Demographic stagnation? compared to who? everything is relative and I don’t think US demographics has it at a disadvantage over EU, China, Japan, South Korea, does it? So then who is left to take seriously as a competitor?
High skill demographics. PRC is going mint more STEM in next 20 years than US is set to increase population, all sources total. That's more or less locked in from past 20 years of births. In relative terms, PRC is going to have OCED combined in just STEM, excluding all the other technical skilled workforce. It's the greatest high skill demographic divident in recorded history, in country with superstructure to allocate talent. All the rapid catchup PRC made in last 10 years was built on fraction of highend human capita they will have.
That PRC talent cohort are going to stick around 2060/70/80s. Past that, it's hard to extrapolate, but ~50 years with that much talent advantage can build very durable advantages. Meanwhile the population PRC sheds is overwhelmingly going to be the old, undereducated etc, think 200m rural farmers left behind by modernization that bluntly is net drag on economy/system, but they're also relatively cheap to caretake vs US silver obligations.
Short of AGI, US is not a serious competitor vs PRC in terms of skilled demographics that sustains strategic hegemonic advantages, at least not in our lifetimes.
But that's just a function of their large population size.
Even if you wanted to, you cannot bring the majority of your population to a high-skill level.
That's not surprising, but still it is debatable whether China is producing value in line with their large, highly skilled cohort. They seem to be stuck on the hard problem, relying a lot on the import of foreign-invented technologies.
That may change over time; we will see…
maxglute|2 months ago
That PRC talent cohort are going to stick around 2060/70/80s. Past that, it's hard to extrapolate, but ~50 years with that much talent advantage can build very durable advantages. Meanwhile the population PRC sheds is overwhelmingly going to be the old, undereducated etc, think 200m rural farmers left behind by modernization that bluntly is net drag on economy/system, but they're also relatively cheap to caretake vs US silver obligations.
Short of AGI, US is not a serious competitor vs PRC in terms of skilled demographics that sustains strategic hegemonic advantages, at least not in our lifetimes.
seec|2 months ago
Even if you wanted to, you cannot bring the majority of your population to a high-skill level. That's not surprising, but still it is debatable whether China is producing value in line with their large, highly skilled cohort. They seem to be stuck on the hard problem, relying a lot on the import of foreign-invented technologies. That may change over time; we will see…
jnmandal|2 months ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_tsunami