Something like half of Chinese men under 50 yrs old won’t marry, won’t have siblings, won’t have children. Those Chinese men and women who do marry will often be caring for all four parents at some point, as well as raising their mandatory one child (I think China finally lifted that law, which was underenforced). Just keeping that whole country engaged in industrial development, building stuff, making goods, and earning money, will likely be sufficient to keep them from fighting a large land war in which they’d have a massive manpower advantage (during the invasion of the two million Chinese “volunteers” Mao sent into the Korean conflict, some 100s of 1000s died, and the reaction in China was, oh well). Beginning in 20 to 30 years, the largest part of that demographic bulge will enter geriatricity, and a couple generations from now, 80-90 percent of them will be dead. The main problem China faces is a population *implosion*, and a growing need to import literally tens of millions of guest workers to care for the aged men who have no siblings, no remaining parents, no spouse or ex-spouse, and no descendants.
By contrast, the US population is likely to double in the next 20-30 years, double again 20-30 years after that, etc, and that’s my conservative estimate — thanks to higher reproductive rates, immigration, and a steep economic expansion, by 2100 the US population will be north of 1.5 billion. My more generous estimate is, north of 3 billion.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1774468/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/1311725/posts?page=17#17
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3188319/posts?page=62#62
Thanks for the insight, SunkenCiv. I had not heard that the one child policy had been lifted, nor the other sociological info you mentioned wrt their own male baby boom generation.
I am always so happy to learn from other Freepers in our conversations over the cyber backyard fence!
I pray that your insight is correct and that China has no likely designs for a land war.
Except that European-Americans are reproducing at rates only slightly higher than Europeans, and barely replacement.
That means most growth comes from immigration, which has featured more illegals than legals.
But, if Republicans become successful in stopping inflows of illegals (read: future Democrat voters), then you can be near certain Democrats will insist on slowing down legal immigrants (read: potential future Republicans).
Then net result could be US population growth not much higher than other more "advanced" countries.
Think about it.
The US has about 322 million, world has 7.2 billion; if the ratio endures (there’s no reason to expect that, but anyway), an increase in US population to 1.4 billion by AD 2100 implies a world population between 62 and 63 billion. :’) By contrast, US population in 1900 shows about 76 million (almost none of whom are now alive) compared with about 1 billion world population (7.6 percent). The 2014 figure (most recent available for both on the website below) works out to about 4.3 percent of the world’s population. With a ratio closer to that of AD 1900, world pop looks more like 40 billion.
In the past 15 years, US population has (it sez here) grown by 39.91 million, say 40 million, of whom perhaps 15 million are in the country illegally. The 16 year period from 1984 to 2000 saw an increase of 46.34 million, IOW, slightly slower growth in the second half of that 32 year period.
US population by year back to 1900:
http://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table
World:
http://www.multpl.com/world-population/table/by-year
China:
http://www.multpl.com/china-population/table/by-year