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East Asia’s Coming Population Collapse
And How It Will Reshape World Politics
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/east-asias-coming-population-collapse
Excerpt:
In the decades immediately ahead, East Asia will experience perhaps the modern world’s most dramatic demographic shift. All of the region’s main states—China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—are about to enter into an era of depopulation, in which they will age dramatically and lose millions of people……China’s and Japan’s populations are set to fall by eight percent and 18 percent, respectively, between 2020 and 2050. South Korea’s population is poised to shrink by 12 percent. And Taiwan’s will go down by an estimated eight percent. The U.S. population, by contrast, is on track to increase by 12 percent.
…..They will find it harder to generate economic growth, accumulate investments, and build wealth; to fund their social safety nets; and to mobilize their armed forces. They will face mounting pressure to cope with domestic or internal challenges. Accordingly, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan will be prone to look inward. China, meanwhile, will face a growing—and likely unbridgeable—gap between its ambitions and capabilities.
…..the power of demography means the long-heralded “Asian century” may never truly arrive.
…..East Asia, in other words, is set on a course of decline that extends as far as the demographer’s eye can see. The region is set to shrink by two percent between 2020 and 2035. Between 2035 and 2050, it will contract by another six percent—and thereafter by another seven percent for each successive decade (if current trends hold).
…..the impending depopulation is different from all the ones before it. In the past, East Asia’s (and every region’s) prolonged contractions were a consequence of dreadful calamity—such as war, famine, pestilence, or upheaval. Today, the decline is taking place under conditions of orderly progress, improvements in health conditions, and spreading prosperity. The coming depopulation, in other words, is voluntary. It is happening not because people are dying en masse but because they are choosing to have fewer children.
…..This demographic shift will cost these countries more than just their youth. It also threatens to sap them of economic vitality. As a rule of thumb, societies with fewer people tend to have smaller economies, as do societies where the elderly make up a disproportionate share of the population.
…..the economic crunch from graying and shrinking can be mitigated through healthy aging, more and better training and education, higher workforce participation, and longer careers. But states have only so much leeway to squeeze out more from less. And like it or not, the fastest-growing age demographic in these countries is likely to be the one least able to work: people over 80.
…..Many of these super-elders will have few kin to care for them—or none at all. East Asia has the highest childlessness levels of any region on the planet today.
…..The United States may be beset with domestic problems and divisions, but to the extent that demographics matter, its strategic future looks surprisingly bright. The country’s under-30 population is projected to be just slightly smaller in 2050 than today, and the overall working-age population will be larger. The country is set to gray, but much more modestly than any in East Asia. By 2050, the United States will have a higher potential support ratio than any major Western economy, with a projected 2.3 Americans of working age for every senior citizen.
The power of demography is bestowing on the United States a great strategic gift in the Asia-Pacific. U.S. policymakers and strategists would be wise to recognize the opportunity and seize it. They need to think through the ways in which this big demographic tilt should change their approach to China and the region overall—including to their friends. Doing so will help Washington best take advantage of what one might call American demographic exceptionalism.
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We are seeing the economic shift already Vietnam and India in Asia and Mexico here. Trump returning to office will give him an ideal scenario to implement MAGA policies that bring back our manufacturing that was plundering then offshored by the Wall Street robber barons. With South Korea, Taiwan and Japan in demographic decline will not be surprised to see many of their high tech companies building facilities here due to available workers. The paper dragon, China, is in a position of weakness all the way around, the opposite of what the talking toilets in DC, on Wall Street and the MSM say. FJB was/is their last fleeting chance to make any gains on the world stage. That too is slipping away IMO.
“American demographic exceptionalism”...
Next to 0 of our population increase is going to be in people who can “get shit done”. Between them and politicians (currently) the accumulated wealth of the US will be frittered away. But I’ll guarantee you that there will be a healthy dose of worthless Americans that celebrate this in it “not giving us an unfair advantage”...
So in other words, when God said, “Be fruitful and multiply,” He wasn’t kidding.
Aldi supermarkets in the U.S. are selling food that “contains bioengineered food ingredients”.
Would you eat it?
https://twitter.com/wideawake_media/status/1789636583060099380