• Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    China has been dangling their consumer market to Western companies for the last 20 years as a way to encourage investment. It hasn’t turned out well for them and many companies are leaving China. Suddenly reopening already “open markets” is not something the West is going to buy. You only get to pull that trick once.

    The Demographics in China are also terrible. They are no longer the most populous nation on Earth. They are also the fastest aging due to the effects of the 1 child policy. The problem today isn’t that they aren’t running out of babies, they did that 20years ago. The problem is they are running out of 20 something’s to replace the older generations.

    Add this to the issues with debt and the property market implosion and I don’t see China making it through the 2030s without some kind of fundamental government change.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China

    • porcariasagrada
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      5 months ago

      oh we’ll buy it. we’ll buy it because we are desperate for good consumer markets and china is that. also demographics is way worse in the west.

      see this post about raising the retirement age to 71 in the uk. https://slrpnk.net/post/6418235

      • DdCno1@kbin.social
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        5 months ago

        also demographics is way worse in the west

        No. China has a fertility rate of 1.2 right now. That’s worse than the West. EU sits at 1.53, USA 1.64. What’s worse is that this rate has been low for a very long time due to Mao’s One Child Policy.

        • porcariasagrada
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          5 months ago

          yeah but our demographics is helped by immigration theirs isn’t. they still have that window open to use. we don’t.

          • DdCno1@kbin.social
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            5 months ago

            They won’t use it. China is going full-on ethnonationalist right now and is considerably less open to immigration than even in the past.

            • porcariasagrada
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              5 months ago

              being a autocratic state, the party will enact whatever policies it deems necessary. see the one child policy for an example. state propaganda will do what is needed. in fact, a huge class of people without citizenship, some class to be opressed, could even be a boon to maintain the party in power.

              like i said before, china has options. the west doesn’t. and because china has options they can maneuver better the chaotic future that awaits all of us.

              • DdCno1@kbin.social
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                5 months ago

                You are operating under the assumption that the party is rational. The grotesquely inept reaction to COVID-19 however has shown that it’s anything but. Not to mention, even if the state suddenly decides to reverse decades of Han-supremacy policies, which is extremely unlikely, this does not mean that immigrants will suddenly flock into China in anywhere close to sufficient numbers. I doubt this is even possible, given how huge China still is. Where are these people supposed to come from?

                • porcariasagrada
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                  5 months ago

                  indeed you are correct. i’m giving the party way too much credit. but i do that for every gov in power.

                  mostly bordering countries, just like the us. laos, cambodia, vietnam would be the origins of said immigrants.