In adversarial terms, for China, it's now or never; for the U.S., it's later or never.
0: Check out how dark blue it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_se...
If the West is not reacting soon, China's ability to dominate East Asia may extend well into the 2030s.
At some point, though, it's reasonable to expect stagnation in China, unless there is some black swan event (AGI breakthrough, large scale eugenic/crispr "directed evolution" or something similar that democratic countries do not have the stomach for)
US prefer sooner war because PRC military closing gap and will continue to both in platfrom numbers and capabilities.
PRC also has the BEST demographics to fight future wars. She's still going to generate multiple times US population as 800M country by 2100, except most will be high skilled necessary to operate modern military, which current reforms is running short on talent because access to high end mil talent is relatively new due to efforts paying off from past education reforms. Reality is, even depressed PRC demographics is still generating 8-5 million bodies a year, and all you really need is a few hundred thousand for modern war machine. The entire demographics will affect PRCs ability to wage war is frankly stupid. Doubly so in age where unmanned roles increasing which still overwhelmingly favours PRC industry.
Meanwhile PLA isn't even close to upper limit of military size and power, with a signficantly greater upper bound than US due to population and industrial base. Like her defense budget is ~2%. She's barely trying. Decades from now PLA will be multiple times more powerful than now, like PLA modernization plans anticipates MATCHING broad spectrum US military primacy after 2040s, there's no reason to do anything now especially if trigger is capability based. Condition based sure, like if TW declares indpendance or US crosses redlines, but that's not for PRC to decide.
Hence why all the PRC will attack TW "windows" are coming from US, because the long term trend significantly favours PRC who'd rather wait. At minimum until post 2030s until she builds out another few thousand nukes. Overlooking that PRC would rush TW scenario unilaterally without proper nuke umbrella is what gives these "windows" little credibility.
Country/region birth 0–14 15–24 25–54 55–64 Over 65 Total
Vatican City -- -- -- -- -- -- All male
Qatar 1.02 1.02 2.42 5.01 3.40 1.89 3.39
United Arab Emirates 1.06 1.07 1.19 3.27 6.05 3.39 2.56
Bahrain 1.03 1.03 1.31 1.87 1.67 1.04 1.53
Kuwait 1.05 1.09 1.21 1.69 1.26 0.79 1.38
Saudi Arabia 1.05 1.04 1.09 1.52 1.61 1.12 1.30
Oman 1.05 1.05 1.11 1.33 1.13 0.92 1.18
China has been trying to incentivize people to have more children for a few years now, and it hasn't been working. Turns out, when the future looks bleak and you don't have time outside of work to socialize, let alone raise a child, you're less likely to be willing to have one.
Add to that all the work China did for decades to promote and enforce its widely-known one-child policy, and you've got a recipe for demographic collapse.
Seems a bit premature to draw any conclusion when the window includes the years of covid lockdowns.
In authoritarian communist countries you typically see silent protests in the form of giving up of quiet quitting. This would apply to starting families as well due to low levels of hope.
China's problem is a pipeline problem. What to do until the new humans arrive?
The problem with rate of birth decline IMO is it compresses and increases stress of PRC weathering society transitioning to more strategically/geopolitically suitable population levels from something like 80 years to 60 years which poses governance challenges. But productivity increase will chug on due to recomposition into a disproportionate high skilled society, by 100s of millions. Best way to conceptualize this is that PRC will be transitioning from current population mixture of roughly 2 Japans and 6 Nigerias to 6 Japans over next 60-80 years in terms of productive potential, the latter being a significantly more productive society even if it only has 60% of people due to net human capital upgrades. Higher birth rate means maybe PRC can manage transition largely alone with domestic births and automation, lower means importing 10s of millions of foreign workers and remittance outflows which is politically and strategically unpalatable. There's plenty to do, but some more politically preferrable than others.