Fun with demographics

Real China Charts do some geeky and speculative digging into China’s demographics with quirky sources. A (controversial) medical stats expert compares babies’ TB vaccine uptake with official birth figures and concludes that the official population is overstated. Examination of a sample of hacked police data suggests something similar. Extrapolating from these numbers, the analysts look at remaining-lifetime earnings by age group, and see zero chance of China pivoting to consumption-based growth – unless the country can achieve 9% year-on-year wage growth (which it almost certainly can’t).

Lots of implications for anyone who still buys into the China long-term growth story – whether you’re a French president trying to strut around being ‘independent of the US’, or someone putting retirement savings into Mainland stocks.

Meanwhile, Guangdong is planning to send hundreds of thousands of youths into the countryside – for two-three year spells – as a way of tackling unemployment. These are mollycoddled single children brought up on computer games and junk food. I’m sure they’ll love life on a pig farm.

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7 Responses to Fun with demographics

  1. GCHQ says:

    Nothing like doing China down.

    It’s so easy after all and no fear of contradiction in the Western media!

    Hurrah!

  2. Chinese Netizen says:

    “Meanwhile, Guangdong is planning to send hundreds of thousands of youths into the countryside – for two-three year spells – as a way of tackling unemployment. These are mollycoddled single children brought up on computer games and junk food. I’m sure they’ll love life on a pig farm.”

    Gap years! Perfect opportunity for a regimented life of waking up early, listening to orders, hard work and toughen oneself a little. As if they’re being molded into an island invasion force of some sort.

    My friend the mainland education “agent” who sends mollycoddled youth to private schools in New Zealand, the US, UK and Oz will have a booming business for sure.

  3. asiaseen says:

    In other matters:

    How on earth can the Information Services Department spend HK1.3 million on a one minute video? Somebody has laughed all the way to the bank.
    That’s nearly HK$22,000 per second cost and $315 per view (so far).

  4. steve says:

    It’s the neoliberal Cultural Revolution, driven by the market instead of proletarian fervor. But both are ideologies, after all, and once again, unprepared young people are stuck in the middle.

  5. @GCHQ says:

    “Nothing like doing China down. It’s so easy after all and no fear of contradiction in the Western media! ”

    Oh, precious, fuck off, why not. And when you get there, keep going.

  6. Eggs n Ham says:

    And in other other matters:

    The Standard dutifully echoes the Finance Department’s triumphant angle that it ‘saved’ money by disqualifying 80,000 people from the next $5k mass handout.

    But closer inspection reveals that is after successful appeal(s) by more than two-thirds of the initially disqualified quarter of a million of us.

    What kind of bureaucrats are we paying for who can so royally screw up a simple list of eligible people?

    https://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking-news/section/4/202517/Up-to-HK$400m-saved-as-some-80,000-disqualified-for-consumption-voucher

  7. MeKnowNothing says:

    A previous attempt at this via a proxy server appears to have failed, so I’ll try again…

    And like what I had for lunch yesterday, I now forget how I’d put it – but it was something about shunting the GD-bit of the GBA’s youth into the sticks whilst HK’s youth are being told to seek their fortunes in the non-HK-bit of the GBA – but probably more entertainingly-worded than that (hence the use of a proxy server in hopes of not getting my arse NatSec’d |^).

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