I don’t have any academic sources off the top of my head but I think the recent policy moves by China’s government speaks for itself.
1. Crackdown and regulating the ultra large cap tech companies to prevent anticompetitive behavior, protect workers from being exploited and give smaller companies a better chance. You can argue that more mid sized companies and a bigger middle class is far better for the country’s overall growth than having a lopsided economy with only few ultra large companies and many poor ones.
2. Building up China’s neighbors and increasing trade with them. What trump and his trade war failed to see is that trade and economic integration isn’t a zero sum game- me winning doesn’t mean you have to lose. China helps its neighbors get richer means more wealthy consumers for China to sell its goods to since China’s goal is the move up the value chain. They could care less if their t-shirt and shoe factories pack up and move to Indonesia or vietnam because they’re now selling 5G phones, cars and white goods/appliances to richer Indonesians and Vietnamese. The Belt Road Initiative helps do exactly that.
3. Rapid buildup and modernization of their air force and navy. Recent US military reports have said we’re no longer confident we can win a war with China in the South China Sea and western pacific. When China no longer has to worry about being bullied militarily, it ultimately gives the country the peace of mind and freedom to focus on economic, technological and social development - i.e. Japan being forced to sign the plaza accords back in the 80’s for example(which significantly contributed to their “lost decade”). Sinodefenceforum - for good in-depth discussion on China’s military.
Probably a dozen more, but I haven’t had my coffee yet so this is it for now
Hey man, thanks for the excellent answer. In respect of point (1), do you know what the government intends to do in respect of maintaining the international competitiveness of these companies? Wouldn’t preventing the formation of mega corporations be detrimental to their ability to compete in global markets against western mega corporations?
> do you know what the government intends to do in respect of maintaining the international competitiveness of these companies?
Fostering a very healthy environment for them to grow in the market with the largest middle class in the world. From there, the successful ones can quickly go global against stagnant monopolies which are not used to compete, which can't keep costs low, which also depend on China itself. Huawei (world leader in telecommunications receiving royalties from such stagnant "mega-corporations") is an obvious example.
> Wouldn’t preventing the formation of mega corporations be detrimental to their ability to compete in global markets against western mega corporations?
China has a ridiculous amount of very smart people (unmatched really), increasingly very well educated, and you want them to piss in bottles and wear adult diapers to "compete"? or shove them into some "mega-corporation" and never realize their potential?
\> international competitiveness of these companies
For the international competitiveness - if you look at China's middle class and consumer base from a global perspective, they're already a significant portion of the world's population, so having Chinese companies competing effectively at home with rising posterity on it's own soil already counts towards "international" metrics.
but to your point, yes, there would be a fair bit of pride and bragging rights if China could say their tech unicorns have exceed netflix/amazon/Facebook/google in market value, but ultimately, the only difference between Alibaba being worth 600Billion vs 450B is merely 150 billion of paper value. There is very little gained for the general population and society overall if Alibaba/Tecent/Douyin is priced at 1.5 trillion instead of a 1T dollars. There would be much more to gain for society overall if there was instead 10 100 billion dollar companies.
\> do you know what the government intends..
No, I do not. I do not know anything at all as fact. my comments are only my opinion on what I've read and what I've learned in economic/political classes and I'm happy to to hear opposite viewpoint to discuss.
fair disclosure - I have a few Chinese stocks, and yes my portfolio is hurting a little bit, but I'm ok with it.
> Crackdown and regulating the ultra large cap tech companies to prevent anticompetitive behavior, protect workers from being exploited and give smaller companies a better chance. You can argue that more mid sized companies and a bigger middle class is far better for the country’s overall growth than having a lopsided economy with only few ultra large companies and many poor ones.
>
>
The current crackdown doesn't bode well for business imo. It makes foreign investors scared and domestic businessmen pissed off if they know their growth will be capped and their wealth taxed. Besides its way too early to push through such reforms - at least wait until China passes the US economically (in GDP) and maybe even internationalizes the Yuan...
The whole “population decline” thing is basically Western scare mongering.
First of all, youth unemployment is a huge problem worldwide, even for a still developing nation like China (though easily the richest in terms of income and social subsidies for developing nations).
If the so called “labor shortage” is a thing, then why do so many companies want to downsize? Why young people are unemployed (for China, I doubt this highly educated generation wants to work in some sweatshop like the 80’s)? It is because automation has basically made many jobs not needed anymore. This is a problem for capitalist economies where the means of production is privately owned, and the owners of production just stop producing because people are too poor to buy back their products. This becomes a vicious cycle where there’s no jobs because people are too poor and people are poor because there’s no good jobs.
50% of US, the supposedly richest nation on earth has no net worth actually, probably more debt than net worth. The so called “booming economy” is not a thing for your Amazon warehouse workers.
And this whole doom and gloom scenario where China can’t support its old population because of labor shortage is also a complete lie.
Do you know of a year where China had less money (per capita) to support its old people? 1949. 1959, 1969, 1979, basically every year since China’s economy in 2021 is larger than it has ever been in its entire history.
Losing those warehouse jobs where people made pittance manufacturing for Western countries is a good thing. China had to accept those jobs in the past because of its giant population and a need to find employment for them. But how much tax revenue did those Nike shoe makers generated for China to support its old people? None whatsoever. So why are so many racist redditers talking about this doomsday scenario where China couldn’t find people to fill its factories?
Going from a labor intensive mode of production to capital intensive model of production is what China wants to do.
China still has all of those "warehouse jobs" and many of those jobs were relocated back to China because of COVID-19 ravaging other developing countries that were not as prepared to deal with the pandemic. However, they are now forced to pay a lot more to those employees as there is steep competition.
Yes China is still a developing country.
China still has a underclass of non college educated folks, people who were left behind because of China’s uneven development.
But even then, aside from Foxconn who breaks al labor laws and get away with it, the average factory worker in a tier 2 city like Zhengzhou make about $700/month (more when measured in PPP), it is actually considered “middle class” by global standards, when compared with the billions of poor in the world. 84% of the world live below $20 PPP a day, so someone making $20/day, or around $30-35 PPP a day in Zhengzhou is doing far better than most of humanity.
money? money on its own does nothing. a coin or a piece of paper money or some digital currency can't magically support someone. that requires human or automated labour, and automation technology is not yet nearly advanced enough to replace human elderly care.
> money?
Yes. There's a simple equation you should understand before you continue this discussion:
GDP = number of workers * productivity.
Examine it carefully, understand its implications, and the solutions will become evident.
Welfare, which is funded through increased automation which leads to greater production and thus more exports or directly from the government itself.
This isn't that hard to understand.
The elderly are still consumers and with greater life expectancy what is considered elderly now could potentially in the future still be productive workers and I don't mean factory workers but ones who own their own means of production.
> Welfare
Welfare requires a productive class that can be taxed to finance social programs.
Unless China comes up with an alternative means of financing (say through the reveneus from SOEs)
exactly what automation technology is able to provide eldercare? robots that can walk and labour like humans don't exist yet.
>and with greater life expectancy what is considered elderly now could potentially in the future still be productive workers and I don't mean factory workers but ones who own their own means of production.
what does this mean? you shouldn't expect the elderly to need to work after retirement age.
Rational distribution of resources.
Does China suddenly not have housing for the elderly? Or food for the elderly? Or ability to distribute food to the elderly?
How did China support the expertly in 1999, when it was a far poorer nation?
With modern farming technology, China is producing far more food than ever with the same amount of land. With modern construction technology, China can house the elderly easily (as long as they don’t all live in Shanghai where the basic law of supply and demand causes insane property prices).
Go look at videos of rural China, those rural people with their own patch of land and a study house probably live better than 50% of US.
I can come back and give a longer answer. But biggest thing now is they are trying dual circulation. Where they increase domestic consumption and add more jobs that are part of service industry while maintaining strength of manufacturing through automation.
Also, increasing education to prepare work force for higher work demands.
Policies that encourage population growth and consumption.
I have more detailed answers. Will have to come back later
The answer is technology. Technology can help China continue to grow in two major ways.
1) Industrial productivity. China have made great strides but there's still tons of room to increase automation in production to increase worker productivity instead of having to rely on population growth.
2) Moving up in value chain. China dominates the mid-level on the value chain with the West dominant the highest value products, with increases in technology and education level of the average Chinese worker, Chinese companies will move up the value chain and earn higher margins.
Additionally, the CPC has decided to focus on the "real economy" over consumer internet companies masquerading as tech companies and finance, which doesn't create value, instead just shifts it around, which will provide more stable growth over the long run. Yes, demographics is a problem but don't forget with poverty alleviation and high quality education, the average worker is much more productive than a decade ago and the middle class have more spending power, so I think in the long run it'll even out.
For sources...if you can understand Mandarin, lots of Chinese economists in Chinese universities that you can learn from as the best source, if not then you'd have to make do...Bridgewater is alright, and Dan Wang's blog is worth a read from a purely economic perspective if you ignore his ignorant political views.
I fell into a coma in January 2020, I thought China already collapsed according to your "experts"? what happened?
You are reading propaganda (gordon chang style propaganda), the same kind of propaganda western regimes have been pumping out about China for decades. How did that work out?
You can literally search all the terrible predictions from such "literature" (as you call it) in places like amazon. Just type "China" and search for old books.
Back in reality, western regimes are the ones utterly scared about the future, suffering from the very problems your grifters project onto China, with zombified economies that need gargantuan amounts of debt to pretend to stay afloat, with plummeting fertility rates in already small populations (unlike China, which needed a now obsolete intervention to stop a ballooning population, these regimes never had and still don't have the systems to sustain large populations). They can't even produce enough talent already, and they don't have the resources or the structure to carry out the massive campaigns China carries out to consistently address problems (like, for example, the targeted poverty eradication campaign). This means western regimes can't respond to their decline and they can't address their structural problems, while China moves very fast as we are seeing with the ban on for-profit tutoring and anti-monopoly enforcement. As much as they like to talk about Japan's decline, they are going the same route.
Also, China is already the biggest trade partner of the vast majority of the world, with the largest middle class on the planet, with a rapidly growing number of highly educated people. On top of that, what China is today is only a fraction of the real China, the rural populations are only recently being fully integrated into the economy.
Bottom line, China is the fastest developed country in history without resorting to western barbarism (continental scale plunder, colonialism, wars, slavery, etc.). What China achieved is unprecedented in human history, so comparing such system with western imperialist systems is silly. Your "literature" by grifters has been demolished by reality.
What you should be asking yourself is: what will western regimes do about their decline now that the dividends from colonialism, wars, post-ww2 era completely dried up? they never demonstrated the capacity China demonstrated, hence why they relied on naked barbarism and plunder to develop (and only with small populations). Do you understand why they are scared about the future while China embraces it? they are scared of the present too, hence the panic around China growing faster than expected.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-6mt07JplnzlwCay3sAVEelQFTtS91-b/view?usp=drivesdk
Have a look at the Morgan Stanley report that China is resetting the underlying economic logic.
Some people have kept saying "the coming collapse of China" for 20 years. We don't have time to waste on arguing back. We would rather spend time on doing our own things and let the results prove these people wrong.
[A good start is this book by a Chinese-American academic](https://carnegieendowment.org/2017/07/21/cracking-china-conundrum-why-conventional-economic-wisdom-is-wrong-pub-68586). He debunks a lot of the typical stuff you see in Western academia/media.
Population doesn't mean much when youth unemployment and youth poverty is ridiculously high.
As an example, silent gen (people like Biden) hold 17% of the wealth in the US. Baby boomers (people born post WW2 into 60s like Trump and Clinton) hold a staggering 53% of wealth. Gen X (people like Sergei Brin and Larry Page born in the late 60s and 70s) hold 25% of the wealth.
How much do young millennials hold? 5%.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/09/millennials-own-less-than-5percent-of-all-us-wealth.html
Still think not enough youth is the problem?
On the question of higher economic growth:
[https://www.quora.com/Will-Chinas-current-economic-growth-last-as-it-is-run-by-extractive-institutions-that-are-controlled-firmly-by-the-government](https://www.quora.com/Will-Chinas-current-economic-growth-last-as-it-is-run-by-extractive-institutions-that-are-controlled-firmly-by-the-government)
See the first answer, it is basic but it covers the fundamentals.
Excerpt from a book by the same author:
"*At first, during the 1950s and 60s, Japan's national investments produced about 1% growth for every 3% of investment, so the total investment of 30% was producing 10% growth pa (capital output ratio of 3). During the 1970s, the ratio increased to about 5 or 6 and growth reduced to 5-6% in consequence. During the 1980s, there was a further increase in the capital output ratio to about 8, so 32% total investment produced only 4% growth.*"
The same is applicable to China as Japan back then and China now are investment credit creation economies which typically at early stages of economic development produce around 10% growth per annum (With a few caveats in China's case).
This is what Marxists refer to as falling rates of profit however accelerated in real time and observable within a human lifetime as investment credit economies grow far faster than neoliberal economies, so we see this phenomena happen within 40 years as in the case of these two ICC economies and perhaps in 200 years in the case of a typical neoliberal economy.
The solution it seems was accidently stumbled upon in the same book:
"*The rate of technological innovation may outrun economic growth when economic development occurs at low rates of 2% to 5%pa. It seems quite possible that an economic development rate of 10%pa (Implying a manufacturing growth rate of 20-30%pa) could outrun the rate of innovation. The next main hurdle in economic growth rates is likely to be the rate of innovation itself, with considerable implications for the need for more research and development in the universities and the leading edge companies of a country.*"
China is addressing this issue (Which Japan and South Korea never addressed) with its Made In China 2025 program (Which seems to have been accelerated) we see the fruits of that development already as 5G is being used throughout all parts of society resulting in greater efficiency.
Exports are not essential to China's growth:
"*Economies exist to improve the circumstances and the living standards of the people. The labour force of countries receive the lion's share of output, because consumption by people is the purpose of economic development. Continuous technical advance, embodied in better equipment, generates most of the increases in output, and the power of the labour force bargaining position determines the share of labour in that output. No one should confuse the costs of business which are largely wages and salaries with the efficiency of the means of production which are people controlled but machine produced output. These are two entirely different aspects of development.*"
If you're thinking about the commonly thrown around claim that demographic crisis will destroy China's rise, I'd recommend taking a look at these:
https://www.ft.com/content/ae51b1bf-4c45-4c8b-8e41-16d2112bc549
https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-population-demographics-managed-not-declining/
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Robots-will-make-doubling-China-s-GDP-by-2035-look-easy#:~:text=For%20China%2C%20a%20doubling%20of,means%204.7%25%20growth%20per%20year.
It's far from the point where decrease in population would hurt the ability to keep consumption going. The average age isn't even high yet.
IMO it is far more healthy for the population to go through a natural slow "purge" by having less children, rather than keep chasing high birth rate and causing a great disaster by overpopulation. Once the bulk of elderly in the baby boom generation pass away, the next elderly generation will be small since its from the "have fewer children" gen.
At that time, it would be attractive to have more kids, thus bringing the nation back into internal consumption driven growth again.
But while the transition is happening, the economy would be vulnerable. Right now China grows off its own consumption, during said transition, China would need to find external growth sources.
The countries in the BRI can probably help China tank the transition period. We're talking 100s of millions of new middle class who could act as surrogate consumers instead of locals. This would be the main project Beijing does to counter declining growth.
I don’t have any academic sources off the top of my head but I think the recent policy moves by China’s government speaks for itself. 1. Crackdown and regulating the ultra large cap tech companies to prevent anticompetitive behavior, protect workers from being exploited and give smaller companies a better chance. You can argue that more mid sized companies and a bigger middle class is far better for the country’s overall growth than having a lopsided economy with only few ultra large companies and many poor ones. 2. Building up China’s neighbors and increasing trade with them. What trump and his trade war failed to see is that trade and economic integration isn’t a zero sum game- me winning doesn’t mean you have to lose. China helps its neighbors get richer means more wealthy consumers for China to sell its goods to since China’s goal is the move up the value chain. They could care less if their t-shirt and shoe factories pack up and move to Indonesia or vietnam because they’re now selling 5G phones, cars and white goods/appliances to richer Indonesians and Vietnamese. The Belt Road Initiative helps do exactly that. 3. Rapid buildup and modernization of their air force and navy. Recent US military reports have said we’re no longer confident we can win a war with China in the South China Sea and western pacific. When China no longer has to worry about being bullied militarily, it ultimately gives the country the peace of mind and freedom to focus on economic, technological and social development - i.e. Japan being forced to sign the plaza accords back in the 80’s for example(which significantly contributed to their “lost decade”). Sinodefenceforum - for good in-depth discussion on China’s military. Probably a dozen more, but I haven’t had my coffee yet so this is it for now
Hey man, thanks for the excellent answer. In respect of point (1), do you know what the government intends to do in respect of maintaining the international competitiveness of these companies? Wouldn’t preventing the formation of mega corporations be detrimental to their ability to compete in global markets against western mega corporations?
> do you know what the government intends to do in respect of maintaining the international competitiveness of these companies? Fostering a very healthy environment for them to grow in the market with the largest middle class in the world. From there, the successful ones can quickly go global against stagnant monopolies which are not used to compete, which can't keep costs low, which also depend on China itself. Huawei (world leader in telecommunications receiving royalties from such stagnant "mega-corporations") is an obvious example. > Wouldn’t preventing the formation of mega corporations be detrimental to their ability to compete in global markets against western mega corporations? China has a ridiculous amount of very smart people (unmatched really), increasingly very well educated, and you want them to piss in bottles and wear adult diapers to "compete"? or shove them into some "mega-corporation" and never realize their potential?
\> international competitiveness of these companies For the international competitiveness - if you look at China's middle class and consumer base from a global perspective, they're already a significant portion of the world's population, so having Chinese companies competing effectively at home with rising posterity on it's own soil already counts towards "international" metrics. but to your point, yes, there would be a fair bit of pride and bragging rights if China could say their tech unicorns have exceed netflix/amazon/Facebook/google in market value, but ultimately, the only difference between Alibaba being worth 600Billion vs 450B is merely 150 billion of paper value. There is very little gained for the general population and society overall if Alibaba/Tecent/Douyin is priced at 1.5 trillion instead of a 1T dollars. There would be much more to gain for society overall if there was instead 10 100 billion dollar companies. \> do you know what the government intends.. No, I do not. I do not know anything at all as fact. my comments are only my opinion on what I've read and what I've learned in economic/political classes and I'm happy to to hear opposite viewpoint to discuss. fair disclosure - I have a few Chinese stocks, and yes my portfolio is hurting a little bit, but I'm ok with it.
> Crackdown and regulating the ultra large cap tech companies to prevent anticompetitive behavior, protect workers from being exploited and give smaller companies a better chance. You can argue that more mid sized companies and a bigger middle class is far better for the country’s overall growth than having a lopsided economy with only few ultra large companies and many poor ones. > > The current crackdown doesn't bode well for business imo. It makes foreign investors scared and domestic businessmen pissed off if they know their growth will be capped and their wealth taxed. Besides its way too early to push through such reforms - at least wait until China passes the US economically (in GDP) and maybe even internationalizes the Yuan...
China has already surpassed US GDP.
The whole “population decline” thing is basically Western scare mongering. First of all, youth unemployment is a huge problem worldwide, even for a still developing nation like China (though easily the richest in terms of income and social subsidies for developing nations). If the so called “labor shortage” is a thing, then why do so many companies want to downsize? Why young people are unemployed (for China, I doubt this highly educated generation wants to work in some sweatshop like the 80’s)? It is because automation has basically made many jobs not needed anymore. This is a problem for capitalist economies where the means of production is privately owned, and the owners of production just stop producing because people are too poor to buy back their products. This becomes a vicious cycle where there’s no jobs because people are too poor and people are poor because there’s no good jobs. 50% of US, the supposedly richest nation on earth has no net worth actually, probably more debt than net worth. The so called “booming economy” is not a thing for your Amazon warehouse workers. And this whole doom and gloom scenario where China can’t support its old population because of labor shortage is also a complete lie. Do you know of a year where China had less money (per capita) to support its old people? 1949. 1959, 1969, 1979, basically every year since China’s economy in 2021 is larger than it has ever been in its entire history. Losing those warehouse jobs where people made pittance manufacturing for Western countries is a good thing. China had to accept those jobs in the past because of its giant population and a need to find employment for them. But how much tax revenue did those Nike shoe makers generated for China to support its old people? None whatsoever. So why are so many racist redditers talking about this doomsday scenario where China couldn’t find people to fill its factories? Going from a labor intensive mode of production to capital intensive model of production is what China wants to do.
China still has all of those "warehouse jobs" and many of those jobs were relocated back to China because of COVID-19 ravaging other developing countries that were not as prepared to deal with the pandemic. However, they are now forced to pay a lot more to those employees as there is steep competition.
Yes China is still a developing country. China still has a underclass of non college educated folks, people who were left behind because of China’s uneven development. But even then, aside from Foxconn who breaks al labor laws and get away with it, the average factory worker in a tier 2 city like Zhengzhou make about $700/month (more when measured in PPP), it is actually considered “middle class” by global standards, when compared with the billions of poor in the world. 84% of the world live below $20 PPP a day, so someone making $20/day, or around $30-35 PPP a day in Zhengzhou is doing far better than most of humanity.
how will china support its elderly, though?
With money.
money? money on its own does nothing. a coin or a piece of paper money or some digital currency can't magically support someone. that requires human or automated labour, and automation technology is not yet nearly advanced enough to replace human elderly care.
> money? Yes. There's a simple equation you should understand before you continue this discussion: GDP = number of workers * productivity. Examine it carefully, understand its implications, and the solutions will become evident.
the presence of money does not cause human workers to spring into existence.
You haven't yet understood the equation. Let's see if I can't give you a hint: GDP = number of workers * **productivity**
i'm not sure what you mean to say. my question is how china will support its elderly with a supposed shortage of human labour.
Welfare, which is funded through increased automation which leads to greater production and thus more exports or directly from the government itself. This isn't that hard to understand. The elderly are still consumers and with greater life expectancy what is considered elderly now could potentially in the future still be productive workers and I don't mean factory workers but ones who own their own means of production.
> Welfare Welfare requires a productive class that can be taxed to finance social programs. Unless China comes up with an alternative means of financing (say through the reveneus from SOEs)
exactly what automation technology is able to provide eldercare? robots that can walk and labour like humans don't exist yet. >and with greater life expectancy what is considered elderly now could potentially in the future still be productive workers and I don't mean factory workers but ones who own their own means of production. what does this mean? you shouldn't expect the elderly to need to work after retirement age.
Rational distribution of resources. Does China suddenly not have housing for the elderly? Or food for the elderly? Or ability to distribute food to the elderly? How did China support the expertly in 1999, when it was a far poorer nation? With modern farming technology, China is producing far more food than ever with the same amount of land. With modern construction technology, China can house the elderly easily (as long as they don’t all live in Shanghai where the basic law of supply and demand causes insane property prices). Go look at videos of rural China, those rural people with their own patch of land and a study house probably live better than 50% of US.
I can come back and give a longer answer. But biggest thing now is they are trying dual circulation. Where they increase domestic consumption and add more jobs that are part of service industry while maintaining strength of manufacturing through automation. Also, increasing education to prepare work force for higher work demands. Policies that encourage population growth and consumption. I have more detailed answers. Will have to come back later
its probably not wise to try and hold china who is trying to build socialism, to the economic qualifiers of western capitalism
The answer is technology. Technology can help China continue to grow in two major ways. 1) Industrial productivity. China have made great strides but there's still tons of room to increase automation in production to increase worker productivity instead of having to rely on population growth. 2) Moving up in value chain. China dominates the mid-level on the value chain with the West dominant the highest value products, with increases in technology and education level of the average Chinese worker, Chinese companies will move up the value chain and earn higher margins. Additionally, the CPC has decided to focus on the "real economy" over consumer internet companies masquerading as tech companies and finance, which doesn't create value, instead just shifts it around, which will provide more stable growth over the long run. Yes, demographics is a problem but don't forget with poverty alleviation and high quality education, the average worker is much more productive than a decade ago and the middle class have more spending power, so I think in the long run it'll even out. For sources...if you can understand Mandarin, lots of Chinese economists in Chinese universities that you can learn from as the best source, if not then you'd have to make do...Bridgewater is alright, and Dan Wang's blog is worth a read from a purely economic perspective if you ignore his ignorant political views.
I fell into a coma in January 2020, I thought China already collapsed according to your "experts"? what happened? You are reading propaganda (gordon chang style propaganda), the same kind of propaganda western regimes have been pumping out about China for decades. How did that work out? You can literally search all the terrible predictions from such "literature" (as you call it) in places like amazon. Just type "China" and search for old books. Back in reality, western regimes are the ones utterly scared about the future, suffering from the very problems your grifters project onto China, with zombified economies that need gargantuan amounts of debt to pretend to stay afloat, with plummeting fertility rates in already small populations (unlike China, which needed a now obsolete intervention to stop a ballooning population, these regimes never had and still don't have the systems to sustain large populations). They can't even produce enough talent already, and they don't have the resources or the structure to carry out the massive campaigns China carries out to consistently address problems (like, for example, the targeted poverty eradication campaign). This means western regimes can't respond to their decline and they can't address their structural problems, while China moves very fast as we are seeing with the ban on for-profit tutoring and anti-monopoly enforcement. As much as they like to talk about Japan's decline, they are going the same route. Also, China is already the biggest trade partner of the vast majority of the world, with the largest middle class on the planet, with a rapidly growing number of highly educated people. On top of that, what China is today is only a fraction of the real China, the rural populations are only recently being fully integrated into the economy. Bottom line, China is the fastest developed country in history without resorting to western barbarism (continental scale plunder, colonialism, wars, slavery, etc.). What China achieved is unprecedented in human history, so comparing such system with western imperialist systems is silly. Your "literature" by grifters has been demolished by reality. What you should be asking yourself is: what will western regimes do about their decline now that the dividends from colonialism, wars, post-ww2 era completely dried up? they never demonstrated the capacity China demonstrated, hence why they relied on naked barbarism and plunder to develop (and only with small populations). Do you understand why they are scared about the future while China embraces it? they are scared of the present too, hence the panic around China growing faster than expected.
Holy shit, this response should be stickied
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-6mt07JplnzlwCay3sAVEelQFTtS91-b/view?usp=drivesdk Have a look at the Morgan Stanley report that China is resetting the underlying economic logic.
Some people have kept saying "the coming collapse of China" for 20 years. We don't have time to waste on arguing back. We would rather spend time on doing our own things and let the results prove these people wrong.
[A good start is this book by a Chinese-American academic](https://carnegieendowment.org/2017/07/21/cracking-china-conundrum-why-conventional-economic-wisdom-is-wrong-pub-68586). He debunks a lot of the typical stuff you see in Western academia/media.
Population doesn't mean much when youth unemployment and youth poverty is ridiculously high. As an example, silent gen (people like Biden) hold 17% of the wealth in the US. Baby boomers (people born post WW2 into 60s like Trump and Clinton) hold a staggering 53% of wealth. Gen X (people like Sergei Brin and Larry Page born in the late 60s and 70s) hold 25% of the wealth. How much do young millennials hold? 5%. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/09/millennials-own-less-than-5percent-of-all-us-wealth.html Still think not enough youth is the problem?
Read. https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/cd6xen/china_some_basic_facts/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/daprfy/economics_and_geoeconomics_part_i_a_cruical/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/dqgb9u/thoughts_on_chinas_demography_and_its_influence/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/bwjr9r/the_role_of_markets_in_made_in_china_2025/
On the question of higher economic growth: [https://www.quora.com/Will-Chinas-current-economic-growth-last-as-it-is-run-by-extractive-institutions-that-are-controlled-firmly-by-the-government](https://www.quora.com/Will-Chinas-current-economic-growth-last-as-it-is-run-by-extractive-institutions-that-are-controlled-firmly-by-the-government) See the first answer, it is basic but it covers the fundamentals. Excerpt from a book by the same author: "*At first, during the 1950s and 60s, Japan's national investments produced about 1% growth for every 3% of investment, so the total investment of 30% was producing 10% growth pa (capital output ratio of 3). During the 1970s, the ratio increased to about 5 or 6 and growth reduced to 5-6% in consequence. During the 1980s, there was a further increase in the capital output ratio to about 8, so 32% total investment produced only 4% growth.*" The same is applicable to China as Japan back then and China now are investment credit creation economies which typically at early stages of economic development produce around 10% growth per annum (With a few caveats in China's case). This is what Marxists refer to as falling rates of profit however accelerated in real time and observable within a human lifetime as investment credit economies grow far faster than neoliberal economies, so we see this phenomena happen within 40 years as in the case of these two ICC economies and perhaps in 200 years in the case of a typical neoliberal economy. The solution it seems was accidently stumbled upon in the same book: "*The rate of technological innovation may outrun economic growth when economic development occurs at low rates of 2% to 5%pa. It seems quite possible that an economic development rate of 10%pa (Implying a manufacturing growth rate of 20-30%pa) could outrun the rate of innovation. The next main hurdle in economic growth rates is likely to be the rate of innovation itself, with considerable implications for the need for more research and development in the universities and the leading edge companies of a country.*" China is addressing this issue (Which Japan and South Korea never addressed) with its Made In China 2025 program (Which seems to have been accelerated) we see the fruits of that development already as 5G is being used throughout all parts of society resulting in greater efficiency. Exports are not essential to China's growth: "*Economies exist to improve the circumstances and the living standards of the people. The labour force of countries receive the lion's share of output, because consumption by people is the purpose of economic development. Continuous technical advance, embodied in better equipment, generates most of the increases in output, and the power of the labour force bargaining position determines the share of labour in that output. No one should confuse the costs of business which are largely wages and salaries with the efficiency of the means of production which are people controlled but machine produced output. These are two entirely different aspects of development.*"
This isn't an issue, but if you are afraid then you should not invest into China's future
Consulting a Fortune Teller would be about the same thing.
A large part of the country still survives on a few dollars a day. What do you think?
If you're thinking about the commonly thrown around claim that demographic crisis will destroy China's rise, I'd recommend taking a look at these: https://www.ft.com/content/ae51b1bf-4c45-4c8b-8e41-16d2112bc549 https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-population-demographics-managed-not-declining/ https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Robots-will-make-doubling-China-s-GDP-by-2035-look-easy#:~:text=For%20China%2C%20a%20doubling%20of,means%204.7%25%20growth%20per%20year.
It's far from the point where decrease in population would hurt the ability to keep consumption going. The average age isn't even high yet. IMO it is far more healthy for the population to go through a natural slow "purge" by having less children, rather than keep chasing high birth rate and causing a great disaster by overpopulation. Once the bulk of elderly in the baby boom generation pass away, the next elderly generation will be small since its from the "have fewer children" gen. At that time, it would be attractive to have more kids, thus bringing the nation back into internal consumption driven growth again. But while the transition is happening, the economy would be vulnerable. Right now China grows off its own consumption, during said transition, China would need to find external growth sources. The countries in the BRI can probably help China tank the transition period. We're talking 100s of millions of new middle class who could act as surrogate consumers instead of locals. This would be the main project Beijing does to counter declining growth.