(08-31-2022, 03:40 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(08-30-2022, 07:37 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: Keep in mind, this is BEFORE covid and the resultant worldwide baby bust.
China still has lots and lots of folks; that's the larger point there.
![[Image: China_population_pyramid_%282018%29.jpg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/China_population_pyramid_%282018%29.jpg)
Also:
1. Life expectancy in China used to be much lower at least into the 1960's as a consequence of extreme poverty. That obviously improved.
2. Almost anyone older than 70 had likely been born in the Republic of China when it controlled most of the mainland, with the People's Republic being established in 1949. Living conditions in China were horrible back then. Practically nobody living in 2018 had lived under the last Chinese dynasty.
3. China had a huge number of births between 1964 and 1973. There would be an echo effect twenty years later. Because of the population bulge from around 1970 that has since been unmatched, China is beginning to resemble advanced industrial countries in having a rather old population. Because these are heavily industrial workers, their old age is likely to result in mass retirements nearly at once.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.