When you start talking about China, you immediate run into massive numbers. It’s hard to imagine it, but the country is edging up to 1.4 billion people. And that’s despite the one-child policy. You remember that. After WWII, the Chinese thought a big population was a good thing but, when the Government saw how difficult it was to feed everyone, they decided big was no longer beautiful and enforced a law limiting each family to one child. This has produced two interesting outcomes. Couples forgot to register the birth of girls, but were proud to announce the arrival of a boy. This has produced an unbalanced population with about 4% more men than women. Many aging families now have no filial children to look after them. Perhaps more importantly, despite the abandonment of the policy, modern couples are no longer planning families. That’s allowing for the fact that, with a shortage of women, there are fewer couples anyway.
Why should this matter? Well, as time passes and the population ages, there will be fewer people around to produce the children to keep China going. Then along comes even more exciting news. According to a research project undertaken by Peking University People’s Hospital, slightly more than 25% of Chinese men currently suffer from erectile dysfunction. OK let’s put this in context. Allowing for a reasonable proportion of these men not being in relationships, or being too old to have children, that’s millions of men who are unable to get their wives pregnant. Now put aside all the old Cold War thinking that, if the US just sits still, China will collapse during the next century and the US will maintain its supremacy. If society begins to break down, there’s no guarantee this will be a peaceful process. Anyway, by the time the Chinese demographic time bomb strikes, the US will be controlled by the majority Latino, Asian and African American population. Their foreign policy may be rather different to the current caucasian view of the world. As an aside, we should note the current birth rate among the white population is falling rapidly with some 18% of adult US males reporting erectile dysfunction. (more…)