China Population Surprise: Peak Population in 2022.
Date Published:
Synopsis.
The Story and Surprises.
Peak China.
The story reports China has already reached peak population.
Too Few Not Too Many:
The author believes that despite over 700 million people in China in around 1970 being considered too many people, 1.4 billion people today is not enough.
The Solution Is More People To Care For:
It is suggested there will be too many elderly people needing care, relative to the population of working adults, and the solution during the next 20 years would be more children, who will during those 20 years be children and thus will increase the population requiring care.
Peak China: And no, it is not due to the One Child Policy!
2021 And the Population of China has already peaked.
I had not expected the population of China to peak for another 10 years, with another 30 million expected to be added to the current tally of 1.433 billion by 2030. There is only 2% difference between the numbers I had seen, and this projection, and with article quoting figures of an 18% year on year drop from 2019 to 2020, then the early arrival of the peak sounds very real. Looking at the population pyramid for China, the peak age group.
False myth: China doesn’t have a unique population problem of its own making due to the one child policy.
There is this myth circulating that China is facing a unique economic catastrophe of its own making, due a crisis of a rapidly aging and declining population as a result of the one child policy, but when you look deeper, it becomes clear this myth is not supported by the facts.
If there was really one child per family, the population of China would have halved each generation, but China’s one child policy was not only arguably inhumane, but it was also complex with many exclusions and variable enforceability which resulted in the overall effectiveness being highly questionable.
However, would the birthrates have fallen even without the policy, as they did worldwide? When considering the effectiveness of the one child policy, it may help to consider that the birthrate in the USA fell from 5 to 1.6 during the time period of the one child policy. The birth rate in China during the time of the policy never fell anywhere near to the level of 1.0, as the name suggests. It takes a birthrate greater than 2.0 per woman, or 2 per 2 parents for growth, and population in China rose from under 1 billion (0.968) in 1979 to over 1.4 billion (1.425) in 2021, a very similar gain to that of the USA (218 to 336) and a larger gain than countries without such high immigration such Germany (78 to 83). The population of China over the time grew by 68% while the US, even with high levels of immigration, grew by 64%, and with the 2021 China population pyramid having now become very similar to a country such as Germany suggests that although there were some Chinese even who suffered inhuman injustices under the policy, the total impact on population levels was not as effective as is widely believed.
The biggest fall in birth rates has been in recent years after the end of the one child policy. Birth rates in China (1.2) have not fallen quite as low South Korea (0.9) or Chinese territories Hong Kong (0.8) and Macau (1.2) not subject to the one Child Policy, and to the same level as Taiwan and neighbouring country Singapore both with a population of Chinese people, with all these in 2023 at the very bottom of the list of countries by fertility rate.
When you consider all the data, it become clear that during the time of the one child policy China had birthrates beyond those in the USA and fall to current in birthrates in China happened after the end of the policy and brought China to levels similar to the those in Spain, Greece and Italy, almost identical to those in Taiwan and Singapore and higher than South Korea and Hong Kong.
Unlike other countries such as the USA etc who compensate for their below replacement birthrates by using immigration to grow the population, it is generally assumed this is not an option for China, despite the potential for China alone to dramatically reduce the number of homeless refugees. While the population of China is not set to fall as fast by percentage as the population of Japan and some other countries, China having been the world’s most populous nation makes the raw numbers of the projected fall in population overshadow all others.
So yes, China now has one of the lowest birthrates in the world, but while it could be argued that without the past One Child Policy, they may have population today larger than the 1.4 billion and thus with more people to “spare”, it is hard to see how that would do anything but make things worse.
Attributing China’s current, basically identical to Taiwan and above that of South Korea, birthrate to the One Child Policy is applying a lot of confirmation bias to a story people would like to believe is true.
Without immigration, almost every advanced economy would be facing the same problem of a declining population that China now faces, and the “China now has a problem we don’t have” seems to be more promoted by a PR campaign from those committed to keep growing their own economies through immigration rather than let their own nation have the population trend their populations birthrate seems to want. Yes, as economies are measured by total spending, as an increasing number of countries ends population growth as the population explosion ends, because less people means even if there is an increase in per capita wealth, while more people can provide economic growth even when average individual wealth fall, an increasing number of countries will have recessions. But that need for perpetual growth does make the current system of economic measurement at least seem a lot like a Ponzi scheme.
Too Few Not Too Many: Does China Really Need More People?
How could umm….700 million in the early 1970s be too many people, yet 1.4 billion in 2021 be insufficient?
Assumedly the converse, a high birth-rate is desirable.
I am unsure exactly how countries such as Niger, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo benefit from their exceptionally high birth-rates, but it does not seem to be through GDP per capita.
In fact the average GDP for the 10 countries with the lowest birth-rates, at $965 per annum, does not compare well with the 40x higher average for the 10 countries with the lowest birth-rates, at $38,580 per annum.
Nor does a large population correlate well with per capita wealth. Of the worlds most populous countries, the USA is a standout being the 3rd most populous, and just missing the top 10 richest per capita at 11th, but next from the top 10 most populous is Russia, at 79th in that list.
While a low birth-rate is not a perfect correlation with a high living standard, there is clearly a strong link. The birth-rate projected for China brings China inline with many richer nations.
So why the predictions of doom and gloom as a result of what is in some ways just inline with Chinese people becoming more like those in richer nations?
While neither high birth rates, not large populations, are of benefit to the average individual, the largest companies, and those with large shareholdings in large companies, do have a vested interest in large populations, as they earn their wealth as an amount per customer in their marketplace. Big population does not benefit the average citizen, but it does benefit billionaires, and even the average citizen in China is still significantly below the wealth of the average US citizen, China does have more billionaires.
So why is the writer of the article echoing sentiment that sounds like population growth propaganda of billionaires and those wishing maximum people so they can effectively farm humans?
I found it surprising an author who do not expect is acting as an advocate or either Chinese rules or billionaires, is suggesting the population of China should continue to grow.
The Solution Is More People To Care For.
The author quotes an author who suggests:
China’s fertility rate stood at just 1.3 last year — among the lowest in the world and even lower than 1.34 in Japan. But China’s GDP per capita is only one fourth of Japan’s. The few other countries with a lower fertility rate include Singapore (1.1) and South Korea (0.84).”Of course, the bad news to China is this is not the end, and that China will continue to gravitate toward the lowest of the spectrum — so it’ll be more like Singapore and South Korea very soon,” Liang said.”If you look at big cities in China, like Shanghai and Beijing, their fertility rate is already the lowest in the world — at about 0.7.”The rapidly aging population and shrinking workforce could severely distress China’s economic and social stability. “It’ll hurt China financially, because you need to support a lot more old people with fewer young people,” Liang said.
Interestingly, it is suggested that the problem of “you need to support a lot more old people with fewer young people” can be solved by having having more children, who would also for the next 20 years, be additional people who require care. An economist it would seem, assumes the people who are of the age to care for the elderly, can do that job better if they are also parents with parental responsibilities, than if they do no also have to care for children. Or alternatively, the economics is assuming children can stop needing a childhood and to attend school.
The economist does note that countries with low birth-rates are rich, but is suggesting at the same time that a low birth-rate will stop a country being rich.
In China, even if all people immediately on retirement require care, this would be 17.2% of the population. Given the high rate of university attendance, this is less of a burden than society supporting the 23.5% who are children or full time students. Note that the reality is, in a high birth rate country such as Niger, 50% of the population is under 15, creating more people needing care and support from society than in China even if in Niger, almost all children end school 15. The “aging population problem” is predominantly just a myth that economists perpetuate to justify perpetual economic growth.
And ahead of expectations. This suggests the entire world is headed for peak population earlier than previous projections. Those earlier projections (see graph) were for China’s population to peak in around another 10 years, and the decrease by around 1/3 by 2100 to around 1 billion. However, having reached the peak earlier, perhaps the correction will be faster.
Economist Belief In Perpetual Exponential Population Growth Is Strong.
Despite humanity having long experienced a relatively stable population prior to the recent population explosion, economists cling to the belief that economic prosperity is dependant on continued exponential population growth.
This is despite:
the logic of “less children means less people to provide care” being proven wrong by simple mathematics.
People in countries with the highest rate of population growth being substantially poorer than countries with the lowest rates of population growth.
Countries with large populations on average having citizens with below average income.
Of course all of these metrics are “per capita”. What life is like foe the people. A big population still makes a bigger total economy, creates more billionaires, and larger national companies. Per capita income is often of no concern to economists.
Illogical Support For Population Growth Extends Beyond Economists.
The author is not an economist, yet the wording of the entire article seems to not only assume population growth is desirable, but that lack of population growth is a disaster. This led me to exploring possible explanations for this blind belief in population growth.
