Thursday
Apropos a recent post, I just came across the following YouTube. It should be watched.
The problem is even worse that I had articulated. The fact that the one child policy created a demographic disaster is well known, what was not so well known is the significant impact that it has had on the way of thinking of young Chinese.
Many people born in the nineties have no intention of ever getting married. The extraordinary cost, coupled with 9-9-6 (working 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week), makes the thought of marriage and children unconfrontable.
China’s price inflation is raging based upon increased commodity prices. This is acting to further crush a population trend that was already in steep decline.
I am suddenly a little more sympathetic to President Xi. He is the inheritor of the problem of a declining population, not the cause. One possible solution is to provide incentives for overseas Chinese to return home. There are more than 49 million overseas-based Chinese; that would be a good start. Unfortunately, nothing government does ever achieves anything other than the opposite of what they set out to achieve. Thus, if they try to attract expat Chinese home, they will probably end up causing more to leave.