It's a stupid argument because PRC unemployment is 5%, meaning youth get jobs eventually. There's just mismatch between jobs they want/think they deserve but they still eventually work. In mean time, high home ownership rate, high % of kids live at home, low student debt means youth can just chill / fuck around / be unemployed for a bit to explore options.

In terms of attrition, at PRC scale, even with shit TFR generate way too many bodies to burn for modern war, hence arguments that demographic crisis would eat away at PRC war making potential even more retarded. And most of the wars on PRC horizon are air/naval, requires very technical personel that are expensive to train. Which is why PLA modernization had dramatic personal reductions over the last few years. This piece is extra stupid because is it assumes increase in defense spending, which btw is still modest ~2%, is correlated to increased personel, when most of the money is going into hardware/acquisitions. A country with actual serious security delimma would spend much higher % of GDP on defense. PRC in the 80s was spending over 6%, or US/USSR during cold war was 6-10% for US, and 10-20% for USSR.