Don’t be surprised by China’s collapse

[antonius123]

Can Artificial Intelligence Solve China's Demographic Crisis?

From manufacturing to the service industries, little-by-little robots are approaching the daily activities of human beings. In brief, AI is an irreversible trend. As some have predicted, when robots are fully applied, China will cut more than 240 million jobs. According to the UN's forecast, two-thirds of the labor force in the developing world will be replaced by robots.

The vision also foresees that AI can overcome traditional demographic challenges through the development of the so-called "smart population," based on AI, that will solve all population-related problems. This is derived from the "smart city" or "urban brain" where the public AI system can analyze the situation of the surroundings in real-time, automatically deploying public resources, fixing the bugs in the city's ongoing operations and guiding the infrastructure plans for the future.

A smart population can monitor and analyze in real time the whole demographic issue, solve automatically the problems of population degeneration, aging, overpopulation in urban areas, unbalanced distribution of population and poverty. By fixing the varied bugs of an unbalanced demographic development, it will become the infrastructure of a sustainable population.

For instance, when a city's population is in decline, it will send out messages to encourage population increases. When births are needed, signals will spread that will lead to more male-female coupling, particularly to women of childbearing age. In this sense, a "smart population" would seamlessly and automatically interpret long-term family planning policy.

In July, China's State Council issued a circular stipulating the country's new-generation AI development plan that aims for China to become a main AI innovation hub globally.

Can Artificial Intelligence Solve China's Demographic Crisis?

BEIJING — Over the past decade or so, "The Low-Fertility Trap," a hypothesis put forth by Wolfgang Lutz, Vegard Skirbekk and Maria Rita Testa, respectively Austrian, Norwegian and Italian scholars, has worried many countries facing the risks of an aging population. This includes China. The...

worldcrunch.com

AI & REPRODUCTIVITY
According to World Health Organisation statistics, one out of every seven couples on the planet suffers from reproductive problems. In China, one out of every ten couples suffers from infertility, and the incidence rate rising.

People have long relied on assisted reproductive technology to solve infertility problems, which basically means help in conceiving with artificial insemination or in-vitro fertilization (IVF) — embryo transfer as well as its derived technology.
Now AI is being introduced into these practices to further boost the success rate. With the help of AI, scientists can better predict which embryos will develop. In addition, when AI figures out which embryos have eventually resulted in babies, it will recognize good-quality embryos by self-learning. In other words, AI will be more stable and reliable than the embryologists and will boost the chances of those who can't conceive naturally.

 

[antonius123]

China will absolutely run out of people or at least productive people. Just for instance who will look after the many hundreds of millions of elderly?

Easy.

AI Robot + human.

China will cut 240 million job due to AI robot, about 200 million manpower from the cut off partially can be diverted to work as helper for elderly. Some can be diverted to work as technician / operator (through training), some can be diverted as scientist and engineer (through further education).

 

[beijingwalker]

1.4 billion people are still too many even for a big country like China, and will stay so for at least our life time.

 

[Kaniska]

Interesting arguments…

One of the key reasons, Asian economies will not collapse unless they mess it up by themselves. It is because China is rising to the top with home grown and talent from within its civilization, unlike West where they depend on the whole world and their talent to be in the West to be successful.

 

[Hephaestus]

Interesting arguments…

A little alarmist & click baiting! China ain't collapsing. But, if it does it's going to be hell for the world economy.

 

[FuturePAF]

Before anyone gets surprised/shocked by his statements, these are his credentials:

Zeihan was born in 1973, and grew up as the adopted son of educators Jerald and Agnes Zeihan in Marshalltown, Iowa. He graduated from Marshalltown High School in 1992. In 1995, he obtained a BSc in Political Science from what then was Northeast Missouri State University, and a postgraduate diploma in Asian studies from University of Otago (Dunedin, New Zealand) in 1997.

Not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. Reduced to earning his livelihood by peddling fantastic 'stories'.

Peter Zeihan - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

He’s a protege of Stratfor (now called “Rane”) and Geopoltical futures founder George Friedman and he himself says he bases much of what he says on demographics and commodities. He is banking on the end of globalization.

Japan stopped innovating because it was forced to increase the value of its currency and its debt bubble burst. China needs to keep its debt in check, continue to try to reach cutting edge tech in the top 25 fields such as commercial aerospace, and branch out into friendly countries to continue to grow on the basis of their modernization (as an investor, a tech partner, a supplier of cutting edge tech, and as a natural resources source) and political alignment.

One of the key reasons, Asian economies will not collapse unless they mess it up by themselves. It is because China is rising to the top with home grown and talent from within its civilization, unlike West where they depend on the whole world and their talent to be in the West to be successful.

China actually grants citizenship or at least permanent residency to foreigner with exceptional talent and cutting edge knowledge. No harm in trying to attract the best global talent, but competition will be stuff and China will have to provide a good life for these geniuses and their families, as well as probably help out their home countries so these geniuses have somewhere to go back to, should they choose to work part time in China and back home in their home countries.

1.4 billion people are still too many even for a big country like China, and will stay so for at least our life time.

The hard thing is not the population size but the structure of the demographics. Too many retirees being taken care of (physically and with taxes) by too few workers.

Easy.

AI Robot + human.

China will cut 240 million job due to AI robot, about 200 million manpower from the cut off partially can be diverted to work as helper for elderly. Some can be diverted to work as technician / operator (through training), some can be diverted as scientist and engineer (through further education).

Robotics will definitely help, South Korea has the lowest birth rate and the highest adoption of robots, but local consumption will drop making China more dependent on exports. China may need to grow its export destinations (in purchasing power) to offset potential decrease in market access in the west aligned nations.

 

[antonius123]

Robotics will definitely help, South Korea has the lowest birth rate and the highest adoption of robots, but local consumption will drop making China more dependent on exports. China may need to grow its export destinations (in purchasing power) to offset potential decrease in market access in the west aligned nations.

Local consumption won't necessarily drop due to aging.

There are 2 variables affect consumption: 1. consumer (qty), 2. buying power

China consumers can remain the same at for another decade (~ 1.4 billion), what will change is composition/aging.
Buying power can increase due to productivity and efficiency thanks to AI, as long as government can manage to redirect the hundred million manpower from the traditional job that will have been cut due to AI to other sectors.

Principally, under good governance AI and 4th Industrial Revolution should increase wealth (like other industrial revolutions in the past) due to increase of productivity & consumptions, not the otherway round. The pain will exist only due to shifting but it should be temporary.

@gambit said: 20 - 40 year consumer will consume the highest; it is not necessarily true. above 40 yo will also need to replace their aging/damaged TV/refrigerator/ washing machine, renovate their houses, even buy new clothes, as long as they still have "buying power".

Also "digital currency" can help government to control and encourage consumptions.

 

[FuturePAF]

Local consumption won't necessarily drop due to aging.

There are 2 variables affect consumption: 1. consumer (qty), 2. buying power

China consumers can remain the same at for another decade (~ 1.4 billion), what will change is composition/aging.
Buying power can increase due to productivity and efficiency thanks to AI, as long as government can manage to redirect the hundred million manpower from the traditional job that will have been cut due to AI to other sectors.

@gambit said: 20 - 40 year consumer will consume the highest; it is not necessarily true. above 40 yo will also need to replace their aging/damaged TV/refrigerator/ washing machine, renovate their houses, even buy new clothes, as long as they still have "buying power".

Also "digital currency" can help government to control and encourage consumptions.

This is why innovation and more export partners is necessary. To have steady destination for Chinese products so the increased productivity has somewhere to be focused towards. I’m thinking of aerospace for example. A COMAC based airline should perhaps set up a hub in Gwadar and Beijing or Hong Kong, and compete with the Gulf and East Asian carriers, respectively; vertical integration.

 

[antonius123]

This is why innovation and more export partners is necessary. To have steady destination for Chinese products so the increased productivity has somewhere to be focused towards. I’m thinking of aerospace for example. A COMAC based airline should perhaps set up a hub in Gwadar and Beijing or Hong Kong, and compete with the Gulf and East Asian carriers, respectively; vertical integration.

China export partners will be as wide as US/West export partners or even more if counting based on population (BRICS).
Decoupling will disadvantage to West more than to China

 

[beijingwalker]

The hard thing is not the population size but the structure of the demographics. Too many retirees being taken care of (physically and with taxes) by too few workers.

That could also mean many retirees will die in couples of decades and China will reach a premium demographic in both overall size and structure, the final goal China always dreams of since 1970's.

 

[Han Patriot]

1.4 billion people are still too many even for a big country like China, and will stay so for at least our life time.

1.4bil is definitely too much. 300 to 500mil is enough for China, i foresee artificial womb being a choice in the future.

 

[FuturePAF]

That could also mean many retirees will die in couples of decades and China will reach a premium demographic in both overall size and structure, the final goal China always dreams of since 1970's.

Unless healthcare will be restricted, the elderly share of the population is expected to be a significant portion of the population, 20+%. Young people are not having enough kids, so unless something changes, I don’t know if “premium” is what you would call that demographic structure.

 

[Taskforce]

1.4bil is definitely too much. 300 to 500mil is enough for China, i foresee artificial womb being a choice in the future.

Lmao. Do you even hear yourself? So you all betting on a plastic vagina ? That can’t give life.

 

[SaadH]

A capitalist economy is a CONSUMPTION economy. I do not know why that is so difficult to understand.

Who is doing the consumption? Domestic population, yes. Export, yes. China have been doing the export part for probably too long. Do you dispute the age groups I briefly outlined? As the major consumption groups decline, labor cost will go up, which will make China less attractive as manufacturing source as time go by, which mean export as a consumption source will decrease. The US is not suffering the demographics decline as China is. The US have both guest workers and immigration, and with the native population, our consumption groups will last longer and more dynamic.

Only western capitalist countries are consumption economies and that's function of their currency having reserve status whereby other countries are looking to exchange goods, services and their own currencies at a disadvantage for the currency of these western countries.

They can print away their currencies and consume till cows come home, but when the balance starts tilting they will have to stop consuming start producing as well.

 

[Han Patriot]

Lmao. Do you even hear yourself? So you all betting on a plastic vagina ? That can’t give life.

It's gonna happen mate. The feminists agenda is running high.