"The group predicted that by 2050 China will have just 1.6 working-age adults to support every person aged 60 and above, a steep decline from the 7.7 adults per pensioner back in 1975, just a few years before China instituted the one-child policy."
The Chinese, however, have forgotten about another plausible and viable option that achieves BOTH population control and maintains a healthy demographic balance, meaning a good ratio of youths to the elderly.
They can merely ban getting old unless a person gets a permit and can prove they are a contributing member of society. No more sitting on porches and dandling grandchildren on your knee, or puttering around in your garden. If you don't get your permit, you shuffle off to the "senior center," say goodbye to your loved ones, and find yourself turned into fertilizer -- which, by the way, is a productive use of your end-of-life status.
Frankly, this is hardly more inhumane than forced abortions and the infanticide that the Chinese bureaucrats sometime resort to, to ensure the one-child policy is enforced.
See? Problem solved. Easy in a godless, totalitarian society.
There IS at least a purported history in China of abandoning old people who become a burden on their families. The oldster would be brought out to the distant forest and just left there to fend for him/herself. Whether those stories are historically accurate, I don’t know, but do remember hearing them some time ago.