What Does China's Demographic "Problem" Mean?

The NYT has another piece that talks about China's demographic problem due to an aging population. (In fairness, this is really a sidebar, the piece is mostly arguing that China has failed to get itself on a sustainable growth path.) I went through the arithmetic on this last week.

The basic point is simple: China has had extraordinarily rapid productivity growth over the last three and a half decades. The impact of this growth on raising wages and living standards swamps any conceivable nega...