[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.