[lolinder]

And now they're at the point where the population pyramid is collapsing. It's hard to make any predictions about the future when they got here riding a baby boom and now their ratio of elderly to working age is about to go through the roof.

https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2023/

[A_D_E_P_T]

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.

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

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

[joshuahedlund]

> 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.

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

[A_D_E_P_T]

> 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]

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.

[A_D_E_P_T]

> 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]

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.

[A_D_E_P_T]

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]

> 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]

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

[djtango]

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

[antifa]

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

[petesergeant]

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.