China now has the lowest fertility rate alongside other southeast asian countries of — Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore.Hong Kong’s Family Planning Association said in a separate release that the number of childless women in the special Chinese administrative region more than doubled from five years ago to 43.2 percent in 2022. Moreover, the average number of children per woman dropped from 1.3 in 2017 to a record low of 0.9 last year.
If China holds at this level of fertility then its population will be about 1.0 to 1.1 billion in 2050. China will lose the population of the United States between now and 2050. The workforce (working age population) could nearly drop in half between now and 2050.
China is trying to give free fertility treatments to try to reverse population collapse.
China population is shrinking but more important to population collapse is the number of girls 0-4 is half the number of women who are in 35-39 and aging out of fertility. The biggest problem with China have a fertility rate of 1.09 is that there are only 0.54 fertile daughters produced by the average women. The Fertile women population plummets far faster than overall population. The number of women in China able to have children will drop in half by 2045-2055.
The China haters can laugh and pretend it is only China’s problem but the global economy taking a ten trillion dollar hit will cause big global financial problems. Also, the 70% of the world is living in countries which are below replacement level birthrates. India and Bangladesh are large population poor countries but their fertility is below replacement.
Dropping below replacement means you the country is about 40 years from shrinking populations. Almost 25% of the world is in countries with shrinking populations.
India’s Population Could Crater Just 30 Year Later Than China
India’s development indicators have improved markedly since its previous census. From 2011 to 2021, the country’s infant mortality rate fell from 44 deaths per 1,000 live births to 27. The secondary-education gross enrollment rate rose from 66% to 78%, and the mean years of schooling among adults aged 20 and older increased from 5.8 to 7.2 years. The contraceptive prevalence rate rose sharply from 54% in 2013-15 to 67% in 2017-19.
Consequently, India’s fertility rate may be as low as 1.6-1.7 in 2024, with its population ranging between 1.37 to 1.39 billion, compared to the 1.44 billion projected by the UN. We will find out when India completes a delayed census.
The UN population division projects that India’s fertility rate will bounce back to 1.78 in 2050 before declining to 1.69 by 2100. But Indian populations in Singapore and Malaysia are barely higher than those of Chinese communities in those countries. Between 2000 and 2022, the average fertility rate for Indians and Chinese in Singapore was 1.19 and 1.09. From 2016 to 2021, the average fertility rate in Malaysia was 1.1 for Chinese and 1.23 for Indians.
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And people call me crazy for saying japan has a higher fertility rate than main land china
I think it is time for governments around the world, especial those in Asia to collaborate on the development of synthetic wombs. These will have two benefits- 1. Free up women to participate fully in the labor force and on equal footing with men. 2. Free up men from having to rely solely on women to have the next generation. A win-win.
China will be getting seriously into this really soon. If the Westerners are too coy or stuck-up in their ways to do it themselves.
And from them to the world. But I do expect several countries to ban it (specially in Europe), with some phony human rights excuse. For some of these nations, infiltrated with Malthusians up to highest echelons, there’s no acceptable alternative out of the human depopulation agenda.
China housing prices are out of control. It cost 25 times the average yearly salary to buy a house. In the US it is 4-5 times. This is a large reason why young Chinese decided to not get married and start a family. They cannot afford to. Additionally with the historic laws on one child the Chinese have been aborting their female children 12-15 %. China is now in an economic meltdown that could cause a revolution and massive crackdowns.
Estimates are 650 million Chinese by 2050.
I’d be more concerned if China didn’t have a >20% 16-24yo youth unemployment problem, with that statistic being the last official one we’re likely to get for a long time because China doesn’t want the world to see how bad their economy really is: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/china-stops-releasing-youth-unemployment-data-after-it-hit-consecutive-record-highs/ar-AA1fhoSQ
The fact is, China, like most of the world, grossly underutilizes the brainpower it has, though brawnpower is probably closer to maximum use, but physical labor is less in demand due to automation, robots, etc. Still, there are brain/brawn things people will still be able to do better than robots for a long time. Will you call a robot plumber, carpenter, maid anytime soon? Every home/job is unique and even AI hates novelty; look how hard it is just to get driverless cars to stop jamming up San Francisco, and that is nothing compared to autonomous humans.
Countries can’t have it both ways: if they want a smart, engaged, ambitious workforce, they’re going to have to accept a less fertile one. These are choices people naturally make, especially women.
Fertility clinics, artificial wombs (closer than you think), longevity science, etc. will all take up the slack.
Meanwhile, Earth needs a breather from us. The technofixes aren’t coming fast enough and hunger, poverty are increasing again worldwide, with no Green Revolution to bend the curve like last time, and no China to yank 100s of millions out of poverty either. Those who remain will be in high demand; this is better than mass famine, water/resource wars and mass casualties.
At the top, most wealth is siphoned off for useless rent-seeking speculation. Those high level quant skills need to be put to more socially constructive use and there will be abundance for all 5-7b of us until things stabilize again.
The situation is far worse than this for China as there appears to be a huge lie in their official stats regarding number of people under 30 being overstated by about 130 million according to demographic researcher Yi Fuxian. ie currently 1.28 Billion rather than 1.41. Add to which massive 10-20% excess of males v females in young demographic due to sex-selection abortions.
Likely real demographics:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FXcKUfHWYAYW332?format=jpg&name=medium
Likely real population trajectory:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fo8JNY-XoAQH7H_?format=webp&name=small
Given scale of problem Emperor Xi will likely create laws to force fertile women to have more babies.
Nonsense. Sweden is the most peaceful civilization out there. China has been doing a lot of debt diplomacy that’s about as bad as what the US used to do to Latin America in the 19th Century. Perhaps you can one day free yourself from the need to idolize hegemonic powers and would-be hegemonic powers.
There needs to be more discussion of what shrinking populations do, how it affects quality of life. Since most of the countries in the world (and certainly the developed ones) this is happening to. And can be done about it; to ameliorate any problems that arise.
1412 million people. So it’s going to get smaller… alot smaller? Good.
Not 1.4 million. May be overestkmated by 100 mill
Let’s recall we don’t need to be rich and happy to be evolutionarily successful, just surf over the natural death toll and keep slightly growing in numbers. Lots of babies with lots of casualties, but reaching reproductive age in enough numbers are enough.
If the genetic/memetic traits that created the Western civilization and its sphere of influence became openly anti-natalist, they are being selected by attrition out of the gene/meme pool to be replaced by something else.
If the disadvantageous traits are high IQ and better stimulus/reward response, we are selecting for low IQ and lack of impulse repression. Whatever it is, life will find a way.
Still odd how a policy that capped the birth rate at 1 TFR for 40 years and has since declined further could bw ABOVE a 1 TFR
The only good implication I see from this tragedy is that China will get really scared of this situation and will quickly mobilize its gigantic resources trying to solve this problem – I am thinking here mainly about pouring huge amounts of money into anti-aging research and robotics/automation.
They’re already doing it on huge scale, but I am talking about another 5-10x increase in budget and people working on those things.
I don’t think population collapse is just China’s problem, BUT.
Realistically, the last thing we want in the world, for the foreseeable future, is a vital and productive China. Because they’re an aggressive totalitarian state, remember? Genocidal, too.
For a while there, a very short while, people seriously thought that economic modernization would fix that, that China would become a more liberal country. So all sorts of advantages in international trade were thrown their way.
Didn’t work that way. They just became a better funded genocidal totalitarian state, with a strangle hold over vital parts of our own economies.
For a lot longer while they bribed enough people in advanced countries that we continued pretending the original ‘liberalization’ scheme was working long past the point of sanity. Took their casually unleashing Covid, and global supply chains breaking, to wake us from that fantasy.
Lot to hate there, actually, so why not be a “China hater”?
But, yeah, the birth dearth is a serious problem for the world, even if it’s making China less of a threat in the long term.
China is easily most peaceful civilization out there. Those who claim otherwise simply don’t understand China (and don’t want to, main reason – nationalism/tribalism) and were brainwashed for decades by various groups of interests who run media, politicians etc.
You can of course make a list of some events from history which in your opinion make them ‘evil’, the same may be done with US. List would be looong.
Of course China is pissing of US, because they are big and strong enough so they’re the only one who’re not afraid of US. All other countries are 2nd tier. India will probably catch up and you will have similar type of love-hate relation with them, because of their size they will be as ambitious as China is and won’t listen to US, and as China they will be trying to create their ‘system’ as the best for the world, therefore there will be constant tensions.
For US/West current system is best and should be here forever, I am sure although India is relatively silent, they don’t agree and it simply won’t be in their interest to make West stronger, more influential, so they, as China is will propose their alternative to the world, for basically everything. If Africa will unite, it will be the same story, they hate West. Russia is too small and irrelevant.
West have some chances of not becoming irrelevant only if we became basically one country. EU,US,UK,Canda,Australia, NZ must merge. One gov, one president,one budget.
Soon you/we will see similar articles and claims about India from western media. It was never about CCP, it was always and is about power, dick measuring contest between powers.
As soon as India will start creating their Apple’s, Amazon’s, Google’s, chips comparable to those which are designed in US and cheaper, advanced weapons which will decrease US share of the market and make US poorer because of smaller sales, you will see the same story as with China.
Exponentially increasing number of ‘India bad’ stories, various excuses for bans of India’s tech (national security), securing US business interest excuses.
India in exchange will do the same, ban for ban and you will see more and more competitive, even hostile relation, just as with China now.
Noone in US will care who will rule India, it’s all about money and power.
It will be like that probably as long as we reach Singularity or post scarcity world and stop fighting for resources and due to abundance change our mentality.
Totally a peaceful civilisation, yeah. Ignore the organ-farming concentration camps.
I subscribe to most of what Zeihan says on China
China is a horrible country,because of the CCP and specifically ,Xi. To me,Deng was a great hero, the interests of China and US clashed then as they do now, but Mao was such a monster, the famine was so bad, they ate each other’s children.
Just being aware of such cruelty, was difficult. But Deng was a great of fresh air. He was against the gang of four. The Chinese had food, and the brutal suffering stoped.
Xi,is just like Mao,a cruel dictator.
At the Southern border there are tens of thousands of middle class Chinese,they do very well here. they are welcome,I hope more come and we just let them in .
It’s really tragic that such innovative country (China barely started and their output is still rapidly increasing each year – quantity and quality) which is contributing so much to tech and science is shrinking.
‘3rd world’ is growing, in population but so far almost zero cutting edge innovation from these regions. Example Indonesia, population almost as big as US and I never bumped into article in Science/Nature/Cell/Nature Communications from some University from this country. Not even one. Ever. How is this even possible? They surely have universities and some scientists are working there? What are they doing?
I get, money, but their GDP PPP is already $4,4T(as big as Germany was in 2020) so they’re not that poor.
US, Europe, China were already doing heavy science even when per capitas were below $10K
Indonesia could easily build and sent into orbit at least one space telescope. EU/US have hundreds each.
China is outputting more cutting edge science results literally in a day(if you browse arxiv articles, papers in journals from Science and Nature family etc.) than Africa/SEA combined probably in a decade.
I have nothing against Indinesia, I just randomly picked them, because of their size( very big economy but almost no science) and to start a discussion, point is that only some societies seem to be innovative. Why?
Is it culture, money, politics(decision to have large science budgets) or is IQ a thing and we can expect most breakthroughs only from countries with above 100IQ (East Asia and West).
Or is it bullshi% and we will be flooded with new amazing science theories as soon as 3rd world will get to say $40K per capita (PPP)?
The counter point to Indonesia is places like Singapore and Israel. Small populations with limited natural resources other than its people, yet they are wealthy. A possible answer is that those who can, leave. Those who are happy to be farmers or taxi drivers, or earn their income through corruption, stay.
The 2050 projection assumes that the fertility rate stabilizes at current levels.
What if the decreasing trend continues at its current rate?
I doubt there are that many China-haters – they hate the CCP. Any sane person would love for us to have a partnership with a free, non-hostile China.
I dont see how it could ever have been above one under ONE Child Policy.
I smell BS
The one child policy had loopholes for a long time. First child was a girl? You get to try again. First child was handicapped? Same story. State recognized minority? You also get two. Rural? Two to three. Both parents were only children? You get two. Twins were also allowed.
China needs a 5 year plan. Now that the central government knows that this is a problem I am sure the central government can fix this.