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Zach Weinersmith

Kinda crazy: I was just reading that China drops in population ~2M people per year now. It's a huge country, but jeez, that's a Chicago per year. US by contrast puts on about 1.5M per year, majority from immigration.

16 comments
demofox

@ZachWeinersmith maybe there's significant overlap in these 2 stats?

James Wood

@demofox @ZachWeinersmith Chinese net migration is only about -300K. Most of the population decrease is natural.

Kindness is as kindness does

@ZachWeinersmith
But they were actively pushing that for a long while with their 1-child policy. I don’t know if it’s still official policy anymore.

Zach Weinersmith

@Paradox @qurlyjoe Also, and I know this is weird, I was looking at some charts recently and the 1CP didn't actually have a big effect. Horrific, but not a large effect on fertility rates. There was already a slow decline that continued, and you can't pinpoint the start of the policy by looking at a graph.

Minski

@ZachWeinersmith More or less the standard development in countries that grow richer, made a lot worse by the One Child Policy's after-effects. the USA is pretty much the only exception, purely because of immigration.

LovesTha🥧

@Minski @ZachWeinersmith only exception? Checking the uk, au, and NZ graphs they are all still growing, and I'm pretty sure that is immigration too.

Immigration is the reason develoed nations continue to grow, yes not all are growing, but many are.

LovesTha🥧

@ZachWeinersmith isn't the US shrinking if not for migration?

James Wood

@LovesTha @ZachWeinersmith Apparently natural population growth is still about 0.5M. I suppose what's happening is that fertility is below the replacement rate, but the breeding-age population is still significantly larger than the number of people dying (and the former figure is helped by immigration), so still more people are being born than dying.

Dr. Evan J. Gowan

@ZachWeinersmith In Japan, a much smaller country population wise, it is going down by almost a million people per year now. There are increasing amounts of abandoned houses, even in the middle of the city I live in.

ÓsQar

@ZachWeinersmith In comparison, that's about -0.2% for China and about +0.5% for US, not sure if too much or too low.

bewitchedmind

@ZachWeinersmith So where do the other 500K Chinese people immigrate? 🤪

Renaud Lienhart

@ZachWeinersmith unfortunately that is also why people expect a conflict with China in the next decade: they have a demographic ticking clock where their population “advantage” is dwindling away, and Xi Jinping is perfectly aware of it; their window of opportunity is closing.

Carl

@ZachWeinersmith There has been a lot of ink and electrons about the Chinese demographic crisis. They'll be half senior citizens about the time I die of old age (should I make it that far), and currently their immigration policy is "No." That's thought to be one reason China wants colonies and dependent states: they'll have no workers when this generation reaches retirement age.

Coyoty

@ZachWeinersmith What is the economic demographic of these figures? Several areas in the U.S. are concerned about Chinese buying up property, and Florida has just outlawed it (Chinese Exclusion Act).

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