Posted on 01/26/2007 8:42:42 PM PST by aculeus
There is almost no chance that China will become the world's hegemonic superpower, or that the Chinese yuan will dislodge the US dollar as the key reserve currency in our life-times.
It is ageing faster than any nation in history. Indeed, there is a risk that China’s demographic structure will implode long before the great mass of China’s interior ever become rich. This was more or less the conclusion of a closed-door session of Chinese experts at the Davos gathering, regrettably on “Chatham House” rules so none can be named.
Those who fret about Chinese chauvinist-militarism certainly have a point. The Chinese navy now has 50 state-of-the-art attack submarines, the spearhead of an offensive maritime force.
Beijing has just smashed an old weather satellite with a highly accurate kinetic missile, mounting an implicit challenge to America’s space monopoly. It has whipped up anti-Japanese feeling, and indoctrinated a whole generation of school children with revanchist beliefs.
The central bank commands reserves of over $1,000bn, the greatest ever seen. It could soon be in a position to trigger a US financial crisis by off-loading its vast holding of US bonds, though that would rebound violently against China herself.
Veiled threats might achieve some purpose, however, and that is how successful superpowers operate.
Yet, as soon as you crunch the demographics you can see that all this is never really going to amount to much. The one child policy has doomed China’s imperial dream. The ratio of males to females born in China in 2005 was 118.6 to 100.
The experts warned that the policy is already creating a huge cohort of unmarried men, a tinderbox for social conflict. The extended family structure has broken down because scarcely any Chinese now have cousins.
The country will catch the European disease of worker shortages within a decade, and then slither even faster down the demographic curve. By 2050, 31pc will be aged over 65.
There is no social security system worth the name. Its funding is just $40bn, a pittance. The state will have to step in to prevent social protest, causing the national debt to mushroom.
China’s surplus will vanish in no time.
In the end, there will be a “suicide epidemic” as the older generation carries out a heroic sacrifice, like the proverbial Eskimos on the ice.
Such are the predictions of those who have explored the theme, not mine. A useful antidote to all the hyper-ventilating we hear these days over China’s new ascendancy.
Don't count on it.
I'm sure there are immigrants that would happily fill the shortage. With all of their jihadist men running off to heaven with 72 virgins, there must be an imbalance somewhere.
Interesting article.
Sounds like it is time for China to pursue another "Great Leap Forward". That'll thin out at least 30 million elders.
I guess they shouldnt have killed all those female babies.
Excessive male population is solved by war.
Interesting..........
Is there some sort of rule that absolutely EVERYTHING about the Chinese military be wildly inflated in the media?
Being quite generous on the term "state-of-the-art" I come up with at most 21 attack subs.
Exactly. With Japan, Taiwan, S. Korea, and thereby the U.S. If we wimp out with a wimpy government, then they get all the women they can carry back -- from abroad.
This is a serious problem a few years ago already. When my sister lived in Japan, there was a rash of kidnappings of Japanese women by Chinese men, and the Chinese government refused to put a stop to the practice. Mongolia, Russia, and more of China's neighbors are suffering from a similar problem.
I wouldn't put too much stock into this article. China's finding women well enough, it's China's neighbors that are in more trouble by this one-child policy.
One needs not hyper-ventilate. First, one ought to remember that the death throes of a collapsing regime need to be watched. Secondly, the danger does not lie in their monetary reserves or any such. In a population of their present size with average IQ 105, something like 150 million Chinese have IQs above 120. In the US population of 300 million [average IQ 97 , due to heterogeneity], the IQ>120 cohort is something like 15-20 million; advantage of 7-10 to 1 in their favor. Luckily for us, they are hobbled by their social system, at least to some noticeable extent, and at present they are still behind. Besides, if they shrink their population, then [unless they resort to purposeful eugenics] they will shrink their IQ>120 cohort as well.
The Chinese have been steadily REDUCING their total military troop strength for many years now.
New seaport in Mexico...ships returning to China can carry human cargo.
China will put guns in their hands and send them to Japan and other countries before these men ever threaten China's government
The solution to a demographic problem in China will be as simple as the totalitarian government lifting the "one child" policy.
"There is no social security system worth the name. Its funding is just $40bn, a pittance. "
WhooHoo, they've set aside 40 bucks for every man woman and child. In contrast, we are in the red going forward.
China's Military Strength Growing, Defense Department Says
http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive/2005/Jul/21-224768.html
[In an interview with reporters accompanying him from Washington, Rumsfeld said the United States and other countries would like to know why the Chinese government has understated its defense spending. He mentioned no budget figures, but the Pentagon said last summer that China may be spending $90 billion on defense this year, three times the announced total.
"I think it's interesting that other countries wonder why they would be increasing their defense effort at the pace they are and yet not acknowledging it," Rumsfeld said. "That is as interesting as the fact that it's increasing at the pace it is."]
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/1019rumsfeld19.html
Whatever China's problems, the lack of a welfare state or a state-run universal health care system aren't among them. In fact, this lack is one of China's strengths - the lack of socialism in a supposedly socialist state means that its economy will continue prospering long after Europe's welfare states are economically moribund. Countries don't crumble due to the lack of a welfare state - they crumble from economic collapse; they crumble from external invasions. On the other hand, if China does implement the socialistic prescriptions coming from Davos, it will definitely stop growing its economy long before it becomes a developed country.
One thing you can count on China doing is ignoring this stupid European advice. That's not completely because the Chinese have figured out that socialism is a bad thing for the national interest, though. It's mainly because self-effacing as they occasionally are in public, the reality is that the average Chinese is self-confident to the point of arrogance. They have embarked upon a given path and nothing will stop them from proceeding along that path.
By the way, the stuff about sexual imbalances is horsepoop. Due to polygamy being legal in China until the 20th century, when it adopted Western mores, most of Chinese history has involved major sexual imbalances. Rich men had many wives, whereas poor single men got to look at women from afar and occasionally patronize a brothel. And yet the Chinese empire has persisted for over two thousand years whereas the empires that existed at China's inception have crumbled to dust. China has not been completely at peace throughout this two millenium period, but it has encountered a heck of a lot more peace than in the mostly monogamous West where sexual imbalances were presumably not a problem.
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