Coming suicide epidemic in China as population collapses

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.

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.

Luckily for us, they are hobbled by their social system, at least to some noticeable extent, and at present they are still behind.

You said a mouthful. I worked in grad school with a Chinese guy with an IQ in the 170-180 range.

For a long time he had been assigned to a re-education camp, and his job was to guard an apple orchard. With a sharpened stick as his weapon.

Just 'cuz you have folks with the IQs doesn't mean you use them efficiently.

Cheers!

"I worked in grad school with a Chinese guy with an IQ in the 170-180 range. For a long time he had been assigned to a re-education camp, and his job was to guard an apple orchard. With a sharpened stick as his weapon. Just 'cuz you have folks with the IQs doesn't mean you use them efficiently."
The trouble [for us] is that he no longer is at a re-education camp, but made it to grad school [or university] in the US. [the trouble would be if he returns, or has returned, back to China, or remains here as their fifth columniac. If he honestly assimilates here, then it is our gain, and not a trouble]

China is biding it's time. They have every intention of taking vengeance on Japan for what they did.

A Chinese friend of mine tells me that the Chinese will absolutely never forgive the Japanese. Of course, I guess that means the majority of Chinese are still non-Christian.

Understood; keeping in mind by analogy those members of the London cells who were by all appearances "assimilated"; nonetheless, from what I have seen, Islam is a bit stickier than Marxism....Ward Churchill types aside.

I also got to know another Chinese student who could eat jalepeno peppers "straight" with no water and no digestive side-effects. He was astounded that the U.S. did not have a "one-child" policy.

Since (IIRC) you came from a Marxist-type country originally, were you able to form any judgements about how "true" Marxists felt about the "Sandalistas" and other progressive student groups on campus? Were they despised as useful idiots?

Cheers!

There were no "true" marxists in sight if by that you mean true believers. The few still left must have been kept in a zoo cage. The main difference between an ideology and a religion is that an ideology exists to be behaved, but not to be believed in, and a religion exists to be believed in, but not to be behaved [they routinely stage cross-boundary raids in one another's realms, and this tends to confuse]. The violators of that rule [sincere believers in the former, and sincere behavers in the latter] are royal embarrassment and a pain in the derriere. As for the sincere ideological behavers- why, even half or more of the dissidents I knew belonged to the type, let alone the more loyal part of the population. More, there was surprisingly high level of awareness about the scoundrelly nature of the society as a whole and of its typical member. Officially, of course, there would be only paeans and panegyrics. The useful idiots were despised, true - for living under paradise [relatively] conditions and wishing for a life in a dunghill.

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