My notes for the part 1 Demographic Crisis:
There is only one solution to China's Demographic crisis and that is longevity escape velocity, I am of the mind that it will be reached in the next few decades with better AI and further research but I don't think china would have that much time remaining as their median age is 38, the quicker this is reached the better for the Chinese government as their demographic won't collapse but it will bring even more problems as they will have a population that isn't aging and will grow wiser with age.
But I feel like even if longevity escape velocity is reached, they have a big issue of gender imbalance and I don't think it will get better in the future, Asian families really wants son as they continue the family name.
This is all a big if.
First: Longevity escape velocity needs to be reached and currently I am optimistic about research in this area but even I don't see it becoming possible until the 2045-2050 or even Later.
More or less whatever ends up happening (say best case scenario for longevity and AI etc), it is baked in problem from the decades of 1 child policy (creating both the raw demographic replacement rate undermining and the skewed gender ratio).
Addressing it to manage it (economically and socially) will basically expend resources that could have been put elsewhere (i.e opportunity cost)....and the per capita margins available are not close to what Japan, Korea, other parts of East Asia have fiscally for it. We shall see how it goes, there will basically be lot of compromises involved....and how govt responds to that (and itself) will be something to observe and learn from for others.
Part 2 Housing Crisis:
This is the biggest problem in my opinion the other problems can be dealt with the increase in technology but this is a problem of management and I don't see the Chinese government changing their ways, even if they know it puts them further into the abyss I feel like they would keep on doing it.
Yes they are overly-wedded to idea of real estate being the conservative sole sink for all wealth....as it is what CCP bureaucratically is very used to (hukou etc).
It will increasingly pose problems as bulk economy (esp as more innovation and streams are required to hedge) wants more than that....given how demand/supply saturates in real estate (esp with monolith corruption).
It is also the one CCP is least flexible on....they are expanding into more control of this area (centrally) at cost of more local govt controls that existed earlier.
Part 3 Water Crisis:
This is gonna be a big problem with most countries in the future but I feel like China's corruption in the government just makes it far worse and the governments GDP targets just make is so that the government doesn't care that much about what provinces are doing as long as they are meeting their quotas and if the environments goes bad that's fine.
I feel like this is prevalent in Chinese society a lot people don't really care about other people as long as it advances them.
Yup, too many yes-echochambers and not enough feedback coming or registering from counter-voices on something as huge as water transfer (given its long term impact and cost past the direct finance costs).
This all-in approach will do a lot of damage...essentially the CCP has not allowed any precedent of recognizing it has gotten large projects ( of scale and real consequence) wrong before....so it forges on unchallenged to even larger ones as the basic wallet for it grows too.
But you step back and anyone with common sense can see what the better sustainable answer is to water issue in the north. It needs less people there, and more people where the water is....especially for something so water-hogging like farming.
Part 4 National Insecurity Crisis:
I feel this anywhere in the Chinese internet, its like you have to be patriotic and when you say things that are good about other countries people come and just say where is your patriotism, I don't feel like this is unique to CCP but that its everywhere in Chinese society and when somebody doesn't do it others just force him to do it, it all leads to a hivemind.
It is almost a natural consequence of the 3 problems preceding it. ...given their scale. Keeping bureaucracy "as is" (for continued political status-quo control entrenchment) in economy that has become far more unwieldy for it (as it grows and innovates and wants to innovate more, taking cues from the world around it), precipitates the need for more and more monitoring + security.....to keep the grass trimmed to the pre-ordained height set by precedent.
Hence we seeing the current clampdowns on certain economic sectors already (overgrowth that has been declared to be so, even though they were caused by govt policy chokepoints to begin with).
