Demography should help the US keep China at bay

Like his predecessors Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Donald Trump takes it for granted that China is the only serious rival the United States faces in the competition to be “Top Nation” which, according to the authors of 1066 and All That, it became after World War I when it replaced the United Kingdom. Many who regard the current president as an ignorant buffoon share his point of view and agree that he should concentrate on dealing with China, though, needless to say, they are appalled by the nasty way he treats friendly allies and his willingness to appease Vladimir Putin’s Russia, presumably in order to prise it from Xi Jinping’s grasp.

Such geopolitically-minded people think that all the Western countries, along with Japan and South Korea, should close ranks in order to meet the threat to their democratic way of life posed by the remorseless and very ambitious Chinese dictatorship. No doubt they are right, but Trump and the people who serve him appear to be convinced that the United States is fully capable of going it alone and should do so instead of wasting good money propping up ungrateful dependents.

Is the United States as well-placed as Trump and those surrounding him suppose it is? After all, should China’s per capita income – which according to the IMF is now slightly higher than Argentina’s – rise to the level reached by Taiwan, its gross national product would exceed that of the US and the European Union combined. Were it to approach that of Singapore, a city state run by overseas Chinese, it would become by far the wealthiest nation on the face of the planet.

Luckily for those who find such a prospect disturbing, until 1978 – when under Deng Xiaoping, the People’s Republic replaced the ruinous Maoist practices with a version of crony capitalism – the regime did its best to prevent its compatriots from making proper use of their considerable talents. By brutally imposing their version of Marxist ideology, they ensured that China would have to play catch-up for many years to come. Had the people running things in Washington been a cannier and more cynical lot, they would have tried to use their influence to unseat Deng and let the Maoists remain in power instead of applauding the reformer’s efforts.

Were China a less populous country than it is, nobody would dream of ranking it as a superpower as so many now do, but with over four times as many inhabitants as the United States, its leaders possess enough human resources at their disposal to behave as though it were already on a par with the North American giant. To equal US output, on average their workers need only to be a quarter as productive. However, despite the fact that demography has always been China’s not so secret weapon, in recent years it has become a major problem that seems certain to put a premature end to the imperial dreams of Xi and his immediate successors.

According to the official figures, the fertility rate in China is 1.18 births per woman, but in urban areas it is admittedly even lower. The numbers may be inflated; plenty of analysts suspect that, as tends to happen under authoritarian regimes, the statistics handed out by the government are make-believe and that the country it rules is plunging headlong towards a demographic disaster. In any event, the situation China finds itself in is comparable to that of South Korea. As things stand, the next generation of South Koreans will be a third of the size of the present one and the one after that, which will arrive well before the present century has run its course, will be nine times less numerous. This means that quite soon South Koreans could become extinct, followed, a decade or two later, by their Japanese neighbours and then those living in the Chinese homeland, a development which would come as a surprise to the many who insist everyone should start learning Mandarin because the future is sure to be dominated by China.

When Obama announced his “pivot towards Asia,” he and his advisors assumed that East Asia would continue to be the most dynamic part of the world for many years to come. This now looks extremely unlikely. Unless the Chinese and the rest of them go forth and multiply at a hectic rate, something which nobody thinks is likely to happen, their societies will age even faster than those of Western Europe and the United States, where a similar phenomenon is causing concern. Without a major demographic turnaround, the Chinese will be in no shape to do much more than devote what resources they manage to accumulate while the going is good to caring for the elderly.

To make China’s situation even worse, as a result of the one-child policy that prevailed until 2015 and the widespread preference for sons instead of daughters, which is embedded in the national ethos, there are now an estimated 35 million “leftover men” who, unless polyandry is instituted, will be unable to find a marriage partner in their native land. In the not so remote past, the government would have used the surplus of young males as cannon fodder in wars or, like the Romans with the Sabine women and many other conquerors, have sent them out to kidnap brides in vulnerable foreign countries, but today such expedients are seen as hopelessly outdated.

A more peaceful solution to the problem would be for presentable Chinese youths to try courting marriageable women in poorer parts of the world, but for them to have any chance of success, their country would have to become far more hospitable to immigrants than it currently is. This would oblige the government to discourage the xenophobic nationalism it has been whipping up of late.

Both the nominally Communist authorities in China and well-informed US leaders – whether Democrat or Republican, fans of Trump or people who loathe him – must be well aware that the People’s Republic is living on borrowed time. Though the Chinese economy may grow enough in the next few years to overtake that of the US by most measures, its moment of supremacy would in all probability be brief. Unless the US stumbles badly, it would soon be able to reassert itself. This is why many in Washington evidently believe that the challenge mounted by China is unlikely to last longer than a couple of decades, and that if their own country holds together until demographic pressures put an end to their main rival’s geopolitical and cultural dreams, they should emerge victorious providing, of course, they succeed in overcoming their own demographic problems which, for now, look far less alarming.