Comparison of US States and Chinese Provinces, 2021

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Obadno

I disagree I think that's a very Eurocentric view of Asia in general. Han China is essentially the northern China plain and historically it has a very high population where it oscillates into conquering its neighbors and then collapsing in on itself over and over.

But the area in which Modern China and Historical China covers is dozens of religions, languages, ethnicities. The Han out of their traditional home region just happen to have 10x the population of the others

Again, everyone consisted of various ethnicities which ebbed and flowed over the centuries. No one country is purely homogenous. Even the 'Japanese' aren't indigenous to Japan (which is one of the most homogenous in the world), the Ainu were.

China to this day maybe overwhelmingly 'Chinese' but there is significant cultural variation from one province to the next. I am sure that stemmed from an era when Chinese culture evolved from various regional ethnic areas.

[Yuri]

China, for some reason, can follow Brazil's steps that after a great 2000's, had its GDP frozen at 2012 levels.

But even if they follow this tragic path, they will still be left with a HSR much bigger than the rest of the world put together and cities with massive subway systems.

That's much better than any middle income country in the world and of many high income ones as well. Chinese people will be just fine.

[muppet]

Guys, just some polite reminders.

1. China is not homogenous, even with the existence of the artifical ethnicity the 'Han' people (created in the 1960s by pooling together 125 ethnic groups who had applied for minority status. The bar was simply that historically they farmed and built cities -despite their differing dress, religion, language, histories, DNA and looks -overnight it became the world's largest). The Han alone speak 200 languages and hundreds more dialects, let alone the other official 55 ethnic groups, which is why its Diversity Index is on par with the US.

2/3 of China's territory is dominated by non-Han peoples -Official map of the 56 recognised ethnic groups:



zoom:




Unofficial, map of 'Han' ethnicities before the Communists:



DNA map


https://www.eupedia.com/images/desig...NA_project.png

This is why if you've ever travelled in China you'll notice how different people start to look between regions, for example how tall the Shangdongers in the north are and how short the Yunnaners in the south are, how skin tone can change from milk-white of the Jilin people to the dark chocolate of the Sea Gipsies, how the rounded eyes, noses and faces of the Cantonese differ from the narrow equivalents of the Dongbeians.

The difference in traditional wedding dresses (now all in red) between provinces are the remnant national costumes of each people:




I should know, I'm one of the unrecognised ethnic groups (Hainanese) - we populated the Polynesian islands back in the day, and look(ed) markedly different. Our race was created by the mixing of the Polynesian base with travellers from the Maritime Silk Route (Arabs, Persians, Mongols, Central Asians, which is why my uncles have blue eyes and I still get blonde/red hairs in my beard), followed up by 600 years of tropical isolation as the jungles of an island penal colony - in that time only 16 people voluntarily came here. Once 8 million strong we're pretty endangered now as -well, people fall in love -Mainlanders arrived by the million since the 1980s. If there's one thing that marks me out - if I tan enough, I can go as dark as acajou mahogany, with a hat on I get mistaken for Black. But yeah, I'm classed as Han.

[muppet]

Also it seems people have quite an outdated idea of the Chinese economy - yes it has a huge deal with overseas trade, but that accounts for something like 17% of its GDP (for comparison, trade with the US is worth only 2.6%). By far what is powering the economy now is domestic consumption - a while back China moved from manufacturing to a majority services economy. It figures - how has no one noticed the size of the Chinese market itself? It's like 40% larger than the West in population, and the reason the economy's been doubling every decade is they're becoming the world's largest middle class by far, the largest consumers of their own output- not necessarily that everyone else is buying double the Chinese products.


This doesn't mean China wouldn't suffer terribly if foreign trade got wiped out, but it's not the be all and end all. For a sense of perspective, the US does more trade with Canada than China, and Germany makes more money in foreign trade.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Why is different? Bulgaria has also an ageing problem and on top of it, they have to deal with a massive emigration from people in the working/childbearing age.

Population will decline in the entire World sans Africa and all nations will have to learn to deal with it. China is not alone on it.

The One-Child Policy in China was unprecedented in human history and was carried on for far too long. Now that it has been relaxed, many people are still pouring all of their resources into just one child rather than having two or three children who won't have as many resources backing them.

This is resulting in the nightmarish "4-2-1" formula where a single adult is supporting two retired parents and four retired grandparents. While it's statistically unlikely for this exact situation to exist currently we're snowballing in the direction to where this becomes more and more common.



While far fewer children are born every year in the United States - roughly 4 million as opposed to 10 million in China - the retired population in China is exploding a far greater rate. Also, immigration keeps attracting more people of all ages to the United States in a way that isn't happening in China.

This is why it's a big mistake to assume that China will surpass the United States' GDP by any significant amount, if ever. The demographic crisis is going to really start hitting China by 2030 and will strangle it by 2040.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

The One-Child Policy in China was unprecedented in human history and was carried on for far too long. Now that it has been relaxed, many people are still pouring all of their resources into just one child rather than having two or three children who won't have as many resources backing them.

This is resulting in the nightmarish "4-2-1" formula where a single adult is supporting two retired parents and four retired grandparents. While it's statistically unlikely for this exact situation to exist currently we're snowballing in the direction to where this becomes more and more common.

(...)

While far fewer children are born every year in the United States - roughly 4 million as opposed to 10 million in China - the retired population in China is exploding a far greater rate. Also, immigration keeps attracting more people of all ages to the United States in a way that isn't happening in China.

This is why it's a big mistake to assume that China will surpass the United States' GDP by any significant amount, if ever. The demographic crisis is going to really start hitting China by 2030 and will strangle it by 2040.

Several populations around the world had "spontaneous one-child policy", including the neighbouring South Korea. There's virtually no discrepancy in Chinese pyramid and the other Eastern European countries. What we've been watching in Bulgaria since the 1990's and South Korea since now, it will be China in the 2030's. Same thing, albeit softer than what happened in Bulgaria or Latvia that even lost the "2" and the "1" of your 4-2-1 equation.

About the US, it's not the 2000's anymore. Births plunged to mere 3.6 million and deaths are catching up quickly. By the late 2020's when lots of baby boomers will start to die, the US won't have less than 4 million deaths anymore and only (a lot of) immigration will prevent the population to decrease. In several age brackets the US is already decreasing: there were more Americans between 0-18 years old in 2010 than in 2020.

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by muppet

I should know, I'm one of the unrecognised ethnic groups (Hainanese) - we populated the Polynesian islands back in the day, and look(ed) markedly different. Our race was created by the mixing of the Polynesian base with travellers from the Silk Route (Arabs, Mongols, Central Asians, which is why my uncles have blue eyes and I still get blonde/red hairs in my beard), followed up by 600 years of tropical isolation as the jungles of an island penal colony - in that time only 16 people voluntarily came here. Once 8 million strong we're pretty endangered now as -well, people fall in love -Mainlanders arrived by the million since the 1980s. If there's one thing that marks me out - if I tan enough, I can go as dark as acajou mahogany, with a hat on I get mistaken for Black. But yeah, I'm classed as Han.

This is really interesting.

[muppet]

Thanks man, hidden history. We were once known as the 'Africans of China' due to historically being the poorest part of the country, dark skin, big noses and er, big other areas.

[muppet]

The birthrate in the US and China are about equal, both have fallen to 1.71 per woman -the US even dipped briefly below China's in the pandemic year - however US has immigration (albeit dwindling, and whose newcomers turn out just as low birthrates), whereas China's stopped sharply with the pandemic.

For all of China's ageing woes, remember the cost of looking after the elderly is one of the lowest in the world, and is predicted to stay that way due to the local culture - it's not so much the state that looks after the elderly, but the community and family, and also people look after themselves obsessively after a certain age - the healthcare culture is long-term preventative rather than treatment based. For example, traditionally people would pay the doctor for years for health benefits, but if you actually came down with something treatment was free. For the future, robots a la Japan.

However costs are indeed creeping up -China has universal healthcare, and 2019 laws now mean it's a human right to have medical treatment regardless of cost, so floodgates are opening for state funded, expensive procedures - though offset by longer working years. The days when women retired at 50 and men at 55 are now delayed by 5 years, due to new legislation.