The West has long been obsessed with China. In the 19th century, the Middle Kingdom was dominated and debauched by Western trading companies, backed by Western militaries, pushing drugs into China. Remember the Opium Wars? Those uppity Chinese had the effrontery to destroy the British India Company’s opium and try to eradicate addiction. That was China’s century of humiliation.
Now the shoe is on the other foot. China has roared past the collective West in so many metrics. The global industrial base has shifted to Asia. Deadly fentanyl coming into the United States used to flow from China, but now they make the stuff in Mexico and ship it north.
For years, the Chinese economy has been significantly larger than that of the US in the benchmark that counts: purchasing power parity. That is the “measure of the price of specific goods… to compare the absolute purchasing power of the countries’ currencies.”
Conventional wisdom is that as China rises, the US fades. On the surface, that seems to be the case: the US wallows in debt and endless wars while China makes friends through the Belt and Road Initiative, BRICS and other mechanisms.
But not so fast. Remember that old saw, “demography is destiny”? The future belongs to those who show up, and by every projection, there will be a lot fewer Chinese around in the coming decades.
China falling?
America’s pre-eminent imperial mouthpiece, Foreign Affairs, just posted Nicholas Eberstadt’s thought-provoking “East Asia’s Coming Population Collapse: And How It Will Reshape World Politics”. Has Mr Eberstadt derailed the mythos of long-term Asian dominance?
As of 2023, Japan[’s]… childbearing levels are over 40 percent below the replacement rate. China’s childbearing levels are almost 50 percent below the replacement rate; if that trend continues, each rising Chinese generation will be barely half as large as the one before it. Much the same is true for Taiwan.
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South Korea’s 2023 birth level was an amazing 65 percent below the replacement rate — the lowest ever for a national population in peacetime. If it does not change, in two generations South Korea will have just 12 women of childbearing age for every 100 in the country today.
East Asia… is set to shrink by two percent between 2020 and 2035. Between 2035 and 2050, it will contract by another six percent — and thereafter by another seven percent for each successive decade (if current trends hold).
If projections hold, China’s working-age population will be more than 20 percent smaller in 2050 than in 2020. Japan’s and Taiwan’s will be about 30 percent smaller, and South Korea will be over 35 percent smaller.
Grim. The Asians know it. Eberstadt says that East Asia “is set on a course of decline that extends as far as the demographer’s eye can see.” Sadly, he is correct.
The Wisconsin professor
Though his field is obstetrics and gynecology, one of the most astute sinologists around is University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Yi Fuxian. Prof. Yi is as pro-Chinese as they come, but not a fan of China’s government. His book Big Country with an Empty Nest warns about China’s impending demographic implosion.
LifeNews Note: Louis T. March has a background in government, business, and philanthropy. A former talk show host, author, and public speaker, he is a dedicated student of history and genealogy. Louis lives with his family in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. This column originally appeared at MercatorNet.
