The Shrinking Global population.. (newspaper, Congress, wages, deaths)

[Mike from back east]

China's population situation is now coupled with a large housing/financial problem.

This month the Xi government refused to release youth unemployment numbers which is causing speculation that things are getting worse.

Excerpts:

China released more bad economic news on Tuesday, but it was the number that wasn’t included in the official data dump that stood out: Beijing said it would stop publishing figures for youth unemployment, weeks after it hit a record high of 21.3 percent in June.

Increasing opacity won’t help international investors. China has been publishing less economic data since Xi Jinping rose to power. In recent months, authorities have reportedly told Chinese economists to avoid discussing negative trends.

A strong, rich and powerful China under Xi wants to change the world order. A strongman in charge of such a state that is getting weak, poor and unstable will do whatever it takes to stay in power, regardless of its consequences for the rest of the world...

There are an estimated 65M vacant housing units in China giving rise to entire ghost cities of empty buildings. The housing supply has overshot China's shrinking population.

China's real estate woes resemble our own woes from the Great Recession when over-building and fraud in the mortgage industry caused a massive meltdown in financial markets. I clearly recall TV news reports of unsellable homes in California being torn down for lack of buyers as that recession plodded along.

It remains to be seen if China can find exits from this trick bag of their own making without dragging the world down with them.

[blisterpeanuts]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

China's population situation is now coupled with a large housing/financial problem.

This month the Xi government refused to release youth unemployment numbers which is causing speculation that things are getting worse.

Excerpts:

There are an estimated 65M vacant housing units in China giving rise to entire ghost cities of empty buildings. The housing supply has overshot China's shrinking population.

China's real estate woes resemble our own woes from the Great Recession when over-building and fraud in the mortgage industry caused a massive meltdown in financial markets. I clearly recall TV news reports of unsellable homes in California being torn down for lack of buyers as that recession plodded along.

It remains to be seen if China can find exits from this trick bag of their own making without dragging the world down with them.

I follow several youtube channels that talk about these issues in China (needless to say, they are based outside of China). It sounds like it's getting pretty bad.

Meanwhile, India's population is growing, and now they have exceeded China's. But, India also has the female infanticide issue. My mother in law visited India about 3 years ago and told me she went to a village that had zero female children -- ZERO! The people were rather matter of fact about it. I wonder what they expect is going to happen.

[Zoisite]

Originally Posted by blisterpeanuts

...... a village that had zero female children -- ZERO! The people were rather matter of fact about it. I wonder what they expect is going to happen.

It's a form of future population control for them. It means less births will be happening in the future if there are less women available there to be giving birth. Less mouthes to feed when natural resources become too stressed to support the population.

Who is it that is doing the selecting and committing the infanticides, is it the men doing it or is it the women and midwives?

.

[Ice_Major]

Originally Posted by blisterpeanuts

I follow several youtube channels that talk about these issues in China (needless to say, they are based outside of China). It sounds like it's getting pretty bad.

Meanwhile, India's population is growing, and now they have exceeded China's. But, India also has the female infanticide issue. My mother in law visited India about 3 years ago and told me she went to a village that had zero female children -- ZERO! The people were rather matter of fact about it. I wonder what they expect is going to happen.

Read your first sentence out loud. So unverified YouTube channels that aren't even based in China are forming your narrative on what is going on in China. Do you cross reference with other sources? I go on YouTube and find various channels with various opinions of China. Not surprising, as I stated in an earlier post, this thread appears to be forming into another anti-China thread something I can get in the P&C or Asia forums. Mods aren’t doing anything to stop it or steer it back to meaningful population discussion, so maybe it's something I'm missing. Great debates is letting me down.

[blisterpeanuts]

Originally Posted by Ice_Major

Read your first sentence out loud. So unverified YouTube channels that aren't even based in China are forming your narrative on what is going on in China. Do you cross reference with other sources? I go on YouTube and find various channels with various opinions of China. Not surprising, as I stated in an earlier post, this thread appears to be forming into another anti-China thread something I can get in the P&C or Asia forums. Mods aren’t doing anything to stop it or steer it back to meaningful population discussion, so maybe it's something I'm missing. Great debates is letting me down.

Regarding my personal knowledge of China, I'm certainly not a world class expert, but I did my undergraduate major in Chinese language and history, and did my MA in east Asian studies at Harvard; my thesis topic was economic development in late Qing Dynasty China, 1880s-1890s, with source material written in scholarly 19th Century Chinese. I speak and read Chinese, and I have a little Japanese as well.

So, my opinions about China aren't informed only by a handful of Youtube channels, obviously, but I do respect the ones that use factual information to support their claims. Much of what they say is also found in the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, and other fairly dependable mainstream sources.

I also scan the headlines in Japan Times, Asahi Shimbun, Taipei Times, and a few others, to get a feel for what's happening in Asia, from an Asian (non-Communist) perspective.

Now as regards the various comments about China, I'm curious what in particular you disagree with. This is, after all, a debate forum, so bring it on!

China, being (now) the #2 population in the world, is obviously of some importance in a discussion about global population. So is India, at #1.

I would recommend you go back to posting #1 and read through this thread, and you will find that there's been some excellent contributions from thoughtful and well informed people.

[Mike from back east]

China is arguably the most prominent example of population shrinkage; it's in the news so often that we over-populate this thread with China news. It's not bias, just widespread media coverage of a nation that is one of our main competitors on the world state.

Here's a story I read in today's WaPo about Japan and how they are coping with their elderly population and dearth of care-givers.

Here are a few excerpts:

If you want a glimpse of the future, go to Japan. ... you will see what lies ahead for many other countries, including the U. S. ... in rural areas and regional cities outside greater Tokyo: lots of people aging and dying, and relatively few giving birth and raising kids. ... the young and middle-aged are consumed by caring for the old, and small-town resources are overstretched. In some places, family gravesites lack descendants to tend them, ... Maternity wards are already closing in rural U.S. hospitals as birthrates fall. South Korea, Europe and China face similar trends of population aging and decline. ...

Here's a link that will get you to the article and past the WaPo paywall: https://wapo.st/3YDZjPH

Basically, all of us in the developed nations of the first-world are in this bag, some worse than others. In our case we do allow some immigration which could allow us to have more care-givers for our elderly.

[ohio_peasant]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

Here's a story I read in today's WaPo about Japan and how they are coping with their elderly population and dearth of care-givers. ...

With all due respect, and sensitivity to the people involved, this is a life-expectancy crisis, and not a fertility crisis.

Consider the illustrative example of Russia. Their fertility rate (1.5) has recovered slightly from its nadir of the 1990s, but Russia remains among the least fecund nations on earth. Even so, there isn’t much of an elder-care crisis. Why? Because life expectancy is low. A considerable number of people – especially males – who are more or less healthy at 40, go on to drop dead before 60. Medical care isn’t particularly advanced, or readily available. This means that for those persons who do manage to attain old-age, end-of-life care (both medical care and general caregiving) isn’t so burdensome. Patients who in the US would have been depleting their savings to extend their lives by a year or two, or more contentiously, depleting the public treasury – would in Russia be doing neither… because they can’t.

In a place like Japan, people live longer, from healthier habits. Once they arrive at old age, it’s costlier to care for them, because medicine is more available. It’s a double hit… more elderly people, AND more expense per-capita among the elderly. All of this has to be shouldered by working-age people.

So: which future is the lesser of two evils: Japan, or Russia?

[Mike from back east]

Thought provoking post, thank you.

Would it be a life-expectancy crisis if birth rates were higher to provide millions more young people working and paying into the safety net programs as well as being available to work in the elder-care facilities which increasingly rely on immigrants?

Russia is a truly sad spectacle with their massive alcohol problem, and IIRC at one time an HIV/AIDS disaster. There are horrendous dash-cam videos on YouTube of appalling car / truck crashes which are often alcohol related.

[M3 Mitch]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

Thought provoking post, thank you.

Would it be a life-expectancy crisis if birth rates were higher to provide millions more young people working and paying into the safety net programs as well as being available to work in the elder-care facilities which increasingly rely on immigrants?

Russia is a truly sad spectacle with their massive alcohol problem, and IIRC at one time an HIV/AIDS disaster. There are horrendous dash-cam videos on YouTube of appalling car / truck crashes which are often alcohol related.

Well, mastering the obvious, a higher birth rate would have to moderate the problem to some extent.

Now for me personally, I am glad I never had any bio kids, I'm just not cut out for fatherhood, and I knew this by the time I was 12. I can't think of anything that would have persuaded me to intentionally sire a child. That and I mostly dated ladies a bit older than me who had their tubes tied, or stridently pro-choice types on the pill. That said, I would think some people are persuadable with suitable financial incentives, free child care, have 4 kids and never pay income tax again, something like that. I'm a poor choice to ask what might work, because none of it would work on me, but something would work on some people who are more nearly sitting on the fence than I am.

Associating with mostly high - IQ people at work and socially with MENSA, I do notice that higher IQ people are more likely to have few or no children, even if married. The only people who reliably have a family after getting married are the highly religious. So perhaps the film "Idiocracy" is as much a forward looking documentary as a comedy.

That said, the US can paper over our current "birth dearth" by a more intelligent immigration system. Consider how Canada does it - if you have a skilled trade like welder, electrician, and have paperwork to prove it, you go straight to the "green line" and it's pretty much "Welcome to your new home, Canada, eh?" Even more so for medical doctors, engineers, etc. Given that almost everybody outside the US would move here if allowed to, we should actively "recruit" the "best and brightest" every chance we get.

[elamigo]

Overpopulation may not be the problem. There are possible problems such as good distribution, people-oriented government programs, and on and on. From what I have read, the earth still has the resources to sustain the present population and more. It is a matter of better cooperation between nations to help each other. In the past technology has proven to improve food production many-fold and be able to feed more people. People have the ability to overcome such problems. Granted, there is a limit. Have we reached it? Personally, I do not think so.

In some cases, education is the solution. When I visited China, I talked to a Chinese that told me they were trying to education people on birth control methods because they lack knowledge on that area. She gave the example of a couple that went to the doctor to find a birth control method because they felt the children, they had was enough. The doctor gave them condoms. A few days later they went to the doctor because the husband was getting very sick and blamed that to the condoms. The doctor asked for specifics. She was giving him the condoms as soup!

You have a great day,
elamigo