China demographics thread.

[tokenanalyst]

You re underestimating the power that hysteria can have on people.

Fringe politicians throwing up ideas that have nowhere near the traction needed to be taken seriously happen all the time in these countries. It's as far from reality as we are from having an artificial womb simply by having scientists talk about it. Except the latter is something that will inevitably be possible from scientific advances while the former may never see the erosion of basic human dignity and choice required for it to happen.

A decade ago yes but now have seem established politicians bringing more the idea, for example the South Korea health minister in 2014 or the German health minister in 2018.

Yes, but it doesn't feel unfair to be taxed when you are young for when you are old. It feels unfair to be taxed for your childlessness for other people's children. With the government's ability to print money, they don't need to collect from A to give to B. They can simply print more for B and thus dilute the purchasing power of A through greater money supply and inflation. It's the same thing but it feels much less unfair.

Inflation, especially in develop industrial countries could reduce the desire for people to have children, specially in educated career driven women and men, having food, education, rent and so on rising constantly becomes an good excuse for not having children.

That's a multi-decade wait to finish this conversation. Ideally, we'd act and have the problem solved in China long before it became a hysteria.

No, I mean there are so many developed countries in the world; you don't think there will be countries that hold out due to the obvious ethical boundaries such a tax would encroach on? What if doing this gave such countries an influx of wealthy and highly educated single and childless immigrants?
People are a part of society so when society develops a disdain for such people, it's easier for them to come around and for those with time to possibly change. But when this discrimination comes from the government, the feeling is just oppression.

Like I said before the problem is hysteria and believe me things can get hysterical pretty fast. From fertility rates being national security threat to basically everyone believing that they are going to cease to exist as a country, this is when the more extreme measures could be taken without any regards on whatever someone think their rights should be. Because regardless how "free" a country consider itself to be, the reality is that all countries consider that the survival of society and the survival of the nation above any individual rights.

Personally I am a bit skeptical about this "bomb", I think there is more nuance to this "problem" than just arithmetic and pretty graphs, there are things that are not taken into account, that there are countries that previously where considered demographically doomed that are seeing their birth rates increasing.
I question if is necessary to take the more radical birth rate measures without considering how technology is going to affect the labor market? I personally think that technology is going to obliterated the human labor market and whatever a human couldn't be found for a job, that job is going to be automated pretty fast and there will be not going back.

In short I personally think is bunch of people believing their own numbers a bit too much or people who believe we should live like this.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

You re underestimating the power that hysteria can have on people.

A decade ago yes but now have seem established politicians bringing more the idea, for example the South Korea health minister in 2014 or the German health minister in 2018.

Inflation, especially in develop industrial countries could reduce the desire for people to have children, specially in educated career driven women and men, having food, education, rent and so on rising constantly becomes an good excuse for not having children.

Like I said before the problem is hysteria and believe me things can get hysterical pretty fast. From fertility rates being national security threat to basically everyone believing that they are going to cease to exist as a country, this is when the more extreme measures could be taken without any regards on whatever someone think their rights should be. Because regardless how "free" a country consider itself to be, the reality is that all countries consider that the survival of society and the survival of the nation above any individual rights.

Personally I am a bit skeptical about this "bomb", I think there is more nuance to this "problem" than just arithmetic and pretty graphs, there are things that are not taken into account, that there are countries that previously where considered demographically doomed that are seeing their birth rates increasing.
I question if is necessary to take the more radical birth rate measures without considering how technology is going to affect the labor market? I personally think that technology is going to obliterated the human labor market and whatever a human couldn't be found for a job, that job is going to be automated pretty fast and there will be not going back.

In short I personally think is bunch of people believing their own numbers a bit too much or people who believe we should live like this.

I agree. Human behavior is far more malleable than physical and biological limits.

 

[manqiangrexue]

You re underestimating the power that hysteria can have on people.

No, I'm saying that hysteria is an inappropriate word for the current and forseeable circumstances and if you insist that it's coming down the road decades later, I just don't want to go there because it's too far from where we are. Same reason I don't like to discuss 50 year predictions for GDP.

A decade ago yes but now have seem established politicians bringing more the idea, for example the South Korea health minister in 2014 or the German health minister in 2018.

2014 was a decade ago. Is Korea any closer to doing it? I'm thinking it fizzled out.

Inflation, especially in develop industrial countries could reduce the desire for people to have children, specially in educated career driven women and men, having food, education, rent and so on rising constantly becomes an good excuse for not having children.

Not if the subsidies given to those with children and multiple children outstrip the inflation rate, which will hit the childless who aren't given these subsidies.

Like I said before the problem is hysteria and believe me things can get hysterical pretty fast. From fertility rates being national security threat to basically everyone believing that they are going to cease to exist as a country, this is when the more extreme measures could be taken without any regards on whatever someone think their rights should be. Because regardless how "free" a country consider itself to be, the reality is that all countries consider that the survival of society and the survival of the nation above any individual rights.

I don't see it in the near future and I don't see it in the scope of a conversation that stays closely tied to current realities.

Personally I am a bit skeptical about this "bomb", I think there is more nuance to this "problem" than just arithmetic and pretty graphs, there are things that are not taken into account, that there are countries that previously where considered demographically doomed that are seeing their birth rates increasing.
I question if is necessary to take the more radical birth rate measures without considering how technology is going to affect the labor market? I personally think that technology is going to obliterated the human labor market and whatever a human couldn't be found for a job, that job is going to be automated pretty fast and there will be not going back.

Yes, I'm with you on this one. I've always said this population reduction isn't as scary as some people make it out to be.

 

[gadgetcool5]

The total number of births in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macao in 2023, which was 9.05 million, was equivalent to the total number of births in the colored red regions above. Note that Singapore and Israel are also colored in.

All in all, better than I thought China would be at this stage. Especially as the red area is being padded by immigration constantly. I expect China's birth figures to gradually fall towards becoming equivalent to the Anglo World (e.g., the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia & New Zealand) only over time. And then, possibly even below that. However, this shows that while China's demographic trends are indeed dire, & thus it needs allies to survive, in terms of absolute numbers it will still be able to match up to the collective West for some time.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

View attachment 127330
The total number of births in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macao in 2023, which was 9.05 million, was equivalent to the total number of births in the colored red regions above. Note that Singapore and Israel are also colored in.

All in all, better than I thought China would be at this stage. Especially as the red area is being padded by immigration constantly. I expect China's birth figures to gradually fall towards becoming equivalent to the Anglo World (e.g., the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia & New Zealand) only over time. And then, possibly even below that. However, this shows that while China's demographic trends are indeed dire, & thus it needs allies to survive, in terms of absolute numbers it will still be able to match up to the collective West for some time.

can you provide source so we can dig deeper?

in terms of absolute numbers, SK and JP are going to get screwed first, so let's see what they have.

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. In South Korea this has led to the

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But apparently, it is spreading around to the west too!

 

[coolgod]

can you provide source so we can dig deeper?

in terms of absolute numbers, SK and JP are going to get screwed first, so let's see what they have.

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. In South Korea this has led to the

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But apparently, it is spreading around to the west too!

I heard something about these radical feminists in China, then checked out their various reddit douban communities , scary stuff indeed.

 

[CrazyHorse]

Except the actual reason for the ultra low birth rate in East Asia is due to culture and psychology, not cost of living. Those things are not going to change without a deliberate push for that to happen. And where would that push come from?

Besides, developed East Asia ex-China, e.g. South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan have such a low amount of arable land that if the population fell in line to be proportional to how much flat/arable land they have, it would indeed be miniscule compared to the global population.

Culture doesn’t just “exist”, it comes from the material conditions of the society. If you change those conditions the culture will change.

 

[Bellum_Romanum]

I heard something about these radical feminists in China, then checked out their various reddit douban communities , scary stuff indeed.

Why? What's the worst thing they write? They don't want to shave their armpits and just become lesbians?

 

[Randomuser]

Can you believe even India is barely at replacement levels now? And they want to chide China when this is a common trend everywhere. No wonder they love looking at things in a vacuum.

 

[asiandemographer]

What a nice way to say they're racists.

You can think of it that way, though it doesn't make a difference to reality.

You should ideally also think that soft power, cultural ties etc. do matter.

Can you quantify that claim?

China has a net brain gain from published scientists.

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Here, it is:

These are all the first authors in every Nature (flagship) journal in the month of March. I only included first author because they do most of the work. I tried compiling all authors, but it was just getting too long of a process, but the numbers in all authors will be even more skewed. By my calculation at bottom out of 64 authors with romanized chinese names (not even english first name), 26.33 were in China. Why the decimal? Because some had multiple affiliations, so 1 of them had 3 affiliations, 2 of those in US and 1 in China.

Hence, don't just rely on these publicized numbers, these often don't capture underlying trends. Highly skilled Chinese still who come to the US still overwhelmingly decide to stay in the US.

India's economy is stagnant in complexity. It is no higher ranked on economic complexity (42) than it was in 2000 (43). That means there is little cross pollination happening.

Again, one such measure some data scientist made somewhere doesn't reflect everything. Cross Pollination is happening quite a lot. A lot of US R&D itself is even been undertaken in India.