By Asaiah Logan —
In the next 75 years, China is going to bust. No more superpower. No more factory powerhouse. No more technological innovation. And the demise is due to communism.
“This is supposed to be the Chinese century, and right now it feels like it is,” says Max Fisher, a former New York Times columnist. “China appears to be expanding its military arsenal at a historic pace. China’s space program is in overdrive. China’s turned the nation into the factory of the world. China is expanding militarily. It’s projecting power in every part of the world. It’s a huge source of scientific breakthroughs, commercial and technological innovations.
“But all of this is built on a huge, huge national workforce, relatively unburdened by dependent,” he adds. “In not too long, that formula is going to flip upside down. The cities will empty out as the population halves. Retirees will outnumber adults, and all those people will need healthcare.”
The biggest problem is its population. For two decades, China thought it faced a population explosion that would outstrip resources, so they forcefully imposed a 1-child-per-couple policy with obligatory abortions and sterilizations from 1979 to 2015.
The government scientist who cooked up that solution was a missile guidance systems engineer, NOT a social scientist. Boy, was Song Jian wrong. He predicted China’s population would hit 4.5 billion.
Instead, it’s headed towards 633 million in 75 years — a textbook case study of the “solutions” that communism produces.
They decimated the work force that built China’s greatness. And the mad rush to fill factories with robots will only partially help. An unaddressed problem is that robots don’t buy things they produce. Chinese consumers account for 40% of the nation’s GDP.
A 2025 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that the ratio of retirees supported by workers could peak at 109 elderly people for every 100 working-age people by 2085 — a complete reversal of the demographic advantage China enjoyed during its industrial rise.
The problem is not just funding pensions and health care. Couples faced with caring for four elderly parents will likely pass on having kids (since they will be additional dependents). Because of a deeply ingrained preference for boy babies, Chinese did sex-selected abortions on female fetuses, resulting in 27.4 million fewer girls than boys.
“China’s demographic trap could precipitate a civilizational collapse,” says Yi Fuxian of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “China’s pension crisis will develop into a humanitarian catastrophe. We are witnessing the end of the Chinese Dream, both of global dominance and even of a decent life for average people.”
Japan faces a similar dilemma, but it got rich before it got old. China looks to be getting old before it gets rich.
Robots are not the only way China’s trying to forestall its imminent implosion. Communist officials are now trying to force people have babies. In 2016, it changed to the 2-child-per-couple policy, followed quickly in 2021 by a 3-child policy.
In full panic mode, they are taxing condoms and contraceptives to make them out of reach for consumers. The same government workers who enforced the 1-child-only policy just a few years ago are now calling up young women and urging them to get pregnant.
They called Jane Huang, a 35-year-old mother in Fujian province, who said sorry, she had neither the money nor the time nor the energy for another baby, according to the Wt.
Social scientists say to just maintain your population (not grow it), you need 2.1 births per woman. China’s fertility rate is 1.02.
“China has embarked on a road of demographic no-return,” says Wang Feng, social scientist from University of California at Irvine.
Related content: World populations implode, Sources Max Fisher
