Aging population of disproportionately unmarried males and very low immigration.
China's gonna get weird in the next decade or two.
this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
210 points (97.3% liked)
World News
32524 readers
935 users here now
News from around the world!
Rules:
-
Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc
-
No NSFW content
-
No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
And the rest of the developed world is going to follow close behind as long as the wealth inequality stays as ridiculously broken as it is.
One of the major difference with the rest of the developed world is the more or less accepted immigration. See Germany for example.
That is most likely only a bandaid too birthrates are falling all over the world. Something is going to need to change eventually.
Robots and AIs can start handling more and more of the work, hopefully enough to support a population with a larger proportion of retired/unemployed humans.
Robots and AIs can start handling more
becoming less involved in how our world functions only serves to empower The Matrix, and make us more like slaves
Are retirees really like slaves?
The AIs and robots will be doing our bidding, not the other way around.
i like definitive statements like that about the future.. they're comforting..
Robots and AIs can start handling more and more of the work
Emphasis added. I was presenting it as one option for how "something is going to need to change eventually."
There are plenty of other options. Including, if you like, having robot overlords enslaving humanity to work in silicon mines for some reason. But I like this option more and I find it perfectly plausible.
will they help humans connect to one another
Actually the opposite. Generally wealthy nations and individuals have fewer children.
That's the problem.
Plus record high unemployment (20%+, some estimate up to 50%) for those unmarried males. This is the kind of situation that swiftly leads to revolution.
Maybe not revolution but likely a massive increase in crime.
On the other hand that low fertility may help reduce the youth unemployment rate in 20 years from now. The same rate that the Chinese government decided to give up computing...
/s obviously but it is really bad for them
2033 Chinese tv: "Fascist eye for the single Bai"
China's demographics are irrecoverably screwed, there is quite literally no way back. Their population collapse began some years ago and the only thing it can do from here is gather speed. Literally every woman in the country between the ages of 16 and 45 could have three children, a totally laughable hypothetical, and it still wouldn't be enough to stop it.
That's official statistics too, there's some work out there by Chinese Academics shows that it may actually be worse.
China is not one to stand by and let things happen naturally if they need to speed things up
I'm not sure what your comment means exactly but I don't see any way out of the demographic hole that they're in. Fixing it would require continued forced impregnation of every eligible citizen for at least the next decade and opening up their immigration to levels well beyond anything they've ever allowed. I strongly doubt that Chinese citizens would tolerate the forced impregnation tactic and who the hell would immigrate knowing that it was a requirement?
Couldn't they just allow immigration? I get that most people don't want to move to China anymore but it would probably help. I also know they won't but would immigration work in a vacuum?
I think a big problem would be population size. China has about the same population as all of Africa. So the question would be where immigrants should come from. I imagine to be helpful china would probably have to become a popular destination for migrants from all of Africa and Asia at a very large scale.
Might not work, but they need every set of you hands they can get, so it'd help, at least a bit...
This is the best summary I could come up with:
HONG KONG, Aug 15 (Reuters) - China's fertility rate is estimated to have dropped to a record low of 1.09 in 2022, the National Business Daily said on Tuesday, a figure likely to rattle authorities as they try to boost the country's declining number of new births.
China's fertility rate is already one of the world's lowest alongside South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Concerned about China's first population drop in six decades and its rapid ageing population, Beijing is urgently trying an array of measures to lift the birth rate including financial incentives and improved childcare facilities.
China has said it will focus on education, science and technology to improve population quality and strive to maintain a "moderate fertility" level to support economic growth in future.
Gender discrimination and traditional stereotypes of women caring for their children are still widespread throughout the country.
Authorities have in recent months increased rhetoric on sharing the duty of child rearing but paternity leave is still limited in most provinces.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
A dictatorship can't force fertility... or can it?
Romanian tried this, and it went poorly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770
Yup, one of the most fascinating videos I've ever seen was on the subject- fertility rates did go up, but all the kids ended up getting raised by orphanages that abused the shit out of them.
Suicide rates are gonna kick up.
No one's been able to reverse it so far, not even the countries that have increased child support. Personally, I think if we go all-in on restructuring our economy to support child-rearing then it will reverse, but I think it's too radical and expensive for countries to consider.
Republicans are trying. Just have to make women carry to conception, outlaw abortion especially when rape happens.
So on the topic, can someone explain why birth rates are so important if it isn't lower then the death rate? I see this issue so much and I really can't find a good issue other then economic reasons
If the birth rate is too low, the population will progressively become older and older with fewer young people there to support them
So what is considered a good birth rate? I would assume over 1 should be fine.
2.1 is maintenance level. Each child has 2 parents, and the .1 accounts for infant deaths, etc.
Depends how you are presenting the number. Over 1 per person is ok, but this is 1.1 per woman. So closer to .5 per person.
Put like that, I can see the issue.
Once all the old people did which will be soon then the issue solves itself. Then maintaining a manageable population will be easy.
The thing about old people is that young people turn into them
Oh dang.
the country will be full of old people and no one to take care of them
Really your only answers are going to be based in economics.
A society can absolutely thrive with a 1:1 ratio, but not built around a capitalistic mindset. Quite frankly China's probably the best person to have this problem and they ignore the whims of capitalism for their countries residents quite often.
Possible non-economic considerations could be not having enough people to build a military and lack of cultural exportation. Both of which China doesn't really have any problems with.
Oh man that is extremely bad.
Going to be a bit hard for folks to have families with that insane under-30 unemployment rate that has got so bad that they’ve just decided to stop publishing the numbers.
how wealthy is Xi Jinping, does anyone know? i'll bet that guy is basically the richest man on Earth..
Why is this happening across the world ? I personally know friends who are trying to have a baby but can't
That's called infertility, and it's a separate issue. Fertility rate refers to children per woman, and this is decreasing globally to unsustainable levels. There is a phenomenon known as the "demographic transition" that refers to the demographic shift of pre-industrial high births and high mortality, to high births and low mortality due to modern science, to finally low births and low mortality. The only successful policy to reverse baked-in population decline so far has been to accept large numbers of immigrants. Obviously this can't be universally applied because those immigrants have to come from somewhere.