China's Low Fertility Rate And Birth Restrictions Set Stage For Disaster

[Swordsmyth]

While China has embarked on ambitious plans for economic and military domination over the next several decades, they may end up defeating themselves without a single shot fired - thanks to their longstanding birth restrictions, shrinking fertility rate and exploding elderly population.

Economically speaking, the problem is easy to understand; a shrinking labor pool due to restrictive reproductive laws tends to drive up wages, while a rapidly growing elderly population requires more spending on pensions and health care. "In a worse-case scenario, slowing growth and a labor shortage could leave China unable to care for hundreds of millions of retirees," notes the Wall Street Journal.

China’s clinging to birth restrictions defies a clear demographic trend: Its workforce is shrinking and the population is rapidly aging. By 2050, there will be 1.3 workers for each retiree, according to official estimates, compared with 2.8 now.
No matter what the government does now, it is too late to significantly change the overall trend because of social attitudes, say demographers such as Gu Baochang, a professor of demography at Renmin University in Beijing. -WSJ

While some experts have argued that slower population growth could mitigate pressure on China to create new jobs as technology increases productivity, others think China is in deep trouble...
“They should have lifted all birth restrictions before 2010,” says Baochang. “Whatever steps they take now, China’s low-fertility trend is no longer reversible.” In three decades, 1/3 of China's population is predicted to be over the age of 60.

The chart below shows annual change in million persons (red line) and total child bearing population (blue columns). From 2018 through 2033, China (with net emigration, to boot) will see an average annual decline of nearly 6 million Chinese capable of creating more Chinese (or the equivalent of losing the population of a Missouri, Wisconsin, or Maryland every year for at least the next decade and a half). -Chris Hamilton, Economica blog

Meanwhile, China's one-child policy, and now two-child policy, has conditioned the population to shun large families.

In a generation that grew up without siblings, a one-child mind-set is deeply entrenched. Maternity-leave policies have been expanded but some women say taking leave twice is a career impediment. An All-China Women’s Federation survey found 53% of respondents with one child didn’t want a second.
Even without birth limits, China’s economic development would have reduced fertility rates, says Martin Whyte, a Harvard University Chinese-studies expert. That has been the pattern elsewhere in the world: When incomes rise, the sizes of families tend to go down. -WSJ

If the nation drops birth policies now, says Whyte, “China will learn what many other countries have learned—that it is much more difficult to get people to have more babies” than to force them to stop having them.
Rapid Aging

In May of 2017, Moody's cited China's rapidly aging population as a major factor in their decision to downgrade their sovereign rating, as an explosion in elder care is expected to erode household savings and strain government coffers - jeopordizing the government's already hefty debt load. The ratings agency predicted China's economic growth could potentially slow to around 5% over the next five years vs. a 2017 rate of 6.9%.

“China is really interesting and unique,” said Marie Diron, a Moody’s analyst of sovereign risk, “because it is aging so much earlier than anyone else.”
Compounding China's problem is the fact that it has one of the lowest retirement ages in the world, at 55 on average - while Beijing has been reluctant to implement a plan to gradually raise it.

Officials had originally indicated they would present the plan last year. It was left out of measures unveiled at the congress in March, in which Beijing said the new ministry “will actively deal with the aging of the population,” with measures to develop the elderly-care sector and health-care reform.
Past policy changes haven’t fixed the trend—not even ending the one-child policy did. Newborns rose by 1.3 million in 2016, the first year without the policy—less than half the official projection—to 17.86 million, from 2015, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
In 2017, births slowed to 17.23 million, well below the official forecast of more than 20 million. -WSJ

Breakin' the law
China's reluctance to further soften their tone on birth restrictions is also leading to friction within local communities and at the workplace.

When Ms. Li, the Qingdao professor, refused to abort her third child, she said, her university employer accused her of selfishly putting at risk her supervisors’ careers, the school’s future and co-workers’ bonuses. A university spokeswoman didn’t respond to faxed inquiries.
With the help of local church friends, her family moved to the Philippines, where she gave birth in November. -WSJ

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...ions-set-stage


And there is a huge gender disparity that the article doen't even mention as well.

[goldenequity]

If anyone is interested in 'exploring China' and getting good grassroots 'intel'
on a HOST of reflection & questions you'd never even think to ask....
I can highly recommend randomly picking through either of these thoroughly enjoyable 2 channels....

https://www.youtube.com/user/churchi...able_polymer=1

https://www.youtube.com/user/serpent...able_polymer=1

you can learn a lot.



Free Samples







Why is Everything in CHINA FALLING APART?

[tod evans]

China's Low Fertility Rate And Birth Restrictions Set Stage For Disaster

Maybe China needs some immigrants, er......cultural enrichment..

[Swordsmyth]

China is planning to scrap all limits on the number of children a family can have, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be a historic end to a policy that spurred countless human-rights abuses and left the world’s second-largest economy short of workers.
The State Council, China’s cabinet, has commissioned research on the repercussions of ending the country’s roughly four-decade-old policy and intends to enact the change nationwide, said the people, who asked not to be named while discussing government deliberations. The leadership wants to reduce the pace of aging in China’s population and remove a source of international criticism, one of the people said.
Proposals under discussion would replace the population-control policy with one called “independent fertility,” allowing people to decide how many children to have, the person said. The decision could be made as soon as the fourth quarter, the second person said, adding that the announcement might also be pushed into 2019.

The policy change would close the book on one of the largest social experiments in human history, which left the world’s most-populous country with a rapidly aging population and 30 million more men than women. The policies have forced generations of Chinese parents to pay fines, submit to abortions or raise children in the shadows.


An initial feasibility study was submitted to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in April, according to one of the people familiar with the discussions. That study found there would be “limited” benefits to lifting birth restrictions nationwide. Li requested more research on the social impact of scrapping the policy altogether, the person said.
Neither the State Council Information Office nor the National Health Commission immediately returned faxed requests for comment Monday.
"The policy shift will hardly boost the number of newborns in China," said Huang Wenzheng, a specially-invited senior researcher of Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing-based think tank."China’s number of births will continue to drop dramatically, considering a sharp decrease in the number of fertile women and declining fertility willingness. "
Still, the move underscores growing concern among Chinese policy makers that more dramatic action is needed three years after allowing all families to have two children instead of one. Births fell 3.5 percent to 17.2 million nationwide last year, according to the Bureau of National Statistics, erasing almost half of the increase in births caused by relaxing the policy.


China’s graying society will have broad consequences for the nation and the world, weighing on President Xi Jinping’s effort to develop the economy, driving up pension and healthcare costs, and sending foreign companies further afield for labor. The State Council last year projected that about a quarter of China’s population will be 60 or older by 2030, up from 13 percent in 2010.
“The low birth rate and low number of newborns from the previous two years after the two-child policy sent a strong message to the decision-makers that the young generation has a weak willingness to have more children,” Chen said. “China’s population issues will be a major hurdle for President Xi Jinping’s vision of building a modernized country by 2035.”
In March, China removed the term “family planning” from the name of the newly consolidated National Health Commission -- the first time since 1981 that no agency bears the name. Xi and Li also omitted any reference to the phrase from key policy reports in recent months.

More at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...n-as-this-year

[euphemia]

Boys are preferred in China. Abortion for gender selection was common. Permanent sterilization was mandatory in some cases and caused by abortive techniques in others. There aren't a ton of fertile women for Chinese men to marry.

[Brian4Liberty]

Oh no, Alan Greenspan's nightmare has come to pass... the human pyramid of ever cheaper labor has come to an end. Strap in, the inflation rocket is getting ready to launch.

[Zippyjuan]

Russia facing problems too. https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-popul.../28760413.html

Another Worrying Sign For Russia's Dire Demographics

MOSCOW -- Many advanced economies are wondering how breakthroughs in technology could leave whole swaths of the population unemployed, but in Russia the government is pondering how to fill jobs with a dramatically shrinking work force.

Economy Minister Maksim Oreshkin this week called Russia's demographic situation "one of the most difficult in the world," saying that in the next five to six years "we are going to lose approximately 800,000 working-age people from the demographic structure every year."

Speaking at Sberbank's Corporate University on September 25, Oreshkin cast it as a knock-on effect of the 1990s, when birthrates plunged following the Soviet breakup that brought political freedom, but also economic hardship, rising crime, and a collapse of welfare.

"The lowest birthrate in the country was reached in 1999, and these people are now 18 years old; they are entering the work force. This generation is very small," Oreshkin said in comments reported by state news agency RIA Novosti. According to Oreshkin, the working-age population will contract by 4.8 million over the next six years.

Kremlin Narrative Undermined

The continued workforce decline in the country of just over 140 million would likely harm efforts to spur economic growth after a deep two-year recession, and also undermines the Kremlin narrative that Russia is beating a slow-burning demographic crisis that dates back to the Soviet Union, when its demography was deformed by tumultuous events, high mortality, and low-life expectancy.

"The challenge is, of course, serious, but the question is how to respond to this challenge," said Anatoly Vishnevsky, director of the Moscow-based Demography Institute at the Higher School of Economics. "In some form, it will probably require a greater flow of migrants to fill the deficit on the labor market. The second kind of answer is labor productivity, which is not very high with us."

President Vladimir Putin, who inherited a dire demographic situation when he came to power in 2000 has tried to nurture higher birthrates, raise low male life expectancy, and attract labor migrants. In a 2012 campaign article, Putin warned that if demographic trends continued, the population of the biggest country in the world could fall from 143 million to 107 million by 2050.

Newspapers like Nezavisimaya Gazeta have cast Oreshkin's declaration on the shrinking working-age population as another reason for the government to raise the retirement age -- a divisive policy that if passed would risk angering older, conservative voters who support the Kremlin. The newspaper noted how influential former Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin -- an advocate of raising the retirement age -- predicted in April that the work force could plunge by 10 million over the next 15 years.

Anti-Migrant Sentiment

Dmitry Kulikov, an expert at the Analytical Credit Rating Agency, told the state news agency RIA Novosti that the fall in the work force combined with lower migration flows could shave 0.4 percent potential growth from Russia's economy every year.

Vishnevsky, however, doesn't believe raising the retirement age would alleviate the problem. "Old people in no circumstances can replace the young," he said. "They are not effective workers. They cannot master new technology. So if your entire work force gets older, it's not clear what the effect will be."

He also noted how a policy of attracting labor migrants from Central Asia or elsewhere might risk inflaming nationalist sentiment. "It's another matter that Russia is not very hospitable toward migrants," he said. "There is fairly strong anti-migrant sentiment, so it's difficult to say how the situation will develop."

More than 10 million labor migrants are estimated to work in Russia.

[pao]

I'm sure we'll see that countries struggling with this problem will soon strongly subsidize the birth of children...the more they birth the more they get with maybe bonuses for being married depending on how important that is to those implementing.

[Danke]

I feel I have something to contribute to solve this problem.

[Raginfridus]

I'm sure we'll see that countries struggling with this problem will soon strongly subsidize the birth of children...the more they birth the more they get with maybe bonuses for being married depending on how important that is to those implementing.

Pretty sure that's already happening in Russia, and China's sperm banks seek only proven commies. That will be their downfall.

I feel I have something to contribute to solve this problem.

They could have had Danke, alas only Marxists can donate sperm...

[VIDEODROME]

Maybe we should embrace automation so we don't need to worry about a consistent population for labor.

Let robots do the dull repetitious work instead of holding onto a work employment system requiring people to do work they likely hate.

It might be a challenge adjusting the economy around it, but I think its unavoidable.

[Swordsmyth]

Last month we told you about China's record-low fertility rate and social stigma around having a large family. Today, we bring you another aspect of that equation; lame, feminized Chinese men who refuse to step up their game and get laid.
Yes, Hong Kong is suffering from an army of loners - estimated at 20,000 to 40,000 strong - usually in their 20's and 30's, who are choosing video games, anime and internet porn over wives, sex and the inevitable children that follow.

We can blame the prevalence of smartphones, laptops, computers, tablets and other electronic devices. We can even blame it on e-sports, a new pseudo sport that is sweeping the city with government backing. It can also be interpreted as another excuse for people to submerge themselves in the digital world rather than experience the real word. -SCMP

These sexless men are known as "otaku," - a Japanese term for socially awkward gents who have isolated themselves from their families and romantic prospects alike. "[T]hese “geeks” tend to be diehard anime and manga fans who have little interest in dating," writes Luisa Tam in the South China Morning Post.

Taking it one step further are the "soshoku danshi," which translates to "grass-eating men" or "herbivore men" - a term coined by Japanese columnist Maki Fukasawa who describes these particular isolationists as having a "monk-like approach to life and relationships," which of course includes no sex.

Studies in Japan estimate that this class of men, normally in their 20s and 30s, account for around 60 per cent to 70 per cent of the male population. Obviously, their reluctance to procreate is a major cause for concern. Japan has had one of lowest birth rates in the world for nearly a decade now. -SCMP

Hong Kong has seen a sharp rise in the number of "grass-eating men," according to Dr. Paul Wong Wai-ching, associate professor of the Department of Social Work and Social Administration at hte University of Hong Kong.

According to Dr Paul Wong Wai-ching, associate professor of the Department of Social Work and Social Administration at the University of Hong Kong, the city has seen a rise in the number of “grass-eating men”.

“These herbivore men don’t connect with others, they don’t establish their own families or have children and don’t really contribute anything meaningful to society, either tangibly or intangibly,” says Wong. “They are like parasites who often live with their parents. So you can imagine how it’s going to affect society in the long run, socially and economically.”

Wai-ching notes that similar to Japan, China's society is aging. “These ‘grass-eating men’ are not capable of taking care of their ageing parents and neither are they capable of taking care of themselves when they become old, they are childless so they will have no family support,” he says.

Another type of man you won’t be finding on any dating apps are the “modern-day hermits”. They seek extreme disconnection and isolation from the rest of society, they become practically invisible. This phenomenon is triggered by an overburdened sense of responsibility, and when the pressure becomes too unbearable it causes the person to pull away and unplug from society in a kind of self-imposed exile.

What's worse, after a long period of social detachment, these men lose their social skills - affecting their ability to find employment. This, as Tam writes, has a domino effect of creating youths who are financially dependent on family and friends - jobless and lacking in drive. This vicious cycle leads to a failure to launch - leaving many of these "otaku" without long term relationships, romantic or friend-based.

A recent study found that cows form relationships and even have best friends. When separated from their best friend, their milk production was affected and they showed a change in personality.
Think about it, if these bovine grass-eaters showed signs of emotional distress because of a lack of emotional contact, how will human “grass eaters” fare if they shut themselves off from human contact?

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...-sexless-nerds

[Swordsmyth]

China, like Japan, faces a demographic crisis, and like Japan, the central planners have decided to do something about it.
Japan has tried a few things - from imposing "handsome taxes" to make it easier for uglier men to get laid, to changing women's attitudes towards sex as "bothersome," but so far it is not working as young Japanese men appear to prefer the company of their AI girlfriends.


But, while Japan went with the 'carrot' incentive for encourage more fornication; China, having relinquished its one-child policy three years ago, prefers the 'stick' to change Chinese people's attitudes towards baby-making.

As The South China Morning Post reports, a proposal to tax all working adults aged under 40 – with the money going to a “reproduction fund” to reward families who have more than one child – has caused uproar in China.
The proposal comes amid a nationwide campaign to encourage people to have more children – a drastic turnaround after a one-child policy that lasted nearly four decades and only ended three years ago – as Beijing worries about a rapidly ageing society, shrinking workforce and falling birth rate creating a demographic time bomb.
Couples can now have two children but the birth rate is falling despite the new policy.

And the working-age population has peaked (just as much of the western world has also)

And here is why that is a major, existential problem for Xi - as China attempts to transition from a pure debt-driven 'production' economy to a 'consumption' economy, the core consuming base of the nation is collapsing...

But, as SCMP notes, the proposal was roundly criticised, with some saying it was reminiscent of the way the Chinese government controlled its population for so many years.


More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...phic-time-bomb

[Danke]

My work is cut out for me.

[Schifference]

Thank goodness I live in the USA where there are no issues with an aging population and no issues with unfunded liabilities.

[Swordsmyth]

Chins is getting desperate about its demographic slide.
One week after we reported that China floated a proposal to tax all working adults aged under 40 with the money going to a "maternity fund" to reward families who have more than one child, Beijing appears poised to scrap the limit on the number of children couples can have, with a state-run newspaper Monday citing a draft civil code that would end decades of controversial family planning policies. The wide-ranging code would get rid of a policy that has been enforced through fines but was also notorious for cases of forced abortions and sterilization in the world's most populous country.
According to AFP, the Procuratorate Daily said the code omits any reference to "family planning" -- the current policy which limits couples to having no more than two children. The draft code would go to a vote at the rubber-stamp legislature, the National People's Congress, in 2020.
In China, couples can now have two children - up from just one as recently as two years ago - but the birth rate is falling despite the new policy.

The Communist Party began enforcing a one-child policy in 1979 to slow population growth. The limit was raised to two children in 2016 as the nation scrambled to rejuvenate its greying population of some 1.4 billion.
Concerns continue to mount that an ageing and shrinking workforce could slow down its economy, while gender imbalances could lead to social problems. Childbirths have not increased as much as forecast since the two-child policy came into force, and there has been rising speculation the government will further ease restrictions.


The draft code was discussed at a meeting of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, a powerful body of lawmakers headed by President Xi Jinping, that will run till Friday. Other proposed changes include a one-month cooling off period before a divorce, during which either party can withdraw their application.
News of the proposed changes lit up social media.

"So they want us to have more babies and less divorces?" wrote one user on the Twitter-like Weibo platform.
Speculation about a change grew this month after a government-issued postage stamp for the Year of the Pig in 2019 showed a porcine family complete with three piglets.


But couples have been in no rush to start larger families since the policy was loosened, with 17.9 million babies born in 2016, just 1.3 million more than in the previous year and half of what was expected, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
At the same time, births in 2017 even slipped to 17.23 million, far below the official forecast of over 20 million.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...0-years-limits

[Swordsmyth]

bump

[Danke]

bump

and grind.

[Kilrain]

Low birthrates are a short-term problem, but a long-term solution. The human population has exploded over the last century and is frankly more than the carrying capacity of Earth, especially given that most of humanity desires to increase its consumption, regardless of what Western environment loons say or do.

The really scary problem is high birthrates in certain areas, since it's both a short-term and a long-term problem, one which cannot be contained to those areas.

I think I've posted this before, but it's a video everyone should watch:



"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."

[Swordsmyth]

Despite reports earlier this year that China was poised to end its notorious family planning policies, the communist government appears to be continuing to force abortion on women who have more children than officially allowed.

According to National Public Radio (NPR) and the pro-life group Women’s Rights Without Frontiers (WRWF), the Chinese government recently coerced an ethnic Kazakh woman with two children living in Kazakhstan with her new husband to return to China, where she had previously lived, and then forcibly aborted her third child under China’s two-child policy.

As reported by WRWF, the woman, whose first husband died in China in 2015, married a Kazakh citizen living in Kazakhstan across the border in the summer of 2018. But she was informed by the Chinese government that she had to return with her two children to China in order to cancel her Chinese citizenship and become a citizen of Kazakhstan.

When she arrived back in China with her children, Chinese authorities discovered that she was pregnant and demanded that she terminate the pregnancy under China’s two-child policy — even though she assured them that the child she was carrying was conceived with her husband in Kazakhstan, making the unborn child a Kazakh citizen.

Realizing that the woman would not cave in to their demands, they took her and her brother, a Chinese citizen, to a government facility. There, the woman told NPR, “they made my brother sign a document saying that if I don’t get an abortion, he would suffer the consequences. I knew this meant he’d be detained in a camp.”

The woman explained that “I’d do anything to protect my brother, so I agreed to the abortion.” However, she related, two days after the abortion the Chinese officials sent her brother to an internment camp anyway.

WRWF, which has monitored China’s murderous “family planning” policies for years, noted that any suggestion that China is easing up and allowing families to decide how many children they want to have is completely false. “The fact that forced abortion continues under China’s two-child policy is further documented in the Population Control section of the 2018 Congressional Executive Commission on China (CECC) Report, which states that regulations ‘include provisions that require couples to be married to have children and limit them to bearing two children.... Officials reportedly continued to enforce compliance with family planning policies using methods including heavy fines, job termination, detention, and abortion.’”

In reality, explained WRWF on its website, while China’s Communist Party would like the world to believe that it has abandoned its one-child policy, which was instituted in 1979, “this is not true. The top population official in China recently announced that the Chinese Communist Party has no plans to change the One-Child Policy for at least another ten years.”

As for China’s so-called “two-child” policy, WRWF explained: “The Chinese Communist Party points out that they have created an exception — couples who are both only children can now have two children. Also, certain other exceptions have long existed. In the countryside, couples whose first child is a girl are often allowed to have a second child in the attempt to have a boy. Further, certain ethic minorities are allowed to have more than one child.”
Plus, of course, China’s tiny wealthy demographic “can circumvent the policy by moving to Hong Kong for the birth of their second child, or by paying exorbitant fines — which can range from one half to ten times their annual disposable income.”
Such alternatives, however, are not available for most of China’s population,

More at: https://www.thenewamerican.com/cultu...nning-policies

[euphemia]

Japan is losing ground in the fertility game, too. With their long lifespans and a fertility rate of 1.42, they are going to need workers to replace the ones that retire.