They say demography is destiny. According to the following report by H. Numan, China’s destiny is in an accelerating tailspin.
Red dragon, dead dragon
by H. Numan
I’ve written an essay in which I showed that the People’s Republic of China (‘China’) isn’t going to attack the Republic of China (‘Taiwan’). They probably still won’t, but the whole situation has changed with the advent of the Russo-Ukrainian war. China is on the way to oblivion. In 2050 the country will have fewer than 700 million citizens. Worse, the Chinese government knows it. That changes everything.
It won’t be through war, thank God. Nor by famine or diseases. Though all will definitely play a part in the future. It’s because of demographics. The One Child Policy has been way more effective and has lasting effects far beyond what policymakers could imagine. China will die slowly of old age. Not in the distant future, but (Mark 9:1) within the lifetime of those here standing. By 2050 the Chinese population will be half of what it is today. The shrinkage didn’t start this year, as was expected by the Chinese bureau for lies statistics, but had already begun around 2010. They miscalculated and included about 100 million that should have been born but weren’t due to the one child policy.
Demographics are complicated
Let’s have a look at how demographics work. We can’t foretell what individuals will do when they reach a certain age, but we can do that fairly accurately for large groups. Those groups are called cohorts in demographics; they consist of males and females of the same age bracket, in periods of five years. A generation is the period a cohort needs to start reproducing, usually 20-25 years.
We can split the population into roughly three groups: juveniles (< 21), adults (21-65) and pensioners (>65). Every five years a cohort moves up one spot on the graphs. On the left side are males, on the right side females.
The first graph is Niger, a country with a fast-growing population. Observe a huge number of infants and a very small number of pensioners. This kind of growth is disastrous. In 15 years the largest cohort (bottom) will start reproducing. Making the bottom cohort even larger. A country like this runs out of resources quickly.
The next graph is Sweden, which has a stable population. Though when you look at the bottom, they are slowly shrinking. The last graph is Singapore, which has a declining population. How can you see that? Look at the bottom. Move up the bottom cohort, with a small reduction for death. The Singaporeans aren’t replacing themselves. The bulge in the middle are the people that are the most productive for the economy. By looking at those three graphs, you can see that Niger is in trouble, Sweden is doing all right and Singapore is booming at the moment.
The Chinese graph is worse:
In both graphs you see more males than females. That’s deadly for any civilization. Imagine a war kills off 50% of all males in a country. It will take a while, but they can recover. Imagine the same, but now 50% of all females are killed/removed. That country will never recover. Impossible. It’s gone forever. An observant reader will say: in the right graph are far more females than men. Correct, but have a look at their ages. They start catching up from 55 years and older. Not too many women in those age groups are likely to give birth …
The One Child Policy started in 1980, and was abolished in 2015. That means 35 years or seven cohorts (!) were raised as single children. That’s far more than a generation. Not only that, but Chinese prefer boys over girls. If they only can have one child, it better be a boy! That single boy is far more precious than you think, because he eventually has to provide not only for his parents and grandparents but those of his wife as well, if he can find one. China does not have an old age pension, and does not allow its citizens to invest for retirement.
This created three unforeseen effects. Once those single boys grew up, they started to look for prospective wives among the surviving single girls. For girls a dream come true: they could marry a young handsome millionaire! If a prospective groom doesn’t bring at least two houses (pauper!!) and a BMW he doesn’t have to waste his time wooing her. Yes, even in this woman’s paradise there are still leftover women. The grass is never green enough. Some things never change.
The other effect nobody thought about is that children raised as single children have great difficulties socializing and do not want more than one child themselves. If they want children at all, that is. In 2015 when the Chinese government allowed for two children, nobody responded. A bit later they encouraged three children, but that was ridiculed by the people. A poll was quickly taken offline, because the results were not exactly what the government wanted to be. +90% of respondents stated that they don’t want any kids at all. None. In very plain language. Not a word of Chinese in it (in a matter of speaking, of course)!
The third and most important effect is that the emperor cannot send countless soldiers to die in a vain, glorious war. Invading Taiwan will immediately cause widespread revolution. Because the parents and grandparents of those soldiers would have lost the means to subsist in their old age.
What’s the complexity of demographics?
First nothing seems to happen, then it happens all of a sudden. It takes 20 years (four cohorts) to become a productive adult. It takes 45 years (nine cohorts) to reach the age of retirement. Then, all of a sudden … boom! … retirement. One day you are working, the next day you’ll never work again. It’s not a gradual process, it happens from one day on the next.
From 1980 onwards Chinese people became prosperous. Less poor, for the most part. But some people really became wealthy. Here China loves to play the numbers game. “We have more millionaires than The Netherlands has inhabitants!” True enough, but China also has 1.4 billion citizens. If we look at the percentages, China has less than 1% of it citizens as millionaires. In The Netherlands that’s 3%.
The prosperity of China is over. Forever. Demographically, they borrowed from the bank. Now it’s payback time. Raising children is very expensive. From 1980 onwards Chinese didn’t have to spend their money on raising children. They could spend it on whatever they wanted. That’s the reason why Thailand became — until Covid — the most popular foreign tourist destination for the Chinese. Chinese tourists amounted to one-third of all arrivals. That money would otherwise have been spent on raising children.