Comradeship // Freechat

That China's population is aging now doesn't mean it will in the future. You have to remember the birth rate in China was very high. But now the average Chinese woman understandably doesn't want four children, so the population is shrinking because due to the higher fertility period there are a lot of older people. But when they have died out, every generation will be from a generation with fewer children, so there will be a more even spread of age demographics.

Also capitalism requires more people because of the need for higher profits, so they push for higher birthrates. Once birth rates fall, which is inevitable in capitalism, capitalists fear fewer workers to exploit and fewer profits. But in socialism the economy isn't based on exploiting as many people as possible for the highest profits so less emphasis on population growth is needed. China is able to deal with aging better because of this.

Besides even a depopulated China would be one of the most populated countries in the world.

People need to understand that demographic trends are not demographic prophecies. They are basically doing a regression with demographic data to state that if this trend continues, the outcome Y will happen after X years. So this is why all these analysis that focus on just one aspect of the whole thing are deemed to fail.

One thing Western pessimists fail to state is that economies are complex systems. So the introduction of different policies over time can make a system re-organize itself. In this case planned economies like China are more able to adapt and change their direction if there are issues, because they can do widespread changes more easily. In capitalism, policies struggle to be put forward because dominant players are always acting as an agent against change, so changes are much more costly sociologically and politically.

So I have to give kudos at Chinese evolution of economic planning. It overcame many issues the old soviet system that was extremely rigid and eventually caused its stagnation. I wish the URSS were able to work out its issues without being balkanized.

Only a masochist would have this conversation. Just point out that this is absurd and that no sane government would do this. Any state in this position would simply depopulate a different country and move settlers into the vacuum. You know, like euros did/still do.

How many times now have western economists predicted some major collapse in China? It’s getting silly at this point

Inside China Business did a video on this recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoUJbucXQpo

The sources he cites are in the video description.

its one of these things that people see line going down and think it's going to stay that way forever.

What do we mean by "depopulate"? I think I read an estimate (from a non-western backed source) that proposed China's population dropping to the 700-800 million mark over many decades. Which shifts like that are often associated with many countries that have seen a drastic rise is quality of life, medical care, birth control, etc. It just happens more. People want/need fewer kids. They have more to do. Etc.

But this was projected over a looooning time. It's not like the country's gonna loose 30% of it's population in a few generations.

I'd ask:

1. You really think a country of well over a billion people is going to do anything worth calling "depopulate" any time soon?
2. Do you have any examples of this happening anywhere (especially in peacetime)?

This has been a conversation for a few decades about Japan. They may have some issues with fewer young people having kids (and hard restrictions on immigration), but "depopulate" isn't on the table, and I'm not even sure it's at a crisis stage.