Some 18 months ago, the news broke that China’s population was beginning to contract. There was a knee-jerk reaction from business commentators who were wringing their hands eagerly over the implications this will have on China’s economic forecast and its place in the world—namely that fewer people will result in less consumption, ultimately slower growth, and thus alter the trajectory of its rise.
To quote a report from the Brookings Institute, “Any sense of Western defeatism based on fears about the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) economic and strategic rise should be tempered with the many constraints affecting that country, beginning with its demographics.” Beyond betraying the geopolitical fears of the West, this sentiment also exposes a perverse and intellectually dishonest economic logic.
