Why Is Asia So Populous?

[pete98146]

If you ask my Asian wife, her answer cuts right to the bone (pardon the pun). She says much of Asia is poor and the most fun and free experience for many is sex. Produces lots of kiddies

[Listener2307]

Originally Posted by pete98146

If you ask my Asian wife, her answer cuts right to the bone (pardon the pun). She says much of Asia is poor and the most fun and free experience for many is sex. Produces lots of kiddies

Used to be more true than it is now..
China will lose population very rapidly and, in fact, has probably already begun shrinking due to low fertility rate. The total fertility rate in China is now 0.90.
There is no end in sight, and there will be no end - that is, a point when population will begin to grow. China will have less than 480M people by 2100. And in 2175 (or thereabouts) will shrink by 1/2 again.



A Total fertility rate of 2.1 is usually considered adequate to stabilize populations. But China is different. If you are of child bearing age there are 130 men for every 100 women. That means the 100 women must have 2.3 babies each in order to replace all 230 people.
The current 0.9 rate spells doom for China.
China will lead the world population decline, but India will follow soon enough. South Korea has had the lowest total fertility rate in the world for several years and, as everyone knows, Japan is settling into the sunset as population gets older and workforce becomes smaller.

[Wenzhe]

Fertility rates in China and US are about equal at 1.91 per woman (in 2020 US even dipped below China's for the year), and below replacement level. US however relies on immigration, albeit declining and with immigrants who'll have the same amount of kids as natives. This is not anything new, even India's is hovering barely above replacement level in terms of fertility, Bangladesh already below.


The trend round the world is increased healthcare means increased provision for people to actually plan their lives. Rather than have as many kids as they can in order for the few to survive into retirement (and look after them), the fact that almost all kids will now survive to adulthood means people can actually choose their preferred amount. The same the world over.



Since Covid China has clanged its doors shut to immigration (the legal variety anyhoo), but it may well open again. Before 2020 over a million were arriving every year, though unlike the US most are economic migrants who don't intend to stay, and only a small amount apply for citizenship.


The fact every part of the world outside Subsaharan Africa will be losing population in the future, points not to economic decline, but a movement in our economy to take it into account - eg robotisation etc. China has something like the second lowest costs for looking after the elderly, and is projected to retain similar in the future, mainly thanks to community tradition and culture, lack of obesity etc. whereby the aged are looked after by the community -and to some extent- themselves, more than by the state. For example they share homes with or are looked after by their children, and in turn look after the grandkids back (negating childcare fees), whilst obsessing about their health, the hobby of choice for those in retirement in China. Go to any park in the country or the bottom of each highrise (pretty much any public expanse) and you'll see them taken over by the armies of retired folk, exercising, singing, dancing, hanging out and playing sport or games.

[Wenzhe]

Asia is populous broadly because of two things : rice -up to three harvests a year, and impossible to rule top-down a rice-based society, eg feudally as it requires so much independent planning and lateral thinking (basically you're trying to periodically trick the crop into thinking its drowning) = everything that leads up to city building, notably trade.



Both China and India were of course, traditionally the world's largest economies for the past few millennia, before their fracturing in the 19th Century by native uprisings against the empire (at which point the colonial powers sweep in). China dominated trade, India mercantilism - before colonialism it was the world's largest miner, textiles, metals, and food producer and ship builder, whose economy was devastated into supplying cash crops and becoming a vast resources mine for Britain, to the tune of an estimated $45 trillion in todays money. The majority of the world's poor came to reside in India, when before they had higher average incomes than the Europeans.



After the fall of the Mughals, the colonial powers took 270 years to piecemeal bribe their way across the multiple fiefdoms (supplying 'protection' in trade deals) until they had complete control. Similar story in China - the collapse of the Qing Dynasty (effectively a foreign power from Manchuria 300 years previously) as the dynasty became stagnant and native Chinese rebelled, setting off 2 centuries of war and near 100 million deaths - the Taiping Rebellion alone took out 700 cities and was the second deadliest conflict after WWII.



Plus the tradition of city building started much earlier in Asia, from the cradles in Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan to the ancient cities larger than the rest in China, India, Iran, Thailand, Japan etc. All in all supporting more populations, and less incidence of famine thanks to age-of-empire governance, keeping supplies or diverting them from other parts of the territory. Something to be said too about the impact of alcohol - in many parts of the world alcohol was used as something to make water potable (your average worker was given up to 8 pints a day, making alcoholism endemic), whilst in Asia they killed the germs by boiling -tea.



Productivity was thus quite high- China went through it's first Industrial Revolution in the Dark Ages, the 1000's when iron ore was being churned out in a system of blast furnaces not seen until 1820s England's Industrial Revolution, with standardisation and a financial system rolled out. China's step-up of course went the way of the Mongols and climate change, that ended the Song Dynasty flowering. Asia had huge hurdles to overcome like any other - from the Mongol conquests that killed so many the atmosphere changed, to Black Death and pandemics, to a hard geography of deserts and mountains, to rainforests that naturally go fallow after a decade of farming, to the fact the Steppe tribes were impossible to overpower due to a lack of homegrown cavalry (potassium is lacking in the soil in the east, which makes the horses weaker).

[Wenzhe]

Of course these obstacles lead to technological invention too- mountain ranges and desert barriers led to the Maritime Silk Route, to the naval powers of India (hence an ocean named after them) and Arabia, and briefly China (the largest pre-industrial ships and fleets), before them pesky Mongols had another go at burning their worlds. Even the Mongols themselves led to gunpowder and the first modern warfare, carried out in the attempted invasions of Japan in the 1200s, complete with aramadas of 4,500 ships, grenades, bombs, mechanised bows and multiple-arrow launchers, the first proto-guns, and sea mines.


Similarly Europe took advantage of its disadvantages - the winter by planning and storing its harvests (read: a tip toward city building again), and the fact raging pandemics often died out or gave respite with the onset of cold weather, rather than continuing for decades. The unending wars between fiefdoms, then countries also led to arms and technology races, the isolation of the relatively small continent on three sides led to exploration and trade. The timely death of Gengghis Khan also saved the continent when the Mongol horde headed back for the funeral, and claim new empires of inheritance, after wrecking Europe to the gates of Vienna (for example, they killed something like half of all Hungarians in the invasion, and kept Russia for 250 years).


In the tropics they managed to turn the world's most unproductive soils, and zero pack animals (although they had wheels, they could little use them -it was still more efficient to use human labour, especially over mountains), living in forest tribes into some of the worlds largest cities. For example the 'hydraulic civilisations' of the Aztecs in Mexico, Angkoreans in Cambodia, the Mauryans in India, the Siamese in Thailand who each gave rise to the largest city in the world at the time. The Angkoreans and Aztecs moved more stone than the Egyptians (the former multiple times so), the Beninese created the world's largest human structures to this day. - All in jungle environments where there's less available protein than the desert (everything in a biological arms race for so long, it's mostly poisonous) and the soil is unsustainable for one crop.


Likewise the desert civilisations then global powers of Iraq, Iran, Arabia, Egypt, Mali, Phoenicia, Libya etc.



So yeah, humans are an inventive species. What we find hard to overcome though is genetic biological susceptibility - notably the peoples of the Americas who died by the millions from infection, with little immunity from a disease pool not seen outside Eurasia (possible the greatest human die-off ever, from 40-100 million succumbing). As the last humans to come about genetically, and conquering the last parts of the world, they had far less DNA resilience than the source material from Africa.


Also climate change, hard to beat that.

[ralfyman]

Probably had a head start, i.e., populations grew there much earlier due to various factors.


Some points here might help.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFuEMnPVZyE

[Wenzhe]

in short - rice=up to 3 harvests, no to feudalism and yes to city building.
Living in the desert = city building to capitalise on scarcer resources
Tea= productivity


result:

Kind of a random arbitrary occurrence. Mostly just because of China, India. However, Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, Philippines, Myranmar also have a lot to officially add up the exact final number count. Exceeding 50 million in absolutely any of those countries. Even further than 70 to 200 Million+ in a technical majority of cases. We can say all of original civilization is the mainland Asian one before even Europe!

Don't believe Climate/Weather, and Birth rate are one of those reasons. So, just good or bad luck depending on somene's own view. Mostly fortunate. We need ourselves in billions copy clone. A hot Asian lady for one example must be so happy. More than 3 Billion are Asian. Sino, and Indo sphere combined.

[mojo101]

didnt the Chinese farmers need more hands to work in the fields besides the yellow cow?
Thats why they married their new born male son to a 10 years old girl so she can babysit him while the mother can go into the fields and help her husband work,all by hands,and the cow