China demographics thread.

[voyager1]

US and China at least have emerging technology companies like Google, Amazon, Alibaba, Tencent, Tesla, Nio, etc. that are companies in modern industries. Japan has none. Japan has no real Internet, software, or IT industries. It failed to develop a domestic vaccine when even Vietnam, India, and Russia have developed vaccines! Japan was the first Asian country to orbit the moon yet now it cannot even put a man in space, soon they will be behind India... I can go on and on. Pretty much every industry you think of Japan is nonexistent or falling behind. The only exception is a few niche semiconductor areas like photoresist that are a relic of its past glory. And even that it won't have a monopoly on forever as China develops alternatives. Even Softbank refuses to invest in a single Japanese company! Smh. Even South Korea is doing far better than Japan. Samsung alone does more R&D than most of corporate Japan combined

This is all true and it shows that Japan is severely declining. Their massive QE program has massively distorted their capital market and the old low tech government policies are stiffling reforms

And lets not forget the infamous Japanese long long work hours.

What quality of life, low crime, clean etc when you are working 14 hrs per day. At that point you are basically a slave.
You wake up, go to work, come back and sleep immediately from being overworked

 

[Abominable]

Well the "situation" Japan is in is better than the US with its school shootings every 12 hours and immense civil strife and riots every 3 months and decline in every educational indicator that exists.

Sounds to me like a worse situation than Japan is in. Now I would much rather China not be in either situation, but if I had to choose? I would choose Japanese demographics over American. There is nothing good long-term in having a demographic underclass that has resentment about a majority population that previously enslaved and segregated them.

You're blaming immigration for school shootings and civil strife?

Most immigration to America today is Asian and south America, I can't think of any school shooting or riots that have involved either. Both tend to involve black and whites who are both as "American" as each other.

 

[Abominable]

You can't evaluate a country just by GDP only. Going by life indices Japan is still a wealthy and orderly country where there 2 or 3 jobs for every job seeker. Excellent social service and education system. Good health care. good infrastructure. Pretty safe country to live, crime is minuscule. Clean and orderly society. It will take China decades to achieve what Japan has now

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Japan performs well in some measures of well-being in the Better Life Index. Japan ranks at the top in personal security. It ranks above the OECD average in income and wealth, education and skills, jobs and earnings, housing, personal security, and environmental quality. It is below the average in terms of civic engagement, subjective well-being, social connections, work-life balance and health status. These rankings are based on available selected data.

Money, while it cannot buy happiness, is an important means to achieving higher living standards. In Japan, the average household net-adjusted disposable income per capita is USD 29 798 a year, lower than the OECD average of USD 33 604 a year. There is a considerable gap between the richest and poorest – the top 20% of the population earn more than six times as much as the bottom 20%.

In terms of employment, 75% of people aged 15 to 64 in Japan have a paid job, above the OECD employment average of 68%. Some 83% of men are in paid work, compared with 67% of women. In Japan, the percentage of employees working very long hours is higher than the OECD average of 11%.

Good education and skills are important requisites for finding a job. Japan is a top-performing country in terms of the quality of its educational system. In Japan, the percentage of adults aged 25-64 have completed upper secondary education, is above the OECD average of 78%.The average student scored 529 in reading literacy, maths and science in the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). This score is much higher than the OECD average of 486. Although girls outperformed boys in many OECD countries, in Japan boys scored 2 point higher than girls on average.

In terms of health, life expectancy at birth in Japan is 84 years, four years higher than the OECD average of 80 years, and one of the highest in the OECD. Life expectancy for women is 87 years, compared with 81 for men. The level of atmospheric PM2.5 – tiny air pollutant particles small enough to enter and cause damage to the lungs – is 13.8 micrograms per cubic meter, slightly lower than the OECD average of 13.9 micrograms per cubic meter. Japan does better in terms of water quality, as 87% of people say they are satisfied with the quality of their water, compared with an OECD average of 81%.

There's no doubt Japan is a great place to live and the quality of life is one of the best in the world. But it has declined significantly over the past 20 years.

In the 80s many believed Japan would overtake America and become the biggest economy in the world, then the demographic bomb hit. Now few people think Japan is a superpower in Asia, let alone in the world.

Western countries have been able to avoid this with immigration for now, but eventually the pool of migrants will dry up.

 

[Xizor]

So you would choose a waning country instead of a strong ever growing countr?

Yes there are problems but the Japan you admire so much has stagnated and cant move forward anymore.

(Still hasn't reached its 2009 GDP...)
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Japan's Demographics is different from Japan's economy.

The Japanese economy has been in stagnation for long. But that doesn't mean they are declining. Except for the bubble created in the 1980s, I can't find any fault with the Japanese domestic economic populace.

However, internationally, I'd agree that they failed to protect their interests. The BoJ policies that lead to the bubble burst was in part forced by US interests (an NHK documentary on the BoJ is still in YT explaining it).
That alongside the Japanese surrender of many critical industries etc mean that the stagnation can't be faulted entirely on the Demographics.
The Japanese failed to hop into Software services and Aircraft manufacturing (although I'm not sure about the latter being an entirely domestic decision).

I'd argue that Japan had the potential to be 10 trillion economy. Demographics is not entirely to blame.

 

[voyager1]

Japan's Demographics is different from Japan's economy.

The Japanese economy has been in stagnation for long. But that doesn't mean they are declining. Except for the bubble created in the 1980s, I can't find any fault with the Japanese domestic economic populace.

However, internationally, I'd agree that they failed to protect their interests. The BoJ policies that lead to the bubble burst was in part forced by US interests (an NHK documentary on the BoJ is still in YT explaining it).
That alongside the Japanese surrender of many critical industries etc mean that the stagnation can't be faulted entirely on the Demographics.
The Japanese failed to hop into Software services and Aircraft manufacturing (although I'm not sure about the latter being an entirely domestic decision).

I'd argue that Japan had the potential to be 10 trillion economy. Demographics is not entirely to blame.

Obviously demographics are not the only reason but it certainly plays a (IMO major) part.

You cant just grow the people incomes to infinity. At some point you hit a "soft" wall and progress slows down by a lot

However if you have demographics at your side you can expand vertically (incomes per person) AND horizontally (many people).
So you can have 2 axis of "easy" growth.

Whereas Japan only has one axis of growth which seems to have maxed out at the moment. Only deep reforms can unlock that upper limit.

So China should strive to have 2 axis of growth.
1 is increasing gdp per capita
2 is having healthy population growth

 

[siegecrossbow]

Wy does it matter though. China is already committed to urbanisation. After 5-8 years these rural pops will become urban population and so on

Yes, there may be some impact on the short term (for 3-4 years?) but after that it will even out

Exactly. It is more worthwhile to improve living conditions in villages than the token gesture of opening up birth quota completely, which will probably only encourage rich people to have lots of children. Actually scratch that. Rich people already do. Zhang Yi Mou had several and he just paid the fines lol.

 

[AndrewS]

Japan's Demographics is different from Japan's economy.

The Japanese economy has been in stagnation for long. But that doesn't mean they are declining. Except for the bubble created in the 1980s, I can't find any fault with the Japanese domestic economic populace.

However, internationally, I'd agree that they failed to protect their interests. The BoJ policies that lead to the bubble burst was in part forced by US interests (an NHK documentary on the BoJ is still in YT explaining it).
That alongside the Japanese surrender of many critical industries etc mean that the stagnation can't be faulted entirely on the Demographics.
The Japanese failed to hop into Software services and Aircraft manufacturing (although I'm not sure about the latter being an entirely domestic decision).

I'd argue that Japan had the potential to be 10 trillion economy. Demographics is not entirely to blame.

Once a country reaches the productivity frontier, you have to expect productivity growth of less than 2% per year.

 

[AndrewS]

There's no doubt Japan is a great place to live and the quality of life is one of the best in the world. But it has declined significantly over the past 20 years.

In the 80s many believed Japan would overtake America and become the biggest economy in the world, then the demographic bomb hit. Now few people think Japan is a superpower in Asia, let alone in the world.

Western countries have been able to avoid this with immigration for now, but eventually the pool of migrants will dry up.

Japan has a population roughly 3x smaller than the USA.

If Japan was to eclipse the US as a superpower, how likely was it that the average Japanese person would become more than 3x richer than the average American?

 

[voyager1]

Japan is not a country to be held in high regard. Yes they are "rich", but look at their people.

Japanese probably work more hours than slaves did in the past centuries.

I doubt that any Chinese wants to emulate that. There are already growing noices against the '996' system in China

China will take its own road. Japan will take its own. We will see who will prevail at the end

 

[Abominable]

Japan has a population roughly 3x smaller than the USA.

If Japan was to eclipse the US as a superpower, how likely was it that the average Japanese person would become more than 3x richer than the average American?

If you are talking about what the situation was like back in the 80s, the population difference was more like 1.5x.

The working population age was also closer:

America's population carried on increasing exponentially, whereas Japan's stagnated.

It's not the only reason why Japan is the way it is now, and immigration is only a temporary solution to demographic problems (immigrants get old too). But America has been able to keep growing over the past 40 years while Japan is frozen in time.