The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

by Peter Zeihan

. . as well as the Chinese demography. No matter how you crunch the numbers, China in 2022 is the fastest-aging society in human history. In China the population growth story is over and has been over since China’s birth rate slipped below replacement levels in the 1990s. A full replacement birth rate is 2.1 children per woman. As of early-2022, China’s only partly released 2011–2020 census indicates China’s rate is at most 1.3, among the lowest of any people throughout human history. The country’s demographic contraction is now occurring just as quickly as its expansion, with complete demographic collapse certain to occur within a single generation. China is amazing, just not for the reasons most opine. The country will soon have traveled from preindustrial levels of wealth and health to postindustrial demographic collapse in a single human lifetime. With a few years to spare.