing the flow of people and labor is crucial, as is their enablement/assimilation/integration so that they stay

[ChuckNorris89]

Except immigration to Europe is mostly unskilled workforce that doesn't assimilate very successfully.

Also, the cost of housing in Europe is increasing so much that all those young people don't see a bright future ahead without help from the bank of mom and dad.

[mvuksano]

Is there any other country that ever showed anything other then upside-down U in terms of economy strength and influence. To best of my knowledge every country, empire or society rises and eventually falls. Probably the best known example is Roman empire but every other society I can think of exhibits same pattern.

[aetherson]

There's a big difference between "eventually country X will fall," and "country X will start to decline in the next decade."

[kiba]

Recorded history is only a few thousand years, and things changed significantly, especially in the modern era.

Don't be so sure that everything follows the patterns of the past.

But, we best not remain complacent.

[gwbas1c]

That's one of the core points of https://www.amazon.com/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed-...

[eloff]

Hah, good point! In the case of China they're likely to peak soon. The USA might peak much later still. The Roman empire lasted over 1000 years. I have my doubts the US can go the distance, but let's see.

[stormbrew]

> The Roman empire lasted over 1000 years.

Treating all the things that were called "The Roman Empire" as one thing is a pretty big stretch. Modern nations have much more rigid and well-defined natures.

[dirtyid]

China has multiple generations. Even "stark" demographic collapse at PRC scale is generating millions of new births per year (several times greater than US even with immigration), there will never be shortage of bodies to fill the military, especially increasingly small force structure of modern militaries that's shifting towards autonomous platforms. As for economy, expect PRC to continue growing, more importantly, move up tech/value chain and build comprehensive national power, just like Japan did while her demographic was absolutely in the shits because JP managed to massively improve human capita via education to create the skilled workers for high value economy (also SKR, TW). For reference PRC is now outputting as much STEM talent as all OECD combined.

Like other the Asian Tigers with death spiral demographics still grew significantly simply because cohort of skilled workers increased massively even though demographics broadly declined. There's a reason PRC is rapidly moving up science and innovation indexes (controlled for quality, not just citations). The reality is, PRC demographics has never been MORE competitive, and will increasingly be, because advanced economic development phase is just getting started. Quantity of quality is in human capital is increasing at stupendous pace. Now add in PRC is adopting as much industrial robots / automation than the next 15 countries combined and that overall demographic decline (as in net population decline) only improves PRC strategic position by reducing import dependence. And that the massive regional income disparity + huge home ownership + enviable house hold savings rate = PRC elderly simply don't have significant expection (or need) for old age social support. In many ways, PRC is almost optimized for weathering demographic bomb with less social cost relative to properly developed countries that are seeing comparable demographic decline.

[eloff]

Japan's economy has been stagnant for the last thirty years[1]. China can look forward to worse by all indications so far. Upskilling their labor force won't fix that. It didn't save Japan.

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/gdp-growth-r...

[dirtyid]

>labor force won't fix

Not for JP because their skillforce potential was already relatively maxed out, their education reform paid off late in 70s while domestic politics squandered female labour participation. JP stagnanted after it tapped out demographic divident of educated/skilled work force in 80s - JP didn't have enough people / demand to upgrade what she had left to push further. Ultimately she settled in fairly prosperous status quo, but as medium sized country, also did not have sufficient internal market or requisite talent to compete across every sector.

VS PRC's recent skilled demographic explosion form 00s academic / S&T / R&D reforms that have not been fully exploited, which is the critical cohort that will build national strength. PRC has internal markets and talent pool to compete in every sector and will move up value chain accordingly. Ultimately just due to sheer amount of people, huge % of whom are lost cause, PRC will settle somewhere below JP, but still significantly higher than where it is now, likely much than US in gross/real ppp terms. Another important dynamic is PRC moving up value chain across all sectors will chip away at western economic primacy. PRC's skills driven growth trend will be slower relative to historic performance of other Tigers because even world demand was not enough to uplift 1.4B people. But that slower growth will start to directly challenge / eat lunch in sectors wealthy west dominantes. PRC may grow slow, but it merely growing will ensure west grows SLOWER if not regress.

One should expect PRC economy to grow slower and stagnate in 20-30 years, but will pull head of US, substantively in real GDP / PPP terms. All while moving up the up value chain, increasing comprehensive national power, and simulatenously erode western economies growth potential. Antcipate a future where every $1 growth in PRC hightech exports takes away 2% from west. Expect PRC industrial/trade policy sell at -$1 loss to cost west $4. JP as US vassel post war did not have the political freedom to play that game, it got Plaza'ed instead.

[ethbr0]

I read Japan's lack of growth as directly stemming from their cultural conservatism. I believe they're among the countries with the lowest immigration and least ethnic foreigners living there?

It's hard to engage economically with a diverse world when your available viewpoints are less diverse. At some point you reach a ceiling.

China has run through the Japanese hypergrowth years (leverage wage disparity, then move up value chain by producing copies of higher value items) and is now in the R&D phase. We'll see how it goes from here.