Gordon G. Chang

"What is the genuine support of China's quality?" a mainstream Chinese site asked in 2009. There was a single word answer: "Populace!"

Nationals of the world's most crowded state take pride in their incredible numbers, and the nation is, as anyone might expect, loaded with populace determinists. "More individuals means more power," composed a publication named "Tooth Feng" on the "Solid Country Forum" of the Communist Party's People's Daily. "This is reality."

Maybe so. Yet, lamentably for the Chinese, their nation's populace is going to top and after that therapist quick. Less individuals may not so much mean less power, but rather a shrinking populace obliges the nation's authority to overcome demographic patterns instead of be pushed by them, as it has subsequent to the establishing of the People's Republic in 1949.

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Accelerated demographic decline is already evident, set in motion by the decades-old one-child policy. Beijing’s vigorous enforcement of this statist planning measure has created population abnormalities that have already disfigured society and, in all probability, will do so for generations. China’s economy, the motor of the country’s rise in the post–Mao Zedong period, is likely to be especially hard hit.

China’s population will not peak in 2026, as estimated by the US
Census Bureau a half decade ago, or sometime in the 2030–35 timeframe, as United Nations statistics, mostly based on Beijing’s own numbers, now indicate. Senior official Liu Mingkang, speaking at the Asia Global Dialogue in May 2012, admitted growth will end in 2020. 

More important, China’s workforce is shrinking rapidly. The number of working-age Chinese fell for the first time in 2010, according to some of the country’s leading demographers, or in 2012, according to the official National Bureau of Statistics. As recently as the end of last decade, Beijing was predicting the high point would not be reached until 2016.

These developments are the result of plunging fertility. China had a total fertility rate—essentially the number of births per woman per lifetime—of 5.9 in the beginning of the 1970s. Today, official sources claim China’s TFR is “between 1.5 to 1.6.” In reality, it’s more like a “dangerously low” 1.4, according to Lu Yang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and it could even be under 1.2.

In any case, China is now well below 2.1, the rate needed to maintain a stable population, and it is looking more like Western Europe in this regard every day.

The problem of a low TFR is compounded by the growing scarcity of females. As a result of the one-child policy and a social bias in favor of male children, the country probably has the world’s most skewed sex ratio at birth, 115.9 boys for every 100 girls, according to official data released in January. As a result of the imbalance—most societies do not exceed 106 boys to 100 girls—there are 33.8 million more men than women, according to Beijing’s official statisticians (or 51.5 million more, according to other estimates). 

Chinese leaders created this anomalous situation by lurching from one population policy to another. Mao, the founder of the People’s Republic, wanted as many Chinese in the world as possible. But his radical pro-growth policies were unsustainable, and toward the end of his life Beijing’s technocrats adopted the mostly voluntary “wan, xi, shao”—“late, long, few”—program to limit population growth. 

These efforts were mostly effective, with the birthrate falling by half in less than a decade. Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, was not satisfied with such progress, however. He rolled out the one-child policy, often termed the world’s most draconian social experiment, in 1979 and 1980, as one of his first initiatives after assuming power. 

Chinese leaders congratulate themselves for this policy, which they credit for preventing 400 million births, yet it’s clear the harshly enforced program has not only created a horrendous gender imbalance but has caused other demographic abnormalities, such as the almost complete disappearance of aunts, uncles, and cousins. 

Frightened by the demographic trends they themselves created, Chinese leaders have progressively relaxed the policy over time. The last major change was announced in November 2013, when additional couples were allowed two children, but the liberalizations have been too little and too late to avert a crisis, which now seems virtually inevitable. Demography may not be destiny, but population trends define the realm of the possible and are, especially in China’s case, unforgiving.

So why has China’s technocratic leadership failed to scrap an approach obviously not needed in more than a decade? 

First, population-control measures are administered by a large bureaucracy that has an interest in their maintenance and has been tenaciously fighting to keep them in place. Second, the population-planning apparatus is one of the Communist Party’s most effective means of controlling people both in the countryside and the city. At a time of protest and other signs of discontent, an increasingly repressive leadership apparently believes it cannot surrender the power the policy provides. Third, a reversal in long-held population programs, which have been strenuously defended for decades, would inevitably call into question the party’s judgment and therefore its legitimacy. Thus officials must consistently reaffirm their support for the now-counterproductive rules, what population expert Susan Yoshihara has termed “the world’s worst law.”

The price for this official intransigence will be high. As Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute wrote a half decade ago, “These problems will compromise economic development, strain social harmony, and place the traditional Chinese family structure under severe pressure; in fact, they could shake Chinese civilization to its very foundations.”

Some of these problems are already evident, such as increased prostitution, elevated HIV-infection rates, and renewed trafficking in females. Gangs are kidnapping women in Russia, Mongolia, North Korea, Burma, and Vietnam and transporting them to China, where they are sold and resold to husbands in “bachelor villages.” And there is also the rise of various criminal groupings, the so-called “dark forces.” All these maladies can be traced to the presence of unmarriageable males, “bare branches,” whose numbers are expected to rise over the coming decades. In the 2030–45 time frame, there will be no potential wives in China for a fifth of the country’s males.

And this could have political as well as social consequences. “Bare branches,” for instance, have been responsible for domestic turmoil throughout China’s dynastic history. One bare branch, Zhu Yuanzhang, founded the Ming dynasty, which was eventually destroyed by another one, Li Zicheng. The next set of emperors, the Qings, were in part ruined by the consequences of sex-ratio imbalances. “China, it seems, is re-creating the vast army of bare branches that plagued it during the 19th century,” write Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer in their controversial work, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population. 

Hudson and den Boer also argue that such male-female imbalances impede democratization. “High-sex-ratio societies are governable only by authoritarian regimes capable of suppressing violence at home,” they contend. Accordingly, the pair thinks the prospect for “full democracy” in China is “poor.”

Although they write too sweepingly, there is a kernel of truth in their thesis on democratization. Li Jianxin, the author of The Structure of Chinese Population, states that behind the mass-violence incidents of the first decade of this century are “shadows of surplus males,” who magnify the challenges of maintaining social stability. Chinese officials are concerned about the problem as well, which is why some of them have suggested, for example, that single children are one of the causes of a juvenile crime wave.

The Chinese one-party state, as it has sought to quell this turmoil during both decades of this century, has noticeably become more repressive. The demographic turmoil is by no means the only reason Beijing has cracked down hard on civil society, but it has been used as an excuse to postpone political liberalization. 

Hudson and den Boer take their theory one step further, suggesting a linkage between the existence of large numbers of bare branches and the adoption of risk-taking foreign policies: “The security logic of high-sex-ratio cultures predisposes nations to see some utility in interstate conflict.” And as academics Christian Mesquida and Neil Wiener explain, “It is likely then that controlling elites astutely underwrite such risky undertakings as territorial expansion or colonization, especially when the alternative is having the aggressive tendencies of the male citizens directed at themselves.”

The idea that single males are “testosterone-powered violence machines” is a crude sexual stereotype that nonetheless has some validity, but to link their presence in society to belligerent foreign policies is a stretch. There are also, of course, reasons why a country like China, with too many males, might not be prone to misadventure abroad. 

For one thing, bare branches can cause so much trouble at home that a country’s leadership would become too busy maintaining internal stability to be able to channel their discontent into provocative acts against other states. Tens of millions of bare branches have traveled the Chinese countryside and populated the slums of great cities for a generation, but Beijing’s external policies did not become especially belligerent until a half decade ago. 

In China’s one-child nation, moreover, a son’s death in battle would mean the extinction of the family name, something unacceptable in a society attaching great importance to continuing bloodlines. China’s pampered “little emperors” may or may not be selfish, spoiled, and self-indulgent—and therefore not likely to sacrifice themselves for the nation—but Chinese parents today are surely more protective of their sons than their counterparts in earlier eras. 

There are also other demographic factors pushing China in a peaceful direction. As China’s population shrinks rapidly—as it undoubtedly will in the next two decades—the nation will become grayer. Countries with large elderly populations do not appear inclined to start wars because, in addition to the narrowing ambitions of aging societies, they lack the resources to engage in prolonged combat. 

We can only speculate as to the future states of mind of the Chinese people and their leaders. But this much is clear: The relentless and ruthlessly enforced one-child policy has created some of the most unusual demographic patterns in the absence of war and pestilence. We know that this policy can affect the country’s external policies in dramatic ways. At this point, however, we just do not know in which direction. 

There is also rapid demographic change along China’s borders. East Asia, for instance, is headed for a “death spiral,” a term applied to Japan but soon applicable to much of the rest of the region. Low Japanese fertility—the country has a TFR of 1.4—is matched by low fertility in South Korea (1.3) and Taiwan (1.1). Hong Kong and Macau, China’s two special administrative regions, have TFRs of 1.2 and 0.9, respectively. Japan, even with a slightly higher TFR, is further along the demographic curve than its neighbors, so it is leading the pack downward. By 2050, the Japanese will be living in “the oldest society the world has ever known,” but nearby countries will not be far behind. Together, they are headed to near-simultaneous demographic collapses without historical precedent.

So China’s demography, as perilous as it is, does not look out of place in East Asia except, of course, that the other societies are far more stable, both socially and politically, and therefore better able to handle wrenching demographic changes. Fertile South Asia presents a quite different situation. The populations of Pakistan and Bangladesh are growing fast, but the big concern for Beijing is India, a peer competitor with an estimated 2.5 total fertility rate. 

Sometime in the next 10 years, India will overtake China as the world’s most populous state, a status China has held for at least three centuries and perhaps for all recorded history. And India will continue to grow rapidly while China goes in the opposite direction. India’s population will peak, according to the UN, at 1.645 billion in 2065–70. By that period, India is projected to have 368 million more people than China, and, in all probability, the gap will be even larger, as UN numbers do not reflect the accelerated Chinese demographic decline evident today.

Where it counts—workers—China will be a distant second. India’s workforce will overtake China’s by 2030, if not sooner. By mid-century, there will be about 1 billion Indians of working age, at least 130 million more than the Chinese in the same group, perhaps as many as 200 million more.

At that time, the median age of India will be a young 37, versus China’s 46. People 65 and over will constitute 23.9 percent of China’s population but only 12.7 percent of India’s. “India has close to ideal demographics,” Credit Suisse’s Robert Prior-Wandesforde recently told CNBC. “It’s in a sweet spot.” China, on the other hand, has one of the world’s most unenviable population profiles at this time, and its government, by insisting on maintaining the one-child policy, appears determined to make its situation even less advantageous.

Chinese demographers know what future trends mean. Li Jianxin, for one, believes the Indians could end up dominating the middle of this century. Chinese economists agree. “When you see a country’s population decline, the country will definitely degrade into a second-rate one,” says economist Yao Yang of Peking University’s China Center for Economic Research. 

Yao may be overstating the situation, but he is generally correct in assuming that a deteriorating demographic profile will undermine an economy over the long term. China’s fabulous economic growth in the post-Mao period coincided with the country’s “demographic dividend,” an extraordinary bulge in the workforce created by boldly imagined and rigorously enforced population policies. It’s not clear that Chinese technocrats will be able to engineer consistent increases in gross domestic product while the country’s population tumbles. Already, India’s economy looks like it is growing faster than China’s.

Its economy propelled China’s astounding leap to the top ranks, and now many Chinese think that the present era belongs to their nation. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, however, talks about the years to come as “India’s century.” China, of course, appears to be the more powerful of the two now, but demographic trends suggest Beijing will not be the dominant one for long.

East Asia's Population 'Death Spiral

In 2014, Japan experienced the lowest birthrate ever, the fourth-straight year of record low births. There were 9,000 fewer Japanese born last year than in 2013, according to Health Ministry statistics.

Japan is shrinking as it sets one unenviable demographic record after another. Last year, the population fell by a biggest-ever 268,000. “2014’s population decrease was a ‘record’ but it’s a record that is going to be broken annually for the foreseeable future,” writes Forbes’s Mark Adomanis. “By this point it’s essentially inevitable: every January for at least the next 20 or 30 years there will be newspaper headlines stating that Japan’s population just suffered a new ‘record’ loss.”
Call it a “death spiral.” By 2050, Japan will be “the oldest society the world has ever known.” If the country’s fertility rate remains unchanged, the population will drop by almost a third by 2060 and two-thirds by 2110. And the last Japanese child will be born in 3011.
As Adomanis notes, “Since 1973, Japan has not had a single year in which its fertility rate was high enough for population stability.”
Japan’s total fertility rate—essentially the number of children born to each woman—is 1.4, well below the 2.1 needed for replacement. Japan’s low rate, however, is not exceptional for its region. China’s TFR, despite state media claims, is probably 1.4 as well. South Korea’s rate is 1.3. Hong Kong’s is at 1.2 but falls to 1.0 or lower if mainland women are excluded. Taiwan’s is 1.1. And what is Macau’s? That’s 0.9.
Yes, Japan is a “nation on suicide watch,” but so is much of the rest of East Asia. Once demographic trends are baked into a society—as they are in Japan and the rest of its neighborhood—governments can do little to change patterns. State incentives usually do no more than accelerate births that would have occurred anyway. As is said with only a tinge of exaggeration, “demography is destiny.”
So what is Japan’s destiny? Many are concerned that a shrinking population will not be able to support the extraordinarily heavy debt load that a succession of Japanese governments have incurred. Analysts will not be surprised when growth, which is already unimpressive, slows further.
More worrisome is China, a poorer society where adverse demographic trends in recent years have been accelerating. The workforce began to shrink in 2012 according to the official National Bureau of Statistics, or in 2010 according to the country’s leading demographers—in both cases well before the 2016 date that had been projected by the central government last decade.
The country as a whole will not peak in 2026, as estimated by the US Census Bureau five years ago, or after 2030, as Beijing’s official statistics indicate. Senior official Liu Mingkang, speaking at the Asia Global Dialogue in May 2012, admitted China’s population would top off in 2020, which means it will, in all probability, begin falling a year or two before then. The Chinese, who take great pride in their country ranking as the world’s most populous, will soon be dropped to second place. India will take the crown in no more than 10 years, probably fewer.
For China’s economy, changing demography will be especially consequential. The country’s three-decade bull run was largely powered by the “demographic dividend,” an extraordinary bulge in the workforce created by Mao Zedong’s policy of fast population growth followed by his successors’ strictly enforced one-child policy. Now that China is hitting demographic inflection points, Beijing’s central economic planners will be facing headwinds. By the end of this decade, the two major economies of East Asia will be struggling to overcome inexorable population decline.
Japan is leading the pack downward, but other countries in its region are not far behind. Together, they are headed to near-simultaneous demographic collapses, events without precedent in history.

China Now Claims Japan’s Okinawa

 

The Global Times, the newspaper run by China’s Communist Party, ran an editorial this month suggesting that Beijing challenge Japan’s control of Okinawa, part of the Ryukyu island chain.

Why would China want to start a fight over Okinawa? At the moment, China, Taiwan, and Japan are engaged in a particularly nasty sovereignty dispute in the East China Sea over five islands and three barren rocks called the Senkakus by the Japanese and the Diaoyus by the other claimants. The disputed chain is north of the southern end of the Ryukyus and about midway between Taiwan and Okinawa.
The Senkakus are administered by Japan, which appears to have a stronger legal claim to the chain than the other two nations. The United States, which takes no position on the sovereignty issue, returned the islands to Tokyo at the same time it gave back Okinawa in 1972. The People’s Republic of China made no formal claim to the Senkakus until 1971. Until then, Chinese maps showed the islands as Japan’s.
Beijing claims the Senkakus were part of China since Ming dynasty times, at least since the 16th century. Therefore, Japan’s occupation of the chain is, in Chinese eyes, a historical injustice. “For every step that Japan takes forward, we will take one step and a half and even two steps to make Japan realize its provocation will bring serious consequences,” the Global Times editorialized, as it suggested Beijing go after Okinawa as a means of bolstering its Senkaku claim.
“China should not be afraid of engaging with Japan in a mutual undermining of territorial integrity,” the Global Times also stated. That, unfortunately, is a recipe for disaster. “Using the Ryukyu sovereignty issue to resolve the Diaoyu dispute would destroy the basis of China-Japan relations,” Zhou Yongsheng of China Foreign Affairs University told the Financial Times. “If this was considered, it would basically be the prelude to military action.”
And not just in the East China Sea. China’s claim to Okinawa, if raised, would partially rest on the fact Ryukyu’s kings paid tribute to China even after the Japanese conquered the islands in 1609. “Once you start arguing that a tributary relationship at some point in history is the basis for a sovereignty claim in the 20th century, you start worrying a lot of people,” notes the renowned June Teufel Dreyer, of the University of Miami. “Many, many countries had tributary relationships with China.” Moreover, many Chinese believe they have, based on history, the right to take, among other things, Mongolia and the Russian Far East.
So where will China’s expansionism end? Some feeble American analysts want to abandon Taiwan because they believe that will soothe relations with Beijing. That’s hardly a good tactic to use against an aggressive power looking to expand, and it undoubtedly will not work with the People’s Republic. Beijing’s defenders often complain of comparisons of China with other regimes, but we are seeing in that country a dynamic exhibited in the most dangerous states, a growing desire for territory controlled by others.