China's Aging Population Bad for Innovation, Says Ctrip's Liang

[rcrmj]

Its the other way around.. Its Chinese trying to play this game of China Better than India .. almost all day on this forum... LOL

its a open fact in China, comparing China with India is a serious insult to our country and people````why would we want to degrade ourselves to compete with primitive India? we are much better than you in all the fields its a solid fact. US, Germany and Japan is what we are talking on daily bases````you funny deluded Indian

 

[Zsari]

When it comes to talents, it is the quality not quantity that matters the most.

Confident, vibrant, talented, and patriotic, the new generation of Chinese youth will take the nation to new heights.

 

[Cybernetics]

its a open fact in China, comparing China with India is a serious insult to our country and people````why would we want to degrade ourselves to compete with primitive India? we are much better than you in all the fields its a solid fact. US, Germany and Japan is what we are talking on daily bases````you funny deluded Indian

It may be hurtful for some to hear but it's true, the only countries Chinese really thinks about are US, Germany, and Japan, this is regardless of what they think of China as Chinese don't think their perception is vital to China's well being. Chinese are focused on their goals, and that is improving living standards through developing technology and economy. Countries that are on their minds are case studies for specific aspects of their success.

The US is not even seen as an enemy (in the cold war sense) or existential threat to China (Chinese think surpassing USA is just a matter of time and normal), it just wants USA's dominance out of East Asia eventually or build a workable framework. In the mean time the US offers many opportunities in developing education, science/technology, and business (some aspects of their modern culture will inevitably rub off). Chinese people have a low-key but strong fascination with Germany and many people (along with the government) think it's the centre (or will become) of European culture, economy, politics, and eventually military, thus a particular attention is paid to Germany. Its partly has to do with the consistent helpfulness of Germany over the century and their industrious culture/mittelstand (its not only respected but it's working to become that). German food is compatible with Chinese's tastes, at least in Northern China where they are used to sauerkraut (substitutable with North Eastern Chinese suancai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suan_cai), a meat and wheat heavy diet and love to drink beer, Tsingdao beer is a direct descendent of German beer. Japan is seen as the Eastern version of Germany (in an industrial sense) who won't sincerely maintain their position/apology on WW2 atrocities and is increasingly revisionist. Other than the usual disputes Chinese see Japan as preserving ancient Chinese culture, specifically the Tang dynasty. There is little hate towards modern day Japanese people themselves, those who have travelled to Japan generally have positive views, even those that are hardcore on geopolitics and history. China, Korea and Japan still view each other as being in the same civilizational circle despite regularly bashing each other and strong tensions.

Chinese members here sometimes indulge in poking at and teasing Indian members since they have funny and cute reactions and have very memeable politicians/outrageous proclamations but other than that India is mostly not on the minds of Chinese in China, Bollywood movies and geopolitical events are passing events. The words India/Indian doesn't evoke much emotions, just Bollywood, yoga, slums, caste system, lots of dancing, funny military parades, strange rituals, bodies in rivers (Ganges), insanely overcrowded trains, and elephants. To many Chinese India is just a Doritos shaped piece of land. Not to be mean to our Indian friends but what does India offer to China other than a mid-sized (but growing) market and claims (but no real result) of "human rights" and "democracy"? A market for Chinese goods is appreciated but its currently not substantial.


Ageing Population
I think the effects of ageing in China is over hyped:

1. Urban-Rural demographic divide (brain drain/youth drain)
2. Regional competition (creates internal migration)

Urban-Rural demographic divide

The ratio of elderly to working age population in rural China is much higher compared to urban China. Nearly all innovation in China occurs in urban centres and its also where young and educated people move into. This migration pattern will continue well after the overall population declines, its due to the massive rural population that still exists (700 million). China's cities and innovation centres will be vitalised by the constant stream of educated youth from the countryside for decades to come. The "demographic dividend" has not ended.

Cost of living in rural areas are vastly lower (magnitude difference) compared to urban centres and most elderly live in rural areas, thus the ratio of budget in maintaining social security for the elderly is much less compared to a developed country with similar ageing. In a way I agree with the statement "China will get old before it get rich" but it won't play out like how some "experts" with a simple analysis using averages expects, their logic is not applicable to China, not yet. Their analogy for demographics are based off developed countries, while Chinese demographic structure is different. Rural China will bare the burden/externality of the demographic trends in China, not the urban (productive/innovative) areas.

The likely outcome is the rural regions experience a gradual depopulation and feed the urban centres with vitality (with gradual tapering) over the next 2-3 generations and reach a equilibrium, by that time China would have been developed or near developed. After that the source for vitality will mainly come from internal migration/competition. The depopulation of rural China will not negatively impact China's economy/innovation, it is a positive trend. Agriculture is becoming increasingly automated, requiring less people while maintaining or possibly increasing output. Those that move into cities earn higher wages and become more productive/innovative.


Regional competition
Japan is able to keep its competitiveness in innovation despite severe ageing. The way they off set is through attracting and concentrating their talent and resources in Greater Tokyo region. The difference between Tokyo and the rest is noticeable, Tokyo has a per capita gdp of $65,000 (https://www.wa-pedia.com/statistics/japan_prefecture_population_density_gdp_capita.shtml) while no others come close, most cities are between $30,000-$35,000. Due to lack of people they are only capable of maintaining one competitive mega-region, this means the consequence of limiting external competition reduces much of its internal/total competition. China on the other hand has at least 3 competitive mega-regions (Pear River Delta, Yangtze River Delta, Bohai Bay region/Jing-Jin-Ji) and is seeing the emergence of a few more inland regions.

Develop mega-regions and integrate into a nation wide network.

Mega regions will compete to attract talent and capital. Talent and capital will move freely within China, creating healthy internal competition, migration, forward-looking attitudes, preservation/evolution of Chinese culture towards a healthy direction.

Internal migration is important to economic, social, and cultural vitality, and avoiding stagnation. It also provides more flexibility in economic foreign policy, it can limit negative external influences while not making the trade off of eliminating competition, a leverage in negotiations. When I refer to migration I don't necessarily mean "migrant workers" or cheap labour (I think being selective is positive) but rather competitive talent and ambitious individuals. Migrants usually lack the sense of entitlement that is present with the incumbency and will strive hard to actualise their dreams, out of necessity and selection bias. They are more likely to start businesses and take risks, essential ingredients in innovation.

There is regional cultural variations in China but not big enough to cause incompatibility issues in a new environment within China. When it comes to food and lifestyle differences, people of different regions enjoy sampling the differences.

 

[my2cents]

Says the Indian in another Indian "China fails/will fail [India will catch up soon with its billions of young and innovative starving slum dogs]" thread in the Chinese & Far East Section. Also its not a game we play its reality you can not deal with.

It is neither. People of all nations feel good when they are acknowledged for their achievements. Chinese are no different from Indians in this regard.

 

[Bussard Ramjet]

Buss, for the sake of humanity, India needs to start controlling her population. I for one have never complained about the one child policy, and now the two child policy for gradual reduction. Our population needs to be reduced, both China and India.

Innovation is not about demographics, else Japan, EU and US would have been surpassed by Africa long time ago. You need to think critically not just believing in hype about the demographic dividend.

Innovation has a LOT to do with demographics. What you are comparing here is basically just the last few centuries.

If you look at the world until 1700s, population was highly correlated with economy, technology, and strength.

It was only later that there was a decoupling due to industrial revolution and renaissance.

But that decoupling is already over. The trend since late 20th century has been that of economic convergence. Almost everywhere the poorer countries are catching up with the rich. In fact, if the rich countries were not so heavily importing the best talent of those poorer countries, this catch up would have been even faster.

And even in the cases you mentioned. Japanese innovation is pretty much dead these days, relative to the past, and the main reason is the aging and greying population. This would have also been the case in EU and US, but those countries import and rely heavily on STEM talent from abroad.

Ultimately almost everyone is capable of the similar things. The population matters.

And the quality of the population sometimes actually decreases with wealth.

There are many studies that show, that as people grow wealthier they start choosing majors in arts, business, and humanities; and go for a more relaxed easier life.

Why are Indians so determined to overpopulate this world and its fast dwindling resources and increasing pollution.
Credit should be given to the great sacrifice by the Chinese to drastically reduce their population and therefore help control the price and availability of food worldwide.
Australia don't need the overpopulation, pollution and hunger that is India.
Big spaces with huge surplus of healthy food for a reasonably sized population should be the goal,
not attention seeking size and ranking among nations.

No wonder Supa Powa keep boasting of its PPP GDP and its large size despite millions dying of hunger and disease.
Its shameful !!!

http://www.bhookh.com/hunger_facts.php
Hunger is the No.1 Cause of Death in India

Indian fertility rate is already 2.2
By the end of this decade it will fall below replacement level.

Also, malthus has been consistently wrong. The food and resources in this world are not some fixed pie. With technology, innovation this pie actually increases a LOT.

In fact, the average consumption of food of individual citizen in the world in the last 100 years has increased tremendously, despite the tremendous increase in population. That is due to technological change.

You knowledge is wrong so you often understand wrong. It's not your own problem, it's due to Indian failure in education.

Can you be more specific as in where my education has failed me according to you? What knowledge is "wrong"?

How many 'innovative population' required for country like China, India? 100 million? Japan, Germany, Korea people must be all 'innovative' likes.

No limit. As many as is possible. The fact is that in every country, the people engaged in R&D of various kinds, and in the knowledge economy are increasing tremendously.

A 1000 years back, very few people used to be engaged in research, science and education. Most people were uneducated.

Now, in developed countries almost every one has basic education, and a huge number are engaged in research.

This trend will continue.

Africa is no doubtfully the paradise of INNOVATION, because of their ultra-YOUNG age structure
View attachment 443521

Please point to me where I said that Young population is ALONE the requirement?

But young population helps.

And by young I mean an average age around 25-30.

The correlation of age with innovation is sort of a bell curve, with a peak around 25-30, and that innovation indice of age (obviously keeping everything else constant) would decrease in either direction.

Obviously there will be no innovation if average age is 1 year, or if average age is greater than 100 years.

 

[sinait]

Innovation has a LOT to do with demographics. What you are comparing here is basically just the last few centuries.

If you look at the world until 1700s, population was highly correlated with economy, technology, and strength.

It was only later that there was a decoupling due to industrial revolution and renaissance.

But that decoupling is already over. The trend since late 20th century has been that of economic convergence. Almost everywhere the poorer countries are catching up with the rich. In fact, if the rich countries were not so heavily importing the best talent of those poorer countries, this catch up would have been even faster.

And even in the cases you mentioned. Japanese innovation is pretty much dead these days, relative to the past, and the main reason is the aging and greying population. This would have also been the case in EU and US, but those countries import and rely heavily on STEM talent from abroad.

Ultimately almost everyone is capable of the similar things. The population matters.

And the quality of the population sometimes actually decreases with wealth.

There are many studies that show, that as people grow wealthier they start choosing majors in arts, business, and humanities; and go for a more relaxed easier life.

Indian fertility rate is already 2.2
By the end of this decade it will fall below replacement level.

Also, malthus has been consistently wrong. The food and resources in this world are not some fixed pie. With technology, innovation this pie actually increases a LOT.

In fact, the average consumption of food of individual citizen in the world in the last 100 years has increased tremendously, despite the tremendous increase in population. That is due to technological change.

You are very lucky living in India with boundless amount of greenery and wide spaces and abundant food where nobody die from hunger.
In that case ask your countrymen to stay in your country and don't go begging for jobs in foreign countries and overcrowding their transport system and even go rioting in Singapore.

I feel this world is getting too crowded, especially in my tiny Singapore.
Imagine the price of food and fuel if China had an extra 400 million more scrambling for resources and emitting more carbon dioxide and shit.
I see no reason why we should test the limits of what this planet can support.
Its obnoxious that some Indians boast how they will be the most populous in the world when their population suffer from hunger deaths and lack of basic sanitation.

Hearing from you, I get why India annexed so many states, Kashmir, Junagadh, Hyderabad, Manipur, Tripura, South Tibet, Nagaland, Goa, Sikkim etc. , immediately after its independence. It is so they have a big population so they can better bully their neighboring smaller nations.

Frankly, I just don't understand why China is so damn against its primary and most important resource- Its people.

It is a country's population that determines its size and ranking among nations. Australia for example is a huge country in terms of size, but no body talks about it as a large country

Your thoughts are frightening.
A large country is so its population can live happily and comfortably as well as produce extra to help out other countries deficient in food, not for world ranking and show off or be the talk of the town and most importantly not to have a big population so they can bully smaller nations like how India bully Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Bangladesh.
.

 

[Han Patriot]

Innovation has a LOT to do with demographics. What you are comparing here is basically just the last few centuries.

If you look at the world until 1700s, population was highly correlated with economy, technology, and strength.

It was only later that there was a decoupling due to industrial revolution and renaissance.

But that decoupling is already over. The trend since late 20th century has been that of economic convergence. Almost everywhere the poorer countries are catching up with the rich. In fact, if the rich countries were not so heavily importing the best talent of those poorer countries, this catch up would have been even faster.

And even in the cases you mentioned. Japanese innovation is pretty much dead these days, relative to the past, and the main reason is the aging and greying population. This would have also been the case in EU and US, but those countries import and rely heavily on STEM talent from abroad.

Ultimately almost everyone is capable of the similar things. The population matters.

And the quality of the population sometimes actually decreases with wealth.

There are many studies that show, that as people grow wealthier they start choosing majors in arts, business, and humanities; and go for a more relaxed easier life.



Indian fertility rate is already 2.2
By the end of this decade it will fall below replacement level.

Also, malthus has been consistently wrong. The food and resources in this world are not some fixed pie. With technology, innovation this pie actually increases a LOT.

In fact, the average consumption of food of individual citizen in the world in the last 100 years has increased tremendously, despite the tremendous increase in population. That is due to technological change.



Can you be more specific as in where my education has failed me according to you? What knowledge is "wrong"?



No limit. As many as is possible. The fact is that in every country, the people engaged in R&D of various kinds, and in the knowledge economy are increasing tremendously.

A 1000 years back, very few people used to be engaged in research, science and education. Most people were uneducated.

Now, in developed countries almost every one has basic education, and a huge number are engaged in research.

This trend will continue.



Please point to me where I said that Young population is ALONE the requirement?

But young population helps.

And by young I mean an average age around 25-30.

The correlation of age with innovation is sort of a bell curve, with a peak around 25-30, and that innovation indice of age (obviously keeping everything else constant) would decrease in either direction.

Obviously there will be no innovation if average age is 1 year, or if average age is greater than 100 years.

I don't want to argue, but it's common sense, demographic dividend only happens when you manage to feed and educate that population, else it will turn out into a demographic time bomb. With due respect and no intention of insulting you, India is at a very dangerous situation now, I was analyzing the water problem in India, it is even more serious than China. Yet, India is incapable of centrally executing a solution let alone solve it. My prediction for India is, you will continue producing manpower for the West while your own country will remain the same or worse. Whatever investment you put into your manpower, the dividends will be reaped by the west. It boils down to the purpose of money afterall, isn't it to improve you country rather than to sustain another economy?

 

[Bussard Ramjet]

You are very lucky living in India with boundless amount of greenery and wide spaces and abundant food where nobody die from hunger.
In that case ask your countrymen to stay in your country and don't go begging for jobs in foreign countries and overcrowding their transport system and even go rioting in Singapore.

I feel this world is getting too crowded, especially in my tiny Singapore.
Imagine the price of food and fuel if China had an extra 400 million more scrambling for resources and emitting more carbon dioxide and shit.
I see no reason why we should test the limits of what this planet can support.
Its obnoxious that some Indians boast how they will be the most populous in the world when their population suffer from hunger deaths and lack of basic sanitation.

Hearing from you, I get why India annexed so many states, Kashmir, Junagadh, Hyderabad, Manipur, Tripura, South Tibet, Nagaland, Goa, Sikkim etc. , immediately after its independence. It is so they have a big population so they can better bully their neighboring smaller nations.

Singapore is not a normal country. It is basically just a city. We are talking about countries that are hundreds or thousands of times the size of Singapore.

Apart from that technology is always able to sustain life. Renewable energy is already cheap enough to compete directly head on with fossil energy.

You are going with the Malthusian theory. But malthusians have now been wrong for close to a century.

I don't want to argue, but it's common sense, demographic dividend only happens when you manage to feed and educate that population, else it will turn out into a demographic time bomb. With due respect and no intention of insulting you, India is at a very dangerous situation now, I was analyzing the water problem in India, it is even more serious than China. Yet, India is incapable of centrally executing a solution let alone solve it. My prediction for India is, you will continue producing manpower for the West while your own country will remain the same or worse. Whatever investment you put into your manpower, the dividends will be reaped by the west. It boils down to the purpose of money afterall, isn't it to improve you country rather than to sustain another economy?

1. India's water issue is challenging, but always solvable, using latest technologies, and schemes.
2. Even you were, just a decade back, producing man power for the West. And this has actually been very beneficial. It is already being beneficial for India because these people often come with advanced skills back to India. It is already happening. IITs these days are receiving very good faculty in the form of western trained professors. Many very good people educated and trained in top schools like Stanford and MIT are coming back to India.
3. If Indian economy keeps growing at 6-7% for the next decade, the economy would grow to a substantial size, and many among the Indian community will keep coming back with growing opportunities.

 

[sinait]

Singapore is not a normal country. It is basically just a city. We are talking about countries that are hundreds or thousands of times the size of Singapore.

Apart from that technology is always able to sustain life. Renewable energy is already cheap enough to compete directly head on with fossil energy.

You are going with the Malthusian theory. But malthusians have now been wrong for close to a century.

1. India's water issue is challenging, but always solvable, using latest technologies, and schemes.
2. Even you were, just a decade back, producing man power for the West. And this has actually been very beneficial. It is already being beneficial for India because these people often come with advanced skills back to India. It is already happening. IITs these days are receiving very good faculty in the form of western trained professors. Many very good people educated and trained in top schools like Stanford and MIT are coming back to India.
3. If Indian economy keeps growing at 6-7% for the next decade, the economy would grow to a substantial size, and many among the Indian community will keep coming back with growing opportunities.

India have the largest population of the poor and always firefighting to solve inadequacy of basic needs instead of striving for advanced development because India have a lot of people like you.
Only able to think of bare sustenance survival and milking the land to death.
How about coming up with ideas to give Indians more space and a better life instead of struggling and failing to feed all ?
I guess not as power crazy Indians like you only have time to see how India rank in power, most populous, largest country by grabbing and gobbling up neighboring small nations.
Yes Singapore is tiny city, so please don't come and infest our tiny city when your large country is unable to provide for Indians. If you want large populations so as to have ranking and power in the world, think also how to provide for them without pestering, overcrowding and contaminating our tiny city and Hong Kong as well.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com...ian-it-professionals/articleshow/57981840.cms
Singapore blocks visas for Indian IT professionals

https://qz.com/962535/australia-is-...y-worker-visa-and-indians-will-lose-out-most/
Australia is scrapping its temporary worker visa, and Indians will lose out most

Indians are finding out they have overstayed their welcome all over the world.
Lets wait and see how India's demographic disaster will turn out.
.