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Comment by tivert | Hacker News Reader

>> China will have fewer people in 75 years than the US.

> Source? Wikipedia predicts US population of ~425 million, China ~632 million in 2100. Still a dramatic decline either way.

Also, assuming current trends continue for a ridiculously long time. The Chinese government has the ability to be massively coercive if it wants to. It's been less than a decade since they ended the one child policy. I wouldn't be surprised if that's deployed in the next 75 years to increase birthrates (e.g. "hey women under 35, you're fired unless you have two kids, kthxbye"). They already have a youth unemployment problem, and it probably wouldn't be too big of a deal for them to make sure all those unemployed youth are women having babies, and slot unemployed men into any jobs that are opened up.

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The thing is that without migration, demographics are extremely predictable for a very long time. People that don't exist can't have kids. They can't be coerced to have kids. And they can't have grandchildren either.

Even if you start coercing people to have kids: that will be much harder than enforcing the one-child policy. And it will have a slow effect either way, because it is starting from such a low base.

I am not sure what is possible given the political cost (and yes even authoritarian states have political costs) but I think it’s worth noting that economics are much more powerful than any birth rate limiting policy at this point. It doesn’t matter if China raises the limit to 10.

Immigration would be a tough sell but not out of the question. In fact with an aging population China’s options may be highly limited.

> It doesn’t matter if China raises the limit to 10.

> Immigration would be a tough sell but not out of the question. In fact with an aging population China’s options may be highly limited.

I think you're making the mistake of thinking of China as having the same policy limitations and constraints as a Western country (i.e. limited to some weak carrots due to a respect for personal liberties).

If the Chinese government wants more Chinese babies, I don't think they're going to fret at all about a lot of the things Westerns would fret the most about. I think they have plenty of options to push Chinese women into having children: onerous fines for not doing so, penalties at work (getting passed over for promotion, demotion, firing), banning access to birth control, etc.

When I mentioned political cost, I meant it. Single party states still need to maintain a level of popular support.

The genius in a two party system is that one party can scapegoat the other for unpopular policy. If there’s no second party, the public will begin to question the system itself.

And ignoring the political aspect, raising kids costs money. One question is who will bear that cost, both at a personal level and socially. If women are taking care of kids, they’re not in the workforce. And Chinese women have fairly high labor force participation rates (slightly higher than the US).

That massive coercion is exactly why the birthrate is dropping like a stone.

> That massive coercion is exactly why the birthrate is dropping like a stone.

Yes, but that was coercion in the other direction. Nothing's preventing them from using coercion to course-correct their previous policy. They're not timid liberals or libertarians afraid of using state power to do whatever.

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