China’s Demographic Challenges

Timothy Beardson argues in this interview with Reuters that demography is the biggest challenge faced by China.

He points to four key demographic challenges faced by China:

1. China's population getting older
2. Workforce is getting smaller, so the average labour cost base is rising.
3. Gender dispararity - many more boys than girls being born each year
4. The overall size of the population will begin to fall after peaking at around 1.4 billion by 2020.

Beardson is quite dismissive of the recent decision by China to cancel its one-child policy which he suggests has had no effect whatever on China's birth rate. Since the one-child policy was introduced, China's birth rate has continued to fall in the same way as other countries in the region as industrialisation has brought millions of young women into the workforce.

Beardson points to some estimates that suggest China's population may fall by around two-thirds by the end of this century.