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China was supposed to start overtaking the US, but the one child policy knee-capped that route. Now their workforce is getting much smaller and the burden of care for the elderly is growing fast.


> workforce is getting much smaller

"Much smaller" will still be about 3x the US one. If that's your best bet, it's not a good one :-D


Unless you count farmers as part of the workforce, otherwise China will not see a reduction of their workforce for 10-15 years.


Why not count farmers as part of the workforce?


Because the amount of farmers is mostly decoupled from total agricultural output for industrial societies until you hit ~2%. So they're not really productive in the way normal workers are.


Farming as percentage of workforce is still huge in China. Higher than countries with similar GDP per capita. Urbanization is also not high enough.


Based China’s leadership’s track record, they do not seem like they will hesitate to reduce that burden if necessary.


Didn't they just lift that?


They did but the results won't have any immediate impact. Some have argued that it was done too late.




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