Glenn Rocess
Most readers will look at the title above and wonder, “What the heck does the ‘Browning of America’ — the coming time when white people will comprise less than half our population — have to do with China’s economic success or failure?”
It has everything to do with it.
About forty years ago, 88 percent of the Chinese population lived on less than two dollars per day. As of 2017, that figure had dropped to less than six percent. The key in this tectonic economic shift was a decision by Deng Xiaoping to open up China’s economy as part of his Four Modernizations. The transformation of China’s economy is unprecedented in human history and has led to the assumption by many (including myself) that China’s economic supremacy (now estimated to occur as soon as 2028) will last for the foreseeable future. This view is further bolstered by the advent of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the largest infrastructure project in human history.
But now it appears their economic supremacy cannot last, and for the most human of reasons: babies. Or, more accurately, the lack thereof. Yes, you read that right — the Chinese aren’t having enough babies.
Older readers will remember China’s implementation of their ‘One-Child Policy’ wherein (with some exceptions) women were not allowed to have more than one child. Fewer still know of its more-influential predecessor, the “Later, Longer, Fewer” birth-control campaign. Both programs included (among other measures) forced abortion, which we in the West viewed with revulsion, though many simply felt the Chinese were doing what they had to do to avoid a Malthusian trap.
In April, many news agencies reported that China was “set to report its first population decline since 1949,” though there’s currently no strong reference showing that any official report was ever released. But doesn’t this seem to be proof that China has successfully addressed its overpopulation problem? Actually, it’s closer to “be careful what you wish for — you might get it.” Or, as a certain American president once said, “Mission Accomplished” (on my ship, dammit!), and inadvertently forever changed the meaning of that phrase in American political and military discourse.
A Demographic “Perfect Storm”
Remember the movie, “The Perfect Storm”? While the storm itself really wasn’t so bad, the name has become a meme of sorts to describe “a critical or disastrous situation created by a powerful concurrence of factors.” Here’s a (rather incomplete) list of the concurrent demographic factors facing China:
China’s workforce will decrease by 35M over the next five years. “Our projections using the pre-census figures already suggested that the workforce would be declining by 0.5% each year by 2030, with a similar impact on GDP,” according to Capital Economics.
China’s state pension fund (their “social security”) will likely run out of money by 2035.
Chinese millennials and “Gen-Z” are choosing to have few (if any) children due to the cost. Many find it difficult to make ends meet and consider the high debt-to-income ratio to be the “most effective contraception”.
In China in 2017, the ratio was six workers in the 20–64 age bracket supporting one senior citizen at least 65 years old. This will decline to 2.0 workers in 2039 and 1.6 in 2050. By 2050, a third of the population, around 480 million people, are expected to be over 60, with many younger workers from one-child families supporting their parents and two sets of grandparents.
Between 2013 and 2019, the number of people getting married for the first time in China fell by 41%, from 23.8 million to 13.9 million.
Falling birth rates and a fast-greying society will add pressure on the working-age population and hit productivity.
China’s ‘One-Child Policy’ ended in 2015, but during the 35-year course of the policy, the preference for male children resulted in the choice by millions of parents to abort female fetuses so they could try again in the hopes that their one child would be a male. According to Mei Fong, Author of One Child, “Now China has 30 million more men than women, 30 million bachelors who cannot find brides. … They call them guang guan, ‘broken branches,’ that’s the name in Chinese. They are the biological dead ends of their family.” It should be noted that since women have longer life expectancies than men, almost all nations have more women than men. But not China. This also affects the challenges faced by the LGBTQ community in China.
And most alarming of all, China’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) may be as low as 1.05% (2.1% is normally considered necessary to maintain a stable population). Even if China is able to raise its TFR to 1.2% (which appears unlikely at best), by 2100 its population will decrease to 480M, a high percentage of which will be elderly and unable to participate in the workforce. For context, the last time China’s population was that low was in 1928.
Note that current estimates of China’s population and birth rates are from official sources. However, there are serious concerns about the veracity of those statistics. China may be facing even worse demographic problems than they are willing to publicly admit. (The reader may need to use Google Translate to read the reference)
One could claim that the same problems with population decline are being faced by many developed nations — Japan’s population decline and its effect on the elderly has been exhaustively documented — but those same problems (exacerbated by the unintended consequences of the One-Child Policy) may well make it impossible for China to maintain the world’s largest economy once they surpass America’s a few years from now.
I did not know that the Statue of Liberty was originally meant to celebrate the liberation of slaves, and that her face may have been modeled after that of an Egyptian woman. (yourblackworld.net)A Brown Hand Lifts The Lamp Beside That Golden Door
America is browning. By 2044 less than half America’s population will be white. Despite the most heinous (and hopeless) efforts of some to hinder the progress of minorities and to put an end to America’s tradition of immigration, most Americans take pride in supporting civil rights and welcoming immigrants to our shores.
As well we should. For all America’s flaws, it is those two factors that will preserve our nation’s greatness. Yes, this claim sounds over-the-top, but that’s what the statistical data show, validating everything Ezra Lazarus wrote in her poem “The New Colossus” at the foot of our Statue of Liberty.
Why? Look at the above list of problems faced by China due to their declining population, and how the same problems (if to lesser extents) are faced by so many other nations. With the sole exception of our slowly-depleting Social Security trust fund, America is not facing any of those problems. Yes, our white population is declining — more are dying and fewer are being born — but our minority (i.e. Black/Hispanic/Asian) population is continuing to grow and reproduce, more than making up for the deficits of white people.
As a direct result, instead of the eventual (and unavoidable) decrease in the Chinese GDP, America’s GDP growth will be concomitant with our continuing population growth. What are the estimates of our population growth in the coming years? Here’s a graph from the U.S. Census Bureau:
Estimated U.S. population by year (U.S. Census Bureau)One might think that a big part of that population growth will be comprised of the elderly who are no longer able to contribute to the workforce, but in reality, not so much. By 2050, one-third of Chinese will be over the age of 60, but the Census Bureau data indicate that only one-fifth of Americans will over the age of 65. Yes, the estimates are of different ages — 60 for China and 65 for America — but that five-year gap cannot account for the 12% difference in proportion of our nations’ respective populations.
Remember the earlier estimate that by 2100, China’s population will decline to about 480M people? That same year, according to Census Bureau statistician Tammany Mulder, America’s population will be about 571M. Yes, you read that right — America will have more people than China. To be sure, that particular estimate is over 20 years old, but it’s not far off the trends delineated in the five year-old Census Bureau graphic above.
Side note: China recently raised its mandatory retirement age in an effort to keep its elderly from becoming too much of a burden on their economy. The mandatory retirement age had been among the lowest in the world — 60 for men and as low as 50 for women. As most who read this article know, America has no nationwide mandatory retirement age. We can keep working (and contributing to the economy) as long as we want, as long as we’re physically able to work (though most of us would really prefer to be able to afford retirement, to be able to choose to retire once we’re old).
America’s Black, Brown, and immigrant populations will not only be providing our nation’s continued population growth, but — even more importantly — preserving the relative youth of our population. This not only provides a more physically-capable workforce but also avoids the trap China faces of having too few younger people to care for too many elderly people.
Many who see that projection of a 571M population for America will immediately think that that means America will be far too overcrowded, living elbow-to-elbow in a dystopia right out of Soylent Green (which was supposed to occur in 2022, btw), but here’s a reality check:
“If you look at the density for the United States, we are not even coming close to the densities that you see in Europe,” said Census statistician Tammany J. Mulder. “ The U.S. population density in 2100 would be 161.4 people per square mile, about one-fourth the current population density of Germany and the United Kingdom.”
Too many white Americans “rage, rage against the dying of the white” as it were (with apologies to Dylan Thomas), but we should instead be deeply grateful for the Black people, Brown people, and immigrants around us. Demographic trends conclusively show that they — and not we — are quite literally the future of our nation. It would be in all our best interests to stop decrying the ‘Browning of America’, and instead do our level best to ensure they have every tool and every advantage we can provide.
We’ve had our time at the wheel for many, many generations. It’s their turn now.
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