Public sentiment surrounding China's demographic challenges is predominantly skeptical and concerned, with many individuals expressing doubts about the effectiveness of government policies aimed at increasing birth rates. Financial pressures, high living costs, and a demanding work culture are cited as major deterrents for starting families. While some highlight potential benefits of a smaller population and advancements in automation, the prevailing attitude is one of resignation, fearing that the government's attempts ignore the real challenges people face.

Chinese Government

Elderly Care Services

Brave-Ad-1879

75 years. bro you scared me for a moment there. 😅

Mixander

2100 will be in 75 years. A lot can change

Impressive-Kick5

In the same time, Africa's population is projected to increase from 1.3 billion to 4 billion.

Soft_Camp_5620

Obviously they need to pull out of the death spiral eventually, but in the short term, population decline will probably actually help them reach high-income status. In second generation 1 child families, the wealth of 4 grandparents is inherited by 1 grandchild. So long as the country can keep things ticking over enough even just to maintain current levels of national wealth, per capita wealth will quickly increase if the overall population size decreases. The shortage of people will also put increasing upwards pressure on wages, which will also increase per capita wealth, so long as it can be managed in a way to prevent employers fleeing to cheaper pastures.

Even if China loses half its population - it will still have more people than Europe does today, living in a similar sized area. Europe is still reasonably densely populated by global standards - enough to sustain thriving and globally significant local markets. A China with this level of population density would put much less strain on resources generally.

While most people would see it as unthinkable today, I would not be surprised at all if by the second half of the century, China is running a sizable immigration program to meter population decline. While Han are the majority, China is officially explicitly a multinational state. China is also highly pragmatic, and there is a long history of non-Han people assimilating into Han culture. For these reasons, I don't think that the resistance to implementing such a program will be as great as it has been in Japan and Korea to date, especially if the state coaxes public opinion in this direction. As a first step in this direction I would expect to see liberalisation of permanent residency requirements for foreign partners of Chinese nationals and high-value workers, and the introduction of temporary migration pathways for lower income workers such as domestic helpers from SE Asia, as is already the case in Hong Kong.

Civil_Concentrate691

From certain perspectives, I think it’s good for the ordinary Chinese citizens. Mainly I won’t ever have to hear that a Chinese may be forced to “retire” when he/she is 35 years old. A ridiculous waste of brain power and experience IMO.

Potato2266

There's automation, but China will have to face the one big issue which the West has been unable to answer within a capitalist system: how do you fairly redistribute the productivity gains when capital replaces labor?

Since the 1970s with increased automation and computerization, US working wages have stagnated even as GDP continued to rise. The profits largely went to corporate owners, with the likes of Bill Gates and later tech bros reaping the windfall from automation. The workaround has been for laborers to become investors in the stock market, directly and indirectly (e.g. 401k). But this is far from perfect.

China will have to make its own way, though being still nominally socialist, it may take redistributive measures that would be branded as government overreach in the West.

cleon80

meridian_smith

No-Money-2660

Given current population reports are at least 15% fake, the situation for china is even more gloomy

FlyistheLimit

250m working age population is still the number 2 in the world by a long shot.

Tomasulu

Sigh, the “back bone generation” from the 60s and 70s are retiring yet, 80s generation are dying from over work and poor health faster than their fathers

youmo-ebike

At what point will genetic engineering and human cloning be socially acceptable?  I'm not saying that's going to fix or even make much of a difference in demographic trends but it gives people a lot more flexibility.

xmod3563

Does it matter? Another research tells me by 2100 the planet will be so hot that most people will die.

No-Satisfaction-275

CC6183

Theres only one solution to this problem and its going to be a lot of fun for 2 mins but also a lifetime of debt 😂

Advanced-Donut-2436

Eh by 2100 humanity has either fully automated or has been wiped out by the AGI behind automation.

Shehriazad

China is actually addressing this issue from several perspectvies. 

Following the model of Germany, they are further pushing automated manufacturing to multiple the productivity per person.  Robots are used in more and more service business, too.

In addition, they are developing novel gears such as extra skeletons for manual labers, as not only more advanced PPEs, but also tools to allow experienced but senior labors to stay productive. 

The core idea is to alleviate the burden from senior populations to younger generations.

Reasonable-Gas-9771

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China is the 1st country to suffer from shrinking population before becoming developed economy. China will never become the world’s biggest economy in GDP terms, let alone on the per capita basis. India may have a higher chance.

Tanglin_Boy

Borinar

Working age 15-59? This is fucking bullshit, whoever made this stat diagram doesn't know about Chinese realities. Actual working age in China is 15-35. Good luck on finding a job after 35, thanks to ageism, good luck even more if you are a woman, thanks to sexism.

Sopheus

ehhhh this is fake data china is the greatest country it is my motherland!

East_Wolverine_6230

Can China really survive as a nation state given this scenario?

WarSuccessful3717

Certainly a demographic pyramid like that means elderly will be poorly looked after, in turn leading to preventable deaths- a more extreme version of what’s already seen in Japan with people dying alone and not being discovered for significant time, in numbers large enough that it’s guaranteed that there are cases where the person could have been saved in some sense if someone had checked on them - the Hackman scenario at scale. 

AntiqueFigure6

I read somewhere that in the coming decades people who travel to certain countries will notice that most of the people are generally older and that they are in an aged society.

Ojo55

I wouldn’t put it past China to deliberately “cull” their older population to avoid the obligation to support them.

Suspicious-Sleep5227

I'm either seeing a lot of starving or dead pensioners, or if AI succeeds, a lot of robots running retirement homes.

metaconcept

[deleted]

The people here clearly don't understand Chinese people nor their customs nor mindsets.

Culling the elderly is considered the primary worst possible crime. They used to give people death by a thousand cut to those who kill their parents_ that includes mercy kills. They do not like euthanasia. The west obsession with euthanasia is unnatural to the Chinese. Now childern are often compared to grass without their parents, so abortion is fine with them. But euthanasia for the elderly, unthinkable. 

Second, Old people are pretty self sufficient in china. They mostly practice Chinese medicine which doesn't create the weird zombie life death scenarios like we have in the west. They stay close to nature. Here we dump tons of painful, expensive procedures with a ton of horrible side effects that are not that effective on the elderly and often kill or maime them. Yeah they maybe effective on young people but it is a different ball game with the elderly. It's like they have half the success rate and double the risk on health as a rough rule of thumb with med or procedures.

Third, many of these elderly survived the communist revolution. These are not soft Americans used to abundance, these are very cunning people who know how to adapt.

I know we Americans love strawmen, but if it causes you to lose sight of the people around you_ you are in big trouble.

akaydis

At this fertlity rate, after 2050, China's population will already be declining by about 17 million people a year, which is about the same as the population of the Netherlands... truly wild..  
And by the way, it will be x2 times more obvious in small towns, because the lower the birth rate and worse the demographics in a town, the more and more people will tend to leave for the big cities.

robinmobder

They will definetely scrap the pension system and just seniors fend for themselves



As harsh as it is, there is no way around this.

EZ4JONIY

Everyone saying that China will cull the elderly is only partly correct.

The Chinese retirement system obligates adult children to care for their elderly parents. This is becoming increasingly impractical as the population pyramid inverts more and more. At some point, the solution is obvious:

The beneficent and magnanimous Communist party of China will take it upon themselves to help their hard working citizens and care for the elderly themselves. They will build highly… efficient elder care facilities, that the state will provide to the people at no cost at all. And, of course, this is the 21st century, where existential loneliness is a plague upon humanity. The elderly cannot be expected to live without extensive social interaction with their peers. To ensure that the elderly Chinese never feel isolated, these facilities will be structured to ensure that there is as much in-person interaction as possible, and that the elderly have as little reason to stay in their rooms as possible. And there are so many good ways to help people socialize. Provide abundant supplies of everyone’s favorite legal recreational substances - alcohol, tobacco, and fatty sugary foods.

Now, there is a risk that such facilities would be prone to rapid spreading of diseases, but we’re all mortal, right? Would it be better to die a death of despair, alone, or surrounded by all your new friends you’ve made through the auspices of the Communist Party?

CMVB

i just tried doing this with puerto rico and wow, that's not a good outlook at all

just-a-cnmmmmm

hard-to-find slim hobbies snails light dog nose birds late jeans

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NearbyTechnology8444

Dismal-Vacation-6677

They are so fucked

They are so incredibly fucked

BrandosWorld4Life

I notice they're simulating most of the ultra-low fertility countries increasing their fertility rate, too, whereas countries have, in practice, decreased their fertility in the past where the UN expected it to rise.

CanIHaveASong

Objective-Variety-98

China is already putting money and effort into going back to two children per woman policy. I don't doubt there will be a reduction in younger people but to the extent this pyramid shows is highly unlikely. 

colako

Calling out this chart from the image set because I wasted half a day making it and it’s the one that really shows the timeline.



https://preview.redd.it/f9yxszzd4fcf1.jpeg?width=1030&amp;format=pjpg&amp;auto=webp&amp;s=6ba9744b50fbd5ee5f3d993dfb33816cba647f56

It’s working-age population indexed to peak. Japan slopes down slowly. China holds for a bit then falls of a cliff in the late 2020s.

Mido_Aus

So, practically speaking, what does this mean? Can we expect China to stop being the world's factory within 20 years? Does this screw up their internal policy in any major way? 
Sorry, my understanding of demography is limited to secondary school 😅.

Booksgh

https://preview.redd.it/3ygtnsw83fcf1.png?width=1469&amp;format=png&amp;auto=webp&amp;s=dc3e45dc8f97c2c883ee5196b31c7a2a4e55f61d

For anyone who wants to dig into the data themselves, here are the parameters for the data portal. 

[https://population.un.org/dataportal/](https://population.un.org/dataportal/)

The best thing about trump is that you can kick him out after 4 years unlike xi jinping/mao zedong .


One child policy is the biggest blunder that china did in its entire history.

Optimal-Forever-1899

SmoovieKing

I'm a bit sceptical about the accuracy of this given that half the data are forecasts.

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Funny how both countries out perform the neoliberal most country in the world South Korea, but le tax break for Samsung will get them to have Niger’s fertility an i right?

Secret_Operation6454

fauxpas007

People are so desperate to use this stats to declare that China is done for, but in reality their demographic crash pretty much ensures Chinese dominance for the century. People are not expecting the gigantic mess of shitstorms that are gonna to play out over the next few decades and how countries like China are gonna to adapt in response.

burgerburgertaco

Mostly a result of the massive increase in life expectancy between 1950-1975, and then further increases since have helped to extend it. In 1949, average life expectancy from birth was only 36 years. By 1975 it was 61 years, and in 2024 it’s now 79 years. 

You can crudely mathematically model out the impact over time. Very crude because it assumes constant probability of dying in every year, which is wrong. On average the survival rate per year was 97.2% in 1949, by 2024 is now 98.8%. Only 24% of people born in 1949 would have made it to 50 years old, but 56% of people born in 2024 will. The real numbers are even more skewers, as actually your probability of survival is higher when younger.

This increase in life expectancy was the primary reason that the One Child Policy was even undertaken, as mathematicians were predicting China’s population to hit 5 billion by 2080 without any action taken.

Here’s a comment I made that gives some background: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/42eWYnpRvH

handsomeboh

I live in a rural area in Hunan Province, China. Even with the one-child policy, most people still have two children. The policy is that once you have a son, you can't have more, or you will be fined. This is to take into account the mentality of the older generation of parents who favor sons over daughters, so it is actually a one-son policy. For example, my mother gave birth to two children, my sister and me, and was not punished. But my aunt gave birth to two sons and was fined 5,000 yuan (in 2007). There is also a family in our village who gave birth to 4 daughters in order to have a son, and finally gave birth to a son on the 5th pregnancy. They also did not receive any punishment. In addition, some people send their sons to other provinces to be raised to avoid punishment. (As far as I know, the policies in each place are different. So what I said only represents the situation in my place.)

166Kangkang

China's population policy only applied restrictions to the Han ethnic group, without imposing limits on other minority groups. Enforcement was more effective in urban areas, but in rural regions, a significant number of people continued to have multiple children. At that time, rural residents accounted for a very large proportion of the population, and the government had limited means to address the issue of excess births, largely resorting to fines as a solution.

Donate_Trump

1. The penalty for having another child is a hefty fine. Nothing phenomenal. But impact poors more.
2. The policy is only enforced in high population areas. Rural cities can have more children without penalty.
3. The policy does not apply to minorities.

Add that together should explain population growth

Logical-Idea-1708

A combination of [population momentum](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/births-and-deaths-projected-to-2100?time=earliest..2007&amp;country=~CHN) and the fact the policy [didn't really affect](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-born-per-woman?facet=entity&amp;uniformYAxis=0&amp;country=~CHN) fertility dramatically; China's fertility rate dropped dramatically \_before\_ the policy   and generally levelled off during the policy, other policies and social developments were far more important.

It's also important to note it's a policy not a fact.  Fertility was 2.5-3 through the 80s and a 1.5-1.8 for most of the rest.    China has only had well below replacement fertility for the last decade, \_after\_ the policy was dropped.

jmarkmark

This is known as population momentum. Smaller cohorts actually add to the population so long as they are larger than the cohorts from 70-80 years ago.

The cohort from 70-80 years ago when the one child policy started is China's 1900 cohort.

Unless China's cohort gets smaller than the cohort from 70 to 80 years ago, population momentum will increase the size of China's population.

Now, the cohort from 70-80 years ago is the 1940 cohort, which is much larger than the 1900 cohort. And the cohort in 2030 will be their 1950 cohort, which is their largest.

This is why China has a 'growth window', which ends in 2030-2035, depending on how long their largest cohort survives.

JediFed

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China is facing a pressing demographic crisis, with declining birth rates prompting the government to offer new financial incentives for families.

China's Demographic Challenges and Policy Shifts

Why This Matters

Public Sentiment Summary

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What the people want