# Like a bull in a China shop: China's future is broken **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [August 1, 2023, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900 "2023-08-01T03:11:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2023, 10:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/41 "2023-08-02T10:06:42Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > Which is probably nothing to do with the one-child policy. The USA is I think unique in being the only advanced economy with a birth rate over 2. Incorrect. it’s around 1.6-1.7 according to a quick google. It’s immigration that keep our population stable/growing. Recent immigrants are also more likely to have kids, and more kids, than folks whose families have been here for a couple generations. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > China stopped the one-child policy in 2016, allowing for two children. Instead, the number of births dropped dramatically. In 2021 they raised it to three. It hasn’t helped. Like millennials everywhere parents think the costs of living are way too high to have more children. As a result, China’s population is already shrinking. That, and a couple generations were conditioned to have only one child and it turns out reversing that is not so easy. > [@LSLGuy](#): > > Which sex imbalance can be an obstacle when you’re trying to grow the population rapidly. Doubly so when those few women are being educated in historically unprecedented percentages and don’t really see baby-making as a good use of their college educated minds & earning potentials. Not just baby-_making_ - my understanding is that baby-_raising_ is still seen largely as women’s work. Old fashioned attitudes towards women and mothers and gender roles in China make “get married and have babies” less attractive to women than it might otherwise be. > [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Having a large cadre of unemployed young men who can’t find wives is never good for social stability. No, it’s not. On top of that, the Chinese government and society is not very tolerant of homo- or bi-sexuality so you still have closeted individuals seeking to marry the scarce women when they’re rather (or would at least consider) marrying each other. Tolerance towards same-sex couples would alleviate some of that social stress, even if not all of it. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > And as a related and partly overlapping phenomenon, to account for the uneven sex ratio at birth, which is something like 105 boys for every 100 girls. The male excess mostly dies out before they reach reproductive age. But it means that you need _at least_ a 2.05 birth rate per woman, even if the men live, because it’s the women that determine the overall birth rate. And in practice, it has to be a bit higher yet, because some of the women die as well. Please. It doesn’t have to be _death_. Infertility is a thing, and infertile people can certainly contribute to society but do not contribute to the next generation. It has to be 2.1 (or more, depending on various factors) for the simple reason not everyone winds up having kids for whatever reason. Ninja’d by @Exapno_Mapcase ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2023, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/42 "2023-08-02T12:14:42Z")
Great post overall @Broomstick. Ref this: > [@Broomstick](#): > > > [@LSLGuy](#): > > > > Which sex imbalance can be an obstacle when you’re trying to grow the population rapidly. Doubly so when those few women are being educated in historically unprecedented percentages and don’t really see baby-making as a good use of their college educated minds & earning potentials. > > Not just baby-_making_ - my understanding is that baby-_raising_ is still seen largely as women’s work. Old fashioned attitudes towards women and mothers and gender roles in China make “get married and have babies” less attractive to women than it might otherwise be. Yes. What I meant was the entire process from conception through [kid graduates high school]. So baby-, kid-, _and_ adult-making. Or as you said more succinctly: baby-raising. SAHM or working Mom is a difficult and often undesirable job in any / every economy. It seems especially so in China. Whether it needs to be, or ought to be, a bad deal is a separate (and very large) topic best left untouched here. Besides letting gay men get together which would relieve a few percent of the sex imbalance, the other common “solution” to mopping up excess young unmarriagable males is dangerous remote labor-heavy industrial work (arctic oil drilling, BRI projects in Africa, Oceana, etc.), or a heavily infantry-based war. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2023, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/43 "2023-08-02T12:18:36Z")
And right on cue, today Foreign Affair released a new article by the noted academic Adam Posen: **[The End of China’s Economic Miracle | Foreign Affairs](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/end-china-economic-miracle-beijing-washington)**. Probably paywalled and their gift links are one-time use only. But the drumbeat of the punditocracy continues. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2023, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/44 "2023-08-02T23:35:53Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Please. It doesn’t have to be _death_. It does. The 2.1 number doesn’t exclude the infertile. The number would be higher if you used the smaller number of fertile people. Suppose for the moment that instead of being fertile from (say) age 16 to 40, humans had one shot at reproducing at age 25. We can also say (as is the case) that a certain number of people die every year, and that they must be replaced exactly if the population is to be stable. In that case, we can look solely at the cohort of 25-year-old women, and say for certain that they must produce roughly 2.1 babies per woman in that year. It doesn’t matter if some of them are infertile, unwilling, or otherwise–that’s the number that must be reached across the whole population. The only women it excludes are those that never made it to age 25. They aren’t counted because they aren’t part of the population. That’s not how humans work, but the principle is the same, except instead of all reproduction happening at one age, there’s a distribution. So there’s a spread over many years, weighted for the typical fertility at that age. And early deaths have a variable contribution because the expected fertility past a certain age is very different if you’re talking age 16 or 40. > [@Broomstick](#): > > and infertile people can certainly contribute to society but do not contribute to the next generation You’re imputing something about my comment that I didn’t say. The discussion is entirely about fertility, and is unrelated to anything about the contributions of non-reproducing members. ---
**Author:** ![Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiendish_astronaut/32/3295_2.png) [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiendish_Astronaut)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2024, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/45 "2024-01-21T22:18:51Z")
China’s published a whole raft of statistics about its economy with its birth rate dropping yet again. [![](https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ASIA-POPULATION/CHINA-STATS/egvbayoxmpq/chart.png) ](https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ASIA-POPULATION/CHINA-STATS/egvbayoxmpq/chart.png) [https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-population-drops-2nd-year-raises-long-term-growth-concerns-2024-01-17/](https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-population-drops-2nd-year-raises-long-term-growth-concerns-2024-01-17/) China is really suffering from high youth unemployment and high housing costs combined with the low wages which underpin its export-led economy. No matter what the CCP does with fiddly three child policies and incentives, they will not be able to fix the problem without tackling these fundamental issues. ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2024, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/46 "2024-01-21T22:28:36Z")
One wonder whether the Chinese leadership will try to deal with youth unemployment by shipping out battalions of contract laborers [slaves] to other countries as a new source of export revenues. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2024, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/47 "2024-01-21T23:18:42Z")
They’re doing it now. All those Belt and Road Initiative projects are being built mostly with Chinese temporary expat labor. A feature that greatly blunts the positive economic impact of the construction on the host country. And when a construction project ends, those expats and their pop-up villages disappear to the next job. Some of them may well be replaced by more permanent expats to operate the port or maintain the railroad trains or whatever. But big picture, a lot of BRI is about sopping up excess Chinese labor by sending it overseas then having much of their wages remitted back to China. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2024, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/48 "2024-01-21T23:57:03Z")
China has a lot of strengths and resources. They are very far from being in dire straits. They may yet have some significant economic successes, though the growth seen over recent decades will not be possible to match. The falling birth rate is a problem given the one child policy was stopped in 2016. So is the real estate market, some corruption and bad bets regarding the BRI and local and global sabre-rattling on some political issues when their economy remains highly integrated with global companies. However, their progress on electric vehicles is impressive and China will reap quicker returns on emerging technologies due to innovation, resources, a lack of regulations when desired by government, and a certain mix of pride, intelligence and shamelessness. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2024, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/49 "2024-01-22T00:29:09Z")
I certainly would not count China out. They are a formidable competitor if they can get and keep their politics right and keep corruption down to the usual world-wide dull roar. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2024, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/50 "2024-01-22T00:41:34Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > I certainly would not count China out. I wouldn’t either. But China’s upswing since Mao looks to have stalled. The numbers here are less than overwhelming, but the fact of it surprised me: [Associated Press: As economy falters, more Chinese migrants take a perilous journey to the US border to seek asylum](https://apnews.com/article/chinese-emigration-us-mexico-border-darien-381c215ff30f0f2349c2ea118aa280c6) > [@](#): > > The young Chinese man looked lost and exhausted when Border Patrol agents left him at a transit station. Deng Guangsen, 28, had spent the last two months traveling to San Diego from the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, through seven countries on plane, bus and foot, including traversing Panama’s dangerous [Darién Gap jungle](https://apnews.com/article/panama-darien-colombia-migrants-1644cedd4389825fecda77bf26415290). > > “I feel nothing,” Deng said in the San Diego parking lot, insisting on using the broken English he learned from “Harry Potter” movies. “I have no brother, no sister. I have nobody.” > > Deng is part of a major influx of Chinese migration to the United States on a relatively new and perilous route that has become increasingly popular with the help of social media. Chinese people were the fourth-highest nationality, after Venezuelans, Ecuadorians and Haitians, crossing the Darién Gap during the first nine months of [2023] ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2024, 9:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/51 "2024-01-22T09:33:48Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > I wouldn’t either. But China’s upswing since Mao looks to have stalled. China has had a lot of ups and downs in its history, but it is still China. There was no way they were going to stay on their upward trajectory indefinitely. I expect there will continue to be a China. How much turmoil and change will ensue is anyone’s guess, but this too shall pass. ---
**Author:** ![Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiendish_astronaut/32/3295_2.png) [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiendish_Astronaut)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2024, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/52 "2024-01-22T10:19:24Z")
This sort of demographic problem is not untypical in today’s world, but China has a few major problems that other countries in the same position don’t have. (I get to use bullet points, I _never_ get to use bullet points!) - This sort of problem generally occurs in late-stage economies. China is still a developing world country - it’s GDP per capita is slightly worse than Argentina’s. And China is almost certainly massaging the numbers. A Chinese official once told his American counterpart that Chinese GDP data was “for reference only”. - China’s fertility rate is _astonishingly_ low. Much lower than other countries facing a demographic cliff edge, and it seems that the CCP has been, surprise, surprise, exaggerating these numbers too so it’s probably even more problematic than it appears. - The scale of China’s population means that China cannot realistically use immigration to ease the problem. Apart from the sheers numbers needed, China is a pretty closed society; not there are any jobs anyway. - This isn’t a new problem. China has spent years trying to reverse their demographic decline and instead of improving, things have gotten worse. - Youth unemployment is so high the CCP stopped publishing the figures. So that problem is at least as bad as you think and probably more so - if there was an improvement you can bet we’d be seeing those numbers. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2024, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/53 "2024-01-22T23:14:36Z")
The way I’ve heard it said: China is the first developing country to get old before it got rich. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2024, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/54 "2024-01-22T23:17:44Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > But big picture, a lot of BRI is about sopping up excess Chinese labor by sending it overseas then having much of their wages remitted back to China. Yeah. And also economic imperialism: Build a nice airport on loan for a country that can’t afford it, then when they miss the payments you take control of the airport, and now you have an airfield in another country, and they are paying for at least part of it. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2024, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/55 "2024-01-22T23:33:24Z")
So, looks like they’re facing a double whammy: They have too few young people, but even for _those_ young people, there are too few jobs. Even if China could magically import 50 million young adults overnight, that would just worsen the unemployment rate. That being said…I wouldn’t be surprised if the Chinese government becomes the first in the world to embrace involuntary euthanasia of the elderly on some widespread scale to try to invert that age pyramid a bit. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2024, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/56 "2024-01-22T23:46:53Z")
How can there be too few jobs in China, when so many jobs have moved there from elsewhere in the world? ---
**Author:** ![Toxylon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f05b48/32.png) [@Toxylon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toxylon)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2024, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/57 "2024-01-23T00:55:13Z")
Job evaporation due to automation etc. seems the obvious answer, but I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2024, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/58 "2024-01-23T02:39:04Z")
The rest of Asia has had decades to industrialize themselves. Their workers can be paid less than Chinese workers, because the Chinese workers have had their lives improved and their outlook broadened, so they demand and get higher wages. What irony. And the only trickle-down that actually works. “Capitalist exploiters” look to the next set of workers to exploit at ever-lower wages. The container ship making transportation costs near zero meant that factories could be located anywhere. Globalization and free-trade agreements meant that jobs could move freely around the world. Are there any nations left to exploit? Employers have discovered that African nations now have steady pools of newly-urbanized workers at bargain basement rates. They’re ones who train AIs. One story at random; > **[Exclusive: The $2 Per Hour Workers Who Made ChatGPT Safer](https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/)** > > A TIME investigation reveals the difficult conditions faced by the workers who made ChatGPT possible Where does capitalism go when all countries have prominent middle classes? Why do you think Elon Musk wants to go to Mars so badly? That’s a joke, but the reality of running out of cheap labor looms. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2024, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/59 "2024-01-23T04:20:22Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Where does capitalism go when all countries have prominent middle classes? Why do you think Elon Musk wants to go to Mars so badly? That’s a joke, but the reality of running out of cheap labor looms. Actually, it’s why Musk is working on an AI robot. Cheaper labor for his factories. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2024, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900/60 "2024-01-23T04:26:10Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > The rest of Asia has had decades to industrialize themselves. Their workers can be paid less than Chinese workers, because the Chinese workers have had their lives improved and their outlook broadened, so they demand and get higher wages. What irony. I take it “the rest of Asia” does not include Japan, South Korea, Taiwan or Singapore for the purposes of this? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/like-a-bull-in-a-china-shop-chinas-future-is-broken/987900.md?page=4)