China is facing a demographic time bomb

The Communist nation’s ageing and declining population heralds economic stagnation

As best as we can tell, China has had the largest population of any country since the dawn of history. The size and shape of China have changed over time, as have the size and shape of other states, but it is fairly safe to say that China has been the world’s most populous nation for at least a couple of thousand years. Sometime in the next 18 months or so, it will be overtaken by India. A situation that has persisted since before the time of Julius Caesar is about to change.

We cannot know on exactly which date this momentous event will occur. There are just too many people in these two demographic behemoths, too many births and deaths each day, to be sure exactly of the moment when China will lose its demographic crown. Some suggest it has already happened.

Inevitably, the question will be asked – does it matter? China is immensely richer than India, for now, and much more militarily powerful. The last time the two countries went to war, more than half a century ago, the Chinese proved their mettle, and the gap can only have widened since then. And in any case, a war across the Himalayas is hardly a likely prospect; world statesmen have other more immediate and more pressing issues to worry about.

But longer term, the demographic decline of China does matter. China is facing a drop-off in its working-age population; when the same happened to Japan, it fell into decades of economic stagnation. And it is happening to China while the country is still relatively poor. People both inside and outside China will blame the notorious one-child policy, and the Communist Party deserves blame for its heartless misanthropy. But, in fact, China’s fertility rate was already plunging before the policy was even introduced – roughly from six to three children over the course of the 1970s. It has collapsed in Chinese communities not subject to the restrictions, such as those in Hong Kong and Taiwan. And, indeed, it is not just the Chinese; Japan and Korea have long had subreplacement fertility rates, and now this has spread even to poorer Asian countries such as Thailand.

Back in China, the loosening of controls on childbearing seems to have had little or no effect. It turns out that the one-child policy was a nasty piece of political coercion sitting atop a huge, fundamental social change.

Already, the median citizen of China is older than the median American, nearly 15 years older than in 1990. As the number of young people plummets, the number of elderly people is shooting up. China is going to run out of workers, and unlike many countries in the West, turning on the taps of immigration is not going to be an option. China is just

The Chinese fertility rate was already plunging even before the notorious onechild policy was introduced

too big for the rest of the world to provide it with enough young workers. And it is still too poor to attract that many migrants.

The rest of the world is about to see something unfold in China that, in terms of scale and speed, is quite unprecedented in world history. But whilst we will look on, we should not get too complacent. Europe has the luxury of being able to attract migrants to fill the gaps in its labour market – if it wants to – but it too is ageing and its population is declining. And even India appears to be on the verge of sub-replacement fertility, although it will take a couple of decades to hit. For now, only subSaharan Africa is a real exception.

When it comes to ageing and declining populations, ask not for whom the bell tolls; as things stand, it tolls for just about all of us.