Posted on 01/23/2023 5:40:55 AM PST by FarCenter
China’s population has started to decline and this has set off a Pavlovian negative reaction – via the news media – of the sort that we have seen before in the case of Japan.
Reuters warns that the news “sounds alarm on demographic crisis.” CNN predicts that the “impact will be felt around the world”, will act as a “drag on growth” and “could threaten China’s ambitions of overtaking the United States as the world’s largest economy.”
Even if some of the dire prophecies are accurate, however, the population decline will also make automation an absolute necessity – as has happened in Japan. It will widen China’s already large lead in the deployment of industrial robots and the industrial internet of things, helping to create an enormous market for service robots.
This process is already well underway. Over the past decade, installations of industrial robots in China have increased by 10.7 times, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR). Compare that with 68% growth in Japan, 67% growth in the US, 20% growth in Germany and 19% growth in South Korea.
In just a few years, China has become the world’s largest user of industrial robots by a very wide margin. In 2021, China accounted for 52% of total worldwide installations. Trailing far behind, Japan accounted for 9%, the US for 7%, South Korea for 6% and Germany for 5%. Viewed by region, Asia accounted for 74% of the total, Europe for 16% and the Americas for 10%.
At the end of 2021, the total worldwide installed base of industrial robots was almost 3.5 million units – with more than one million, or close to 30%, deployed in China. That compares with 12% in Japan, 10% in South Korea, 9% in the US and 7% in Germany.
(Excerpt) Read more at asiatimes.com ...
In just a few years, China has become the world’s largest user of industrial robots by a very wide margin. In 2021, China accounted for 52% of total worldwide installations. Trailing far behind, Japan accounted for 9%, the US for 7%, South Korea for 6% and Germany for 5%.
So China has nearly 6 times as many robots as Japan and nearly eight times as many as the US? It has over 11 times the population of Japan and 4.3 times the population of the USA.
So even with its population slightly decreasing over the next couple decades, its economy should grow to about 4 times that of the US in order to reach equivalent GDP / capita.
While getting about 10% cheaper every year, robots still consume significant energy resources to design, build, program, operate, maintain, and produce much CO2 along the way. GDP is limited by energy available, not labor. Whenever energy-inefficient big government limits energy resources, or makes them more expensive, GDP and the standard of living goes down.
US energy use is around 6800 kg of oil equivalent annually per capita. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.PCAP.KG.OE
It takes about 25 years to create a worker, which is a lot of energy consumption.
And after 25 years, a lot of the batch are defective.
Of course CNN would worry China surpassing us might not happen
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