China’s Meltdown: Dangers and Opportunities

The self-inflicted demographic collapse is well underway. That's going to have consequences, including for anti-aging tech.

by Patrick Cox
September 15, 2015

Demographics, as they say, is destiny, and China’s demographics are important by virtue of their size. At over 1.35 billion people, the sheer size of the PRC’s population (the largest in the world) is important.

Like many countries across the globe, one of China’s most pressing issues is its rapidly aging population. China’s fertility rate is well below replacement rate, which means that China has seen “peak babies” and is now gliding down the other side of the population curve. China has also passed the point of “peak workers,” a fact that has enormous long-term consequences.Though most observers expect an end to China's one-child policy adopted in 1979, this change will not reverse baby and labor shortages because the same forces at work in other industrialized countries are already in full-swing in the PRC. The following chart from this article titled "China’s People Shortage" in Sourceable tells the story well.