Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China

by Hal Brands

China is running out of people—especially the healthy, working-age people that fuel economic growth. Having just recently benefited from an unprecedented demographic dividend, China is now about to suffer one of history’s worst peacetime demographic crises. Blame the One-Child policy. When China first implemented that policy, it provided powerful economic stimulus by creating a generation of upwardly mobile, relatively unencumbered parents. But the bill is coming due because now there are no children to take the places of those parents. By 2050, the country will only have two workers available to support every retiree (compared to ten workers for every retiree in the early 2000s), and nearly one-third of the country will be over the age of sixty.20 China’s population will be just half its current size by the end of the century and perhaps as soon as the 2060s.21 The economic consequences will be dire.