Brian Wang: "Why 4 Billion On the Way Up is Different on the Way Down"

There are people out there that crow about how China will replace the U.S. as a dominant world power. Mostly they look at historical economic trends and show that the U.S. has entered a phase similar to France and Britain, respectively, as they lost their economic dominance to an up and coming rival. But it is one thing to say that the United States is declining as an economic power and quite another to say that China will be next globally dominant economic power.

    While the economic trends seem to support the view of China's ascendency, I have doubts about whether China can sustain these trends over a longer time frame because of its collapsing birth rates. I believe it creates a very different situation from France, Britain and the U.S. which saw increasing populations when they were economically ascendant. 

    Wang discusses in his article why a declining population and birth rates creates a very different situation from one where the population is increasing. He compares it the situation of an airliner climbing through the 15,000 foot mark after takeoff versus the same aircraft passing through 15,000 foot elevation while plummeting to the ground before a crash. 

    People say, don’t worry about it, we got through 15,000 feet of altitude just fine.

    But last time we had all of our engines working.

    Don’t worry, we will restart the engines at 10,000 feet or 3,000 feet.

    But losing all the fertile women means that the engines are ripped off entirely.

    A rapidly dropping population will wreck various national economies and then the world economy.

    There will be less innovation with fewer young and energetic people with new ideas.

He then focuses on Japan, showing it demographics in 1965 when it had a population of 100 million, versus what its demographics will look like in 2050 when its population will have declined to 100 million. He notes:

    The difference is 18 million in 1965 fertile women versus 8 million fertile women in 2050.

    The difference is 18 million young people in 1965 versus 7.5 million young people 0-19 in 2050.

    Here is a reminder: Only fertile women can have new children. A population of 100 million people who are all over 45, will have no children and will just age out with no next generation.

    Turning to China, the Strait Times reported in 2021 that China's population appeared to have peaked, with new births equaling deaths, according to official statistics. (See "China's population may already be falling as births slow further"--The Strait Times). Within a year, in 2022, even sources friendly to the CCP acknowledged that China's population had started to shrink. (See "China’s Population Has Started Shrinking"--The Sounding Line). The trend continued into 2023. (See, "China’s Population Shrinks Some More—Decrease in Births, Increase in Deaths in 2023"--Time). And Alex Berenson wrote in his January 2024 piece, "The baby bust is worsening" that:

    Newly leaked data reveals that China recorded fewer than 8 million births in 2023. If that figure is confirmed, it will represent a decline of 17 percent from 2022, and an unfathomable drop of almost 60 percent since 2016.

    Yes, you read that correctly.

    In 2016, China - which has about 1.4 billion people - reported 18.8 million births, according to Caixin, a Beijing-based investigative magazine. (Although every Chinese news organization faces government censorship, Caixin is still reasonably reliable.)

    But by 2019, even before Covid and China’s harsh lockdowns, births had fallen to 14.7 million. Since then, they have plunged even faster. By one estimate, China had fewer children born in 2022 than it did in 1790.

So acute is the baby shortage in China that an increasing number of hospitals are closing their obstetrics departments and a factory that produced baby formula for China's market has shut down due to a lack of demand.

    But I occasionally come across assertions that China's population decline started well before 2021/2022, and that its population is much less than the 1.4 billion cited by the CCP. For instance, in the video below, the presenter uses various statistics of items that are probably less likely to be faked by the Chinese government to try and come up with an estimate of the actual current population of China and concludes that the real Chinese population may be less than 1 billion--perhaps as low as 800 million.

VIDEO: "China doesn’t have 1.4 billion people. Its population is under 1 billion."

Lei's Real Talk (1 hr 6 min.)

What this suggests to me is that China already lacks the younger, more dynamic population necessary to achieve economic dominance over the U.S.; or if it achieves economic dominance, it will be fleeting and short lived.