| HN Mirror

> https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr035.pdf

Japan, Germany, Italy, and numerous other countries are all much worse off. Assuming things don't change, China in 2050 will be in approximately the same position as Japan today.

Germany and Italy, to take but two examples of large Western economies, haven't had native above-replacement TFR since ~1970.

Even in the US, TFR is well below replacement right now, and in fact is basically comparable to China's TFR from 2010-2017.

US population growth is sort of immigration-dependent, which, let's put it this way, isn't an unalloyed good thing.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1359964/world-population...

joshuahedlund 534 days ago

> Assuming things don't change, China in 2050 will be in approximately the same position as Japan today.

What metric do you have in mind here? It looks like Japan’s population has dropped ~2% from peak in the last 25 years. China is projected to lose ~8% in the next 25.

Or if we look at percent of population over 65, Japan is at ~30% today. China is projected to jump from <20% to 40% by 2050.

> percent of population over 65

Yeah, Japan is at 29.6% today. China is at ~15% right now and is estimated to be at 26% by 2050.

That's not China in your link. It's Hong Kong, which has an older-skewing population.

lolinder 534 days ago

Unalloyed good or not, it's way better than where China is at. And I'm not sure why "other countries are going to be even worse off soon" is an argument in favor of China being on the verge of surpassing as a superpower the one country on your list that is actually growing in population.

> Unalloyed good or not, it's way better than where China is at

I'm not convinced. I don't think that population decline is necessarily worse than changing the cultural and ethnic makeup of your country. If anything, I think that a much stronger case can be made for the other perspective.

Anyway, fact is, things aren't that bad in China. We can see what China's demographic future looks like, because nations like Germany and Japan are forerunners in that regard.

jorvi 534 days ago

You’re conveniently leaving out that that China is still a middle-income country.

It can bear the burden of developing and producing things like solar panels or batteries or AI because of the sheer size of the population, but that doesn’t work if the population itself is the problem.

Conveniently? "The population itself" won't be a serious problem for a long time, which was my point.

Besides, with ~1.4B people, China has a very deep population reservoir. Even with a catastrophically low birthrate in 2023, there were more than 9M births. That's about as much, in that year, as the US, Japan, South Korea, Germany, France, England, Mexico, Canada, and Spain combined. (3.5M+.8M+.23M+.7M+.7M+.56M+1.8M+.35M+.32M)

The Economist crowd loves to prophesy doom, but really the facts are not unambiguous and China's position is not uniquely bad in any respect. If anything, it still has a lot going for it.

jorvi 533 days ago

> Conveniently? "The population itself" won't be a serious problem for a long time, which was my point.

You are deeply, deeply misunderstanding the problem.

Maybe when Western-oriented, China would have been able to escape the middle-income tier despite their demographic trends. But with the dual gut punch of being excised from Western technology and an economy that will be in a tar pit due to growth crashes (real estate bubble for example), no chance in hell.

Don't get me wrong. It's amazing how many people China has lifted out of poverty. And yes, they do take "100 steps forward" for every "2 steps forward, 1 step back" that the West does. But this is because they came from very low, where there is no ossified infrastructure and plenty of low-hanging fruit to pick.

For example, being in Shanghai and having nothing but quiet streets because virtually every motor vehicle is electrified feels like being in the future. The same goes for massive amounts of high-speed rail being built per year. But this is possible because A) there is no legacy infrastructure and B) the state can just crush you without any recourse.

It is quite well-known that the more free a nation is, the more it prospers. Make of that what you will.

petesergeant 534 days ago

Yes but people want to immigrate to Italy and Germany, and emigrate from China

djtango 534 days ago

Based on what I've seen, Italy experiences outflows of the young and inflows of the old...

antifa 533 days ago

I've never heard of someone wanting to go to Italy for non-vacation reasons...

petesergeant 532 days ago

It’s the fourth largest economy in Europe (3rd in the EU), with strong rule of law, and half a million immigrants in 2022. It’s got the 2nd highest industrial base after Germany. Northern Italy is an absolute beast in most metrics, and Southern Italy is… something else.

talldayo 534 days ago

When I was a kid, China was a lot better integrated with the international community. Right now their relationships are far and few between, rarely featuring first-world nations.

If Russia couldn't beat NATO in a pitched fight against the rest of the world, neither can China.

freehorse 534 days ago

> When I was a kid, China was a lot better integrated with the international community. Right now their relationships are far and few between, rarely featuring first-world nations.

Maybe in western media depictions it would seem so, but eg china invests more and more in europe over the years. Moreover, BRICS are roughly half of world's population. Perceptions of what "the world" or "international relationships" mean are sometimes distorted in the west.

joshbaptiste 534 days ago

As a sovereign nation rises in power you'll notice how it slowly starts losing favor from USA

roca 534 days ago

If it's a democracy and reasonably friendly to the USA, it's not a big deal. In the 1990s everyone thought Japan was going to be the next superpower and that was just fine.

tw1984 534 days ago

are you kidding? the US forced Japan to sign the plaza accord effectively ending Japan's rise. that was followed by 30 years close to zero economic growth.

you are not mature enough to discuss such topic if you believe the US will be happy to be taken over by some democratic friends.

gregw2 532 days ago

I am intrigued by the notion that the Plaza Accord was a lynchpin that stopped Japan, and I'm sure better minds have debated it than me, but I don't quite see how a currency accord that didn't shift the trade flows or even the dollar that much, and which was reversed a couple years later in the Louvre Accord, really killed Japan's rise.

My perception is that Japan, after some great success, went through a normal semi-inevitable asset bubble, but their response was uniquely Japanese. Rather than letting firms and the social contract of lifetime employment (particularly for older workers) go bankrupt, their firms and country decided to absorb the losses for a generation and stagnate.

Economically it was a very suboptimal approach but socially/morally I'm less confident it was the wrong call.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japanese_sentiment_in_the...

niceguy1827 531 days ago

Arguing about the Plaza Accord is really a moot point. The real argument is that in the 80s, Japan-bashing was a real thing, just like the China-bashing today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/06/us/resentment-of-japanese...

FpUser 533 days ago

>"... and that was just fine."

No it was not. The US had taken whole bunch of steps to prevent this from happening and those steps were anything but "let's free market decide" and "compete on merits".

It is a real problem for any country or block. As soon as it looks like it threatens leading position of the US all the gloves come of. Obviously not specific to the US. Any other country would do the same given a chance.

What steps are you thinking of? Nothing like what is currently happening with China, I'm sure of that.

suraci 534 days ago

> If it's a democracy and reasonably friendly to the USA, it's not a big deal

Correction: If it accepts the stationing of U.S. troops and succumbs to U.S. financial policies, it's not a big deal

Japan and Germany have paid a huge price to demonstrate their friendship to the U.S. That was not 'just fine'

What does "succumb to US financial policies" even mean?

The situation has waxed and waned but in general West Germany and Japan at the government level have been pretty happy to have US troops stationed there while facing off against the Soviet Union (now Russia) and China. The Ukrainians and the Baltics would love to have some US troops stationed there right now.

rangestransform 532 days ago

It’s a shame that Americans don’t reap the maximal benefits from it, but why should the hegemon not take advantage of lesser states?

ijidak 534 days ago

Ha! Do you remember the panic induced by a rising Japan in the late 80's and early 90's.

The fear of the "Red Sun Rising".

The fear that Japan was going to own most of the valuable real estate in America.

The forcing of Japanese car companies to onshore to protect American jobs.

Blaming of Japanese industrial policy as being unfair competition.

It was the collapse of the Japanese growth engine in the mid 90's that finally ended the American panic.

The U.S. and U.K. are a dual world power.

Whenever powers rise to threaten that duality there is a lot of hand-wringing in Washington.

lmz 534 days ago

> The U.S. and U.K. are a dual world power.

Wait, how did the UK get in there? Especially in this post-brexit century...

I remember those years pretty well. There was a lot of hand-wringing but not a lot of concrete action, very much unlike the situation with China now.

caycep 534 days ago

The question in a rational mind is, why would it even bother? US/China partnership is the most economically successful in world history, even more so than US/UK or AUKUS. But the downside of CCP government structure is that paranoia at the top ranks has a good probability of overruling rationality.

Albeit US cannot speak as US-centric paranoia/"exceptionalism" may do the same thing...and the electorate voted to self destruct the government despite US economy being the strongest in decades.

bugglebeetle 534 days ago

> US economy being the strongest in decades

The vast majority of its people do not share in that success and have seen a declining standard of life relative to prior generations whereas in China, the opposite is quite demonstrably true, despite increasingly similar concentrations of wealth and political power.

roca 534 days ago

On the contrary, real wages in the USA are the highest they've ever been. Social media and fentanyl are making people unhappy but for most people it's not an economic problem.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/11/05/the-average-age-of-first...

bugglebeetle 534 days ago

Sure thing, Dr. Pangloss.

> Average age of first-time homebuyers is 38, an all-time high.

> U.S. homelessness rose 18 percent in 2024, continuing multi-year upward trend

> https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/u-s-homelessness-rose-18...

> analysis of government data estimates that people in the United States owe at least $220 billion in medical debt.

https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/the-burden-of-m...

cheinic830405 534 days ago

> Average age of first-time homebuyers is 38, an all-time high.

And why is this a problem?

What is wrong with renting for life, exactly? I’m seeing more and more people own rental properties, but do not own their primary residence by choice.

Dalewyn 534 days ago

The bad economy is the biggest (arguably only) reason Trump won against Harris, and by a landslide at that.

You may think that expensive gasoline and cartons of eggs are a meme, but the reality is that the economy has become pretty damn Shite(tm) for the commons. Costs of living are objectively higher than they were just a couple years ago and incomes haven't kept pace either.

The stock market is having the time of its life (and as a small time investor I find that nice) but it's completely detached from the economy.

You can cherry-pick problems here and there, of course, but the aggregate statistics are pretty clear. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

bee_rider 534 days ago

I thought eggs were high because of the bird flu.

selimthegrim 534 days ago

Landslide? Electorally?

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/biggest-trade-partner-of...

janalsncm 534 days ago

Not sure where that comes from. By any measure China is more integrated into the rest of the world than ever before.

Whether China can beat NATO in a head to head military contest is one question, but separate from whether they can take Taiwan, for example.

FpUser 533 days ago

>"If Russia couldn't beat NATO in a pitched fight against the rest of the world, neither can China."

The "rest of the world" is not limited by NATO. And China is not fighting "the rest of the world". It trades with it, invests and does all kinds of other things. But sure keeping one's head in a sand is a nice position.

> making drones / evs / high end electornics

China does have a current advantage on lithium battery and rare earth materials - dumb technologies that US and allies can replicate fairly quickly, less than a year. EUV and 3nm and below on the other hand, will take decades, since it involves a number of different and deep technologies controlled by dozens of companies. China has thrown $150B on it since 2014, and has only come up with low yield/unprofitable 7nm via existing DUV machines.

> 80% GDP

China's demographics will more than HALF to 500M by 2100, if not earlier, while US grows to close to 400M by then. Someone actually theorizes that China's population is already only 800M right now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR5F_8dSjOw

Also, a lot of that GDP is debatable in 2024, when real estate prices have dropped by more than 50% in tier 2 and below cities, and deflation has raged on.

> when real estate prices have dropped by more than 50% in tier 2 and below cities, and deflation has raged on.

Can other economies copy that part? I know a bunch of people who'd like to be able to afford more houses & more groceries at the same time. I'd like that, I can't realistically afford a house in the city I live in without a 50% price drop.

I'm sure China has a lot of problems, but key goods getting cheaper is not one of them. What I'm guessing you meant to say is that retirees were led to put too much of their savings into the housing market and are discovering there is a glut. Which is tragic for them. But prices dropping is a good thing; the unachievable ideal is a utopia where everything is free, ie, 100% deflation.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/uzq5bu/why_is...

China's real estate prices having dropped 50% or more has been accompanied by/caused by wages being slashed 50% or more, and increasing unemployment rate, such as 30%+ for youth.

Here are some good posts on why nobody wants deflation:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/mbsxyl/can_so...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/yotf0c/i_dont...

also coincidentally and recently, China’s Xi Jinping asked ‘What’s so bad about deflation?’ amid economic slowdown https://fortune.com/2024/12/29/china-economy-deflation-xi-ji...

So some might suggest that the problem is wages being slashed by >50%? Falling real wages are actually a problem. And, AFAIK by definition, are not influenced by inflation or deflation. But if wages had fallen by <40% and prices by >50% then the overall situation was probably improving. A bit chaotic to be comfortable, but not fundamentally worse.

And there is an unemployment problem too, obviously.

suraci 534 days ago

Your reference is a bs

'CCP is a secret and authoritarian regime that wields immense power' vs 'Some random reporter with English firstname and Chinese lastname know what Xi said before he go to bed'

Have you ever wondered if there's a tiny possibility that the media and the reporter *might* be lying?

...

rangestransform 532 days ago

It’s definitely less rule by committee than the Hu administration, and even the Xi administration pre-deposing Li Keqiang

robgibbons 534 days ago

It's commonly referred to as a deflationary spiral because the falling prices lead to people (perhaps counterintuitively) holding off from large purchases, anticipating a continued drop in prices. Sort of a "buy the bottom" mentality.

The lack of spending then further contributes to falling prices, job cuts, businesses closing, etc. It's really not a situation any economy _wants_.

That said, I empathize with your sentiment.

That is obviously wrong to the point where I am confused why someone always makes the claim. I'm looking forward to running in to someone who can actually follow up with some sort of defence of the position. Extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence style.

Consider the computer industry. Prices have been falling pretty much across my entire life. Supply-demand suggests that people will keep buying new computers as the price drops and that is exactly what is happening. Demand for compute has never been higher. There is no waiting for improvements, if anything there is a mad rush to buy hardware that everyone knows is about to be obsoleted. It isn't even an irrational rush, the people buying that obsolete hardware often make good money (eg, bitcoin miners in the heyday).

Basic supply demand says as price drops demand increases. Basic life experience says as prices drop I can afford more and better stuff. Observation of real industries suggests - as we would intuit - that industries with regular price drops are actually healthy and great to be in for consumers in the small and the large. Theory suggests that everyone ignores nominal price fluctuations and focuses on real changes so systemic deflation is irrelevant. None of this supports the idea that deflation is bad.

Pretty sure the anti-deflation crowd are just wrong. They have no evidence or argument [0] as far as I can tell, and all the theory is stacked against them. China surely has problems. Deflation is not a problem. It is just a metric.

[0] EDIT Well I suppose they do have an argument, but it involves people randomly going crazy and choosing to live in poverty and discomfort because it gets easier to buy goods. Which is not an argument I really take seriously.

bbreier 534 days ago

Deflation is a problem, but not for the reason mentioned there. The reason deflation is an issue is because it makes holding cash into an investment strategy. If the price of goods is dropping, the value of money is rising, so the more cash I hold the richer I get. This obviously dissuades people with cash from investing their cash into actual productive work, which means fewer jobs. There was a small deflationary bump in American history around the 1930s that helps to illustrate what can happen in a deflationary spiral.

Like interest on a bank account? Holding cash is already an investment strategy. Bonds are a thing. People have options to hold cash and not lose purchasing power. One of the traditional ways people tackle inflation is they demand interest from the banks sufficient to cover it plus a little more to account for time value of money.

It is rather unlikely that giving people an option that they already have is going to cause a problem. One major benefit of money is that people can hoard it and there is no cost in the real economy because all the resources are still there and prices can just adjust to the amount of cash in circulation.

> here was a small deflationary bump in American history around the 1930s that helps to illustrate what can happen in a deflationary spiral.

The US came out of the 1930s with an economy that was capable of overcoming almost literally the entire world. Again, the evidence that deflation was some sort of major problem is questionable, it seems to have been associated with the creation of one of the most dynamic economies in the history of history.

And the idea that we have this one clear lesson from one instance back in the 30s is just weird and unbelievable. That isn't how history or complex systems work.

churchill 534 days ago

I have never understood the concept of the deflationary spiral: no matter how much people want to save their cash for later, there are simply things they can't do without.

Food, energy, transportation, education, etc.

How long are you going to delay getting a new car simply because cars are getting cheaper and better? Once you probe the theory beyond the surface, it collapses. Yes, a deflationary economy will see less cash velocity than a ZIRP economy with cheap cash sloshing around. But, at the end of the day, humans MUST spend resources today to live to see their savings worth more.

jarsin 534 days ago

You're missing the debt equation. We live in debt based economy. True across the board deflation (not just some things get cheaper cause of tech etc) means debt is harder and harder to service as wages and earnings fall. As the asset backing the debt goes underwater the debt holders have no choice but to walk away. All banks stop lending and ultimately the entire economy grinds to a halt. That's the main cause of the spiral.

One man's debt is another mans income.

The reason we narrowly avoided full blown deflation in 2008 is because they bailed out the banks. If they didn't we would have had 1929 style depression these last 15 years.

csomar 534 days ago

Yeah people only spending money when they should be spending it is bad for the economy. Misallocation because of inflation is great. Good thing is that this system is close to collapse.

csomar 534 days ago

I think peak propaganda and manipulation was convincing people that inflation is good for the economy and therefore for them. Imagine prices constantly dropping and your money buys more than ever, uhm, like the deflation happening in tech. That would be very bad for the economy. The irony is that the best performing sector has been the one deflating the most.

victorbjorklund 534 days ago

Much of real estate in china is not liveable. They are cheaply built projects without any infrastructure or people living in it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjaE8mDbq68

here's a video of a Chinese family living on the 16th floor of a rotten tail building (unfinished building) with no running water or electricity.

eunos 534 days ago

> dumb technologies that US and allies can replicate fairly quickly

Laugh in Northvolt

> $150B on it since 2014, and has only come up with low yield/unprofitable 7nm via existing DUV machines

Considering that there are less than 5 countries on Earth that can fab 7nm semiconductors, that aint bad.

RIP Northvolt from Sweden and The U.S. made a breakthrough battery discovery — then gave the technology to China https://www.npr.org/2022/08/03/1114964240/new-battery-techno.... However:

- Battery Startup Opens Chicago Plant as US Seeks to Curb Reliance on China https://www.nanograf.com/media/battery-startup-opens-chicago...

- Our own YC: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/industry/energy

- China’s startup scene is dead as investors pull out—’Today, we are like lepers’ https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-startup-scene-dead-inve...

eunos 534 days ago

> RIP Northvolt

Northvolt isnt lacking funding (pedantically they are, else they wouldnt be bankrupt) or clients, but know-how for scaling putting aside some conspiracy theories about Chinese equipments. Turns out scaling isnt easy.

vanadium redox flow isnt very big yet even for Energy Storage System

Side note: The tendency US and Westernin general to depend on Wunderwaffe tech (Vanadium Redox! Solid State Battery!) is quite amusing.

> China’s startup scene is dead as investors pull out

Turns out Emperor Pooh dislike get-rich-quick startup mentality and yet another useless apps. He wouldnt mind hard tech bro like Ren Zhengfei or Wang Chuanfu though.

P.S. Watch the robotic space, things might get interesting in a year or two.

tpm 534 days ago

> Side note: The tendency US and Westernin general to depend on Wunderwaffe tech is quite amusing.

Japan too. It's a sign of helplessness and desperation, as much as I would prefer not to see that. They procrastinated and now see themselves behind.

FooBarWidget 534 days ago

So why aren't US and allies demonstrably replicating EVs (and other kinds of green technology) quickly? Tesla is still pretty much the only serious player. Why are CEOs of major western carmakers painting a very different picture than what you describe here? Where are the serious EU/US battery makers that are globally competitive? It looks to me like the EU has chosen the worst of all options: put up tarriff barriers while also not having serious domestic EV makers, and also not stimulating domestic EV development.

dboreham 534 days ago

Western consumers don't want to buy EVs (mostly).

slt2021 534 days ago

They would buy Chinese EVs since they are much cheaper than ICE

DangitBobby 534 days ago

Not at the prices offered.

vachina 534 days ago

Wrong. Western consumers thinks EVs are for tree huggers and prefer their 6L pickup trucks.

FooBarWidget 534 days ago

Yeah I mean, with the sad state of the Dutch electric grid, the poor coverage of chargers, and the disappearing consumer subsidies, I wouldn't want either. So why aren't governments also building the infrastructure they need to help stimulate demand for EVs? Not taking global climate disaster serious enough?

Building EVs and supporting infrastructure is a lot more complicated than just having a bunch of blueprints.

PeterStuer 534 days ago

Because the agenda is not transitioning the current fleet to EV, it is making private transport a privilege of the top percent in the process.

Personally, I am not sure yet whether I like this or not. I can see good arguments for and against.

I wish it would be an honest open policy instead of the current vice grip of on the one hand passing aggressive phase out timelines of ICE through regulation, and on the other doing nothing to prepare a grid for mass EV adoption.

I can see why it wouldn't pass a democratic vote, but I also think chances of this passing under the covers are fairly slim as any time one of their roadmapped phases comes near they usually have to postpone them to appease the public.

Saline9515 534 days ago

Northvolt is a good example of why it is not so simple to replicate China's success in lithium battery production.

protomolecule 534 days ago

>a lot of that GDP is debatable in 2024

While the share of services in the US GDP is more than 3/4. What will you do with all these expensive NY lawyers when push comes to shove? Sue China's drones?