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Comment by haltingproblem | Hacker News Reader

I am quite befuddled by the claims of the demographic crisis, did Chinese planners not forsee this since population dynamics models are relatively straightforward compared to say, epidemiological or climate models. Chinese Academies are quite good. Is this fear mongering by a spirited cadre of believers who might be most likely wrong or a very likely outcome?

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Idk why this is news, fertility and one-child policy outcomes have been obvious for over a decade

“Clearly, the situation is becoming urgent. Already the country's population is ageing fast. The first children born under the one-child policy face the prospect of caring for an ever-increasing number of pensioners.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11404623

“Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, predicts that the ratio of over-65s to 15-to-65-year-olds in China will increase almost threefold between 2010 and 2035. That means for each person over 65 there will be just three working-age people, compared to 10 today” - 2007

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19626291-800-china-sp...

My question was why did the Chinese intelligentsia not foresee this 20 years ago (2000s) or 30 years ago (1990s) rather than over the past 5-10 years. Even now they don't seem to be attacking it with any vigor.

There are several outlets predicting a 50% population decline by the end of the century, but it is generally a well known issue tied to the 1-child policy and the more general pattern of higher living standard tied to lower birth rates. The Chinese are now having fewer children and waiting longer, much like most other advanced economies.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/12/05/key-facts-a...

The "crisis" is tied to a population age distribution skewed towards the older, so you have fewer people working and supporting a growing number of retirees.

It's more that past priority correctly focused on suppressing population growth at all cost. I've pointed out in other comments in this thread but roughly 40% of PRC is still in informal economy making 2000 USD per year, contributing to 5% of GDP. They are, to be blunt excess people who will be trapped in lower middle income because they couldn't be integrated into modern economy due to various factors. Estimates for PRC family planning averted ~300M births. Imagine another 120-200M poor, with agri resources already near limits. A PRC with 1.4B and 600M useless people and demographic crisis is still preferrable to PRC with 1.7B and 720-800M useless people that would need to be reigned in anyway.

As everyone is saying, demographic models are relatively straightforward. So everyone involved in decision making should have known this.

So.

Perhaps they don't see it as a bad thing?

How sustainable would it be for a population the size of China's to have similar individual consumption levels to the average American?

Perhaps they see a benefit to spreading the resources of their nation amongst 200, 500, 800, whatever million people instead? It will give each person a better quality of life? It will allow the quality of life amongst Chinese people to continue improving, which will support national stability?

> Chinese Academies are quite good

Almost like it doesn't matter how good your academics are in a communist dictatorship :) If only we had an example of one such communist dictatorship collapsing despite all their genius planners..

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