China is dead. And what isn’t dead is dying. Give it maybe ten years, then watch the place collapse from within.
Demographics can be a real bitch, and the Chinese aren’t the only ones having to deal with it, but they’re the ones who will have to deal with it so quickly. Other industrialized countries, including Canada, will face this danger themselves, but will do so over a longer period of time, most likely because of immigration that’s intended to stave off this prospect.
But how can a country of 1.3 billion people be suffering from a demographic crisis? The answer is simple. When over 50% of that 1.3 billion people are over age 50, you come to the stark reality that the population is going to take a gigantic hit in the next couple of decades as these people pass on, and with no idea as to how they’re going to be replaced. That’s a staggering 600 million people gone in the next twenty years or so. And in a country where earlier laws limited parents to two children, and then one child by law, you don’t have to be brilliant to figure out the problem. In fact, China’s population is currently estimated to be under 1 billion already, and it will steadily go down.
So who’s going to work in the factories? Who’s going to keep that manufacturing juggernaut going that kicks out just about every finished product the world wants or needs? Who will be there to keep China in position to be the overlord of East Asia. Nobody, that’s who.
It’s so bad that China is actually contemplating the idea of allowing immigrants from other lands to come to its shores. Imagine, China, a country in need of immigrants. Talk about a world turned upside down.
Demographics are an easy-enough concept, that is if you have the willingness to pay attention. I’ll give you the McDonald’s drive-thru version, and even something as simplistic as that will have eyeballs rolling in a public that often gets its operating information from short-burst slogans and superficial media, just like here in town. But I don’t have to worry about that, because none of those folks are reading this.
Too long. Too preachy.
But this isn’t virtue signalling. This is real life. And death.
Once upon a time we all lived on farms — if we were lucky — and came from families that had many kids. These kids were an economic asset, in that they provided free labour for the myriad jobs that needed to be done involving a farm.
Then came industrialization, with factories in the cities offering economic opportunities that never existed before. So the kids left and moved to town.
The kids grew up, and maybe lived the dream of having a home and family of their own. But what they didn’t need was their own personal workforce, since urban living doesn’t have that aspect to it. Plus, kids can be expensive. So therefore no real need to have them. The women of the time must have been relieved. I mean, having four or five kids still happened, but it sure as hell wasn’t the same thing as having ten, twelve, or even more.
So you can see right now the math starting to take shape. Over time, this process will yield fewer and fewer children. In the 1960’s the population of China was out of control, so the government passed a law limiting a woman to two children. That wasn’t enough of a dampening effect, so they changed it to one child/woman. And it worked, sort of.
China was late to the industrialization party, but when it showed up, it showed up like gangbusters. Western countries have adjusted to industrialization over the course of a century or more, but China went all-in and built up what they have now in about fifty years. Today, statistically, a woman living in a large Chinese city — of which there are many — is having an average of less than 0.4 children.
And yet their entire economy is dependent upon a flawed assumption: that there will always be enough people to fill the jobs in an ever-expanding manufacturing base. The problem, of course, is that there isn’t. Not even close.
Same for Canada, but to a lesser degree. But we got out in front of it through immigration, the way we’ve always done it. The same reality as China is facing will be faced here, it’s just a matter of to what degree and how long it will take.
Maybe twenty years ago, Canadian governments of both Liberal and Conservative stripes began allowing more immigrants to enter the country to stave off this problem. But what might have been a good idea at the time quickly turned into a nightmare as 4 million people, mostly under age 40, were allowed in during a relatively brief period of time. Sure, that helped the workforce meet its needs, sure it helped the tax base. But I guess nobody was doing much thinking as to where these people were going to live. By that I don’t mean what part of Canada. What I do mean is where, in terms of housing and accommodation, will these people actually live? Hence our current housing crisis, probably the number one reason, alongside maybe “woke-ism” and “virtue-signalling” that the current Liberals will be shown the door by an angry Canadian — meaning mostly white — population.
This same thing is happening everywhere in the industrialized world, but it is a crisis of huge importance to China. With its population rapidly depleting — did I mention 600 million people — and that process rapidly gaining steam, what will the world look like if China collapses upon itself?
Sure, the belligerency of the Chinese in their part of the world, especially in the South China Sea, will start to reduce. They certainly won’t remain the huge military threat they are now, but we should still fear that they might use it before they lose it. They may even collapse as a political entity, or even as a nation.
What about any side-swipe effect a Chinese economic implosion would have on its neighbours? On it’s trading partners, of which there are many? It’s worth noting that most of China’s exports — and it is export-dependent — go to the United States, the European Union, and nations of the ASEAN trading bloc. What will be the effect on them?
This isn’t a case of someone spouting off some nonsense. This is an established fact, one that most people don’t know about, and honestly don’t care to know. People who live for the now, and don’t want to be preached at. People who don’t stand for being “told what to to do or what to think,” then go ahead and allow themselves to be told what to do and what to think by malicious others. People who don’t know what a malicious other even is. People led through the nose by political manipulators.
Immigration has an effect on demographics, that’s inescapable. When you allow in large numbers of “others,” at some point your population and society is going to reflect that “otherness.” And that makes people afraid. And they don’t know what to do with that, so they channel that fear into anger, and away we go. It’s something I don’t have an answer for, other than to say that a lot of people who feel this way will die soon, in the next twenty years or so, which in its own way will contribute to the changing face of Canadian society, French society, American society, German society, Russian society, and most prolifically, Chinese society.
It’s inescapable. And for many, not even remotely understandable.
Sometimes, you have to look in order to see. And maybe you have to care, as well.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 