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Comment by csee | Hacker News Reader

There's reasons to doubt this.

First it's very short term thinking by China. Victory is assured for them if the boat isn't rocked too much and they continue the path of economic integration and economic growth. Their economy will be 2x the US economy and then they will be in a better position to assert their geopolitical interests.

Second consider the consequences to China of NATO expansion in the East, which the UK has started to discuss as a good idea in the last few days. That is not good for China's geopolitical position.

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China has a very short window of time before their demography crashes.

What do you mean?

The one-child policy over many years was not only successful in stopping the population growth but also completely distorted the age structure of the population. So a large part of the Chinese population is going to retire in a few years leaving behind a comparatively small work force.

I wonder what their plan is for cushioning this. I heard they have efforts to entice people to have kids again but the now more urbanised and educated population isn't big on it.

I also wonder how this will impact certain regions differently since for example the now very famous Uyghurs and some other minorities were exempt from one child policy till it ended in 2016. Will their regions fare better economically or is this taxation and application of it in elderly care, pensions, etc a more top down federal thing?

Might suggest they’re interested in creating a disease that mostly kills those too old to work.

Woo-oo-ooo....

South Korea's demography is crashed but their economic growth is still strong. There is more to growth than that. There's no reason why China can't double its GDP in the next few decades and then assert itself much more strongly after it has achieved that.

Why has South Korea continued to grow, despite the demography crash? And how do you think it compares to Japan? Genuine questions.

Not op, but. SK demographics are only now starting to stagnate and are not decreasing. Japan has had stableish/declining population for a while. Different situations.

China is not really comparable since there is still a substantial reserve army of rural inhabitants that can be drawn into industry (900 mil urban/500 mil rural). Until the rural pop is drained you'll continue to see strong growth in china.

I wonder if China is going to go full-in into artificial wombs and "production" of new work force without need to rely on natural births.

Artificial wombs are very controversial in the West, but they seem to be technically feasible (at least experiments in other mammalian species indicate so), and an authoritarian country like China, being squeezeed by demography while having significant scientific know-how, seem to be the most likely candidates for actually trying this out on humans.

Is an economy unable to survive a stable population even worth having? A growing population is inherently unstable.

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