As described previously, China is undergoing a significant culture shift which is receiving at best only modest national media coverage and publicity, and even less attention internationally. Beijing seems largely unaware of the problem, or at least has been lackadaisical in its analysis and application of remedies. Social media expressions of the immediate consequences are curtailed or simply taboo. In this sense, China is no different from any other country in the civilized world. But it’s also far from clear that any solution exists or has ever existed.
Part I:
Updated: China Has a Problem
The weather today was positively balmy at 6°C, a vast improvement. MyTown erupted with excitement earlier this week due to a visit from no less than the President of China. Turns out our mayor is his nephew. Sadly, there was no public appearance, which I would have been delighted to attend whatever the weather. Below, official social media produced to c…
Chinese culture on the ground, among the teeming masses rather than the elite, is embracing western values, including feminism, with the consequent TPR (Totally Predictable Result) of fewer marriages, fewer children, fewer families, and now a falling population as I predicted in 2015 – the trends are unmistakable in publicly available statistics. In Part One I wrote “A smaller population would clearly be more sustainable and place less pressure on world production and on the environment.” In other words, it’s a good thing. And certainly no population can grow indefinitely – the Earth and its resources are obviously limited and finite.
However, fewer children coupled especially with a rising standard of living and an increasing life span, both of which are still occurring in China, means an ever-growing burden on an ever-smaller productive population. For now at least, seemingly contrary to expected outcomes, China’s resource extraction, production, exports, energy use and other indicators are actually rising for the most part despite the falling population and the recent severe downturn in youth (that is, new university graduate) employment.
More significant is that China is a fully-integrated partner in the world economic system. It depends on debt-money creation, as does the rest of the planet, which is important in that this mechanism absolutely and unequivocally requires consistent economic growth to maintain itself. The easiest and most obvious way to create growth is to create new human beings. More mouths mean more demand for products and services and voila, economic growth, easy-peasy (yes, I’m aware this is an over-simplification and does not always hold entirely true – we’ll get to that in future).
On the flip side, an ever-expanding economy is difficult if not impossible to sustain over the long term without a growing or at least stable population. The results are in fact quite predictable: increasing debt at all levels (government, corporate and personal), financialization, inflation, increasing complexity, concentration of wealth, rising wealth inequality, and similar ills which should be familiar to most observers in the western world (or would be if corporate/government-controlled media were honest – they’re not).
In the western sphere of influence, Japan offers an example of how this plays out. The birth rate there is at all-time lows, as is the marriage rate. Population is falling like a stone. Family formation and childbirth are dead in the water – Japan’s family court system is renowned for its unmitigated disregard for men and dads. Yet Japanese women, oddly, are considered markedly more traditional than American women, with a strong preference for being stay-at-home moms, although that may no longer actually be true. Economic growth is therefore hard to come by, and indeed the Japanese economy is stagnant and has been for decades.
One possible method for keeping things going is immigration. Japan is reluctant to dilute its own ethnic/racial heritage, but there are signs that the moratorium on ingesting foreigners is beginning to crumble. Who to import? Is it better to bring in persons from similar cultures and ethnicities or is it likely that any people will do, since they will surely integrate into and help expand the current economy and culture? In Japan at least, there is still considerable resistance to the Tower of Babel approach, according to The Mainichi: “There is a deception in the measures to combat the declining birth rate in Japan. The government does not care whether the children born are Japanese or not.”
Immigration is a potentially-viable substitute in lieu of a growing native population. But South Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang, in his book 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, points out that large-scale immigration in fact only accomplishes two things economically. It reduces labor costs (lowers the wages paid to the working class) and increases asset values/prices, particularly housing. The facsimile of growth thus produced is akin to adorning a pig with lipstick and false eyelashes.
Back to China: what is replacing the long-standing Confucian embrace of extended family? If people aren’t getting married and making babies, what are they doing? Reversing the one-child policy has been ineffective (it’s now at three). China’s population of childless and family-less individuals is growing as a percentage of the total: at best there are relatively more single-mom families and single women, although these are outnumbered by single men in the younger age brackets.
A few years ago, the plight of these young men, overburdened by the financial and other demands of marriage as well as the 996 (12 hours/day, six days/week) work culture, manifested itself in a phenomenon known as 躺平tangping or ‘lying flat,’ a phrase which gained widespread notoriety on social media before being actively suppressed by authorities. An upgraded iteration, 摆烂bailan, let it rot, has now arisen to take its place. Humble Wife advises that even among her primary school students this phrase is commonly bandied about by both sexes.
One of the Mandarin language-learning channels I follow recently offered an insightful podcast on the intertwined effects of these cultural trends. Have a look – it’s fully subtitled in good English and quite candid:
One comment stands out, a young man observing that “let it rot means you prioritize your own feelings,” a focus on feelings belonging firmly to the feminine domain. The entire video, from another young male repeating ‘I agree’ to everything his female companion says, to the preponderance of female perspectives, makes it clear that for whatever reasons one might care to assign, and recalling the yin-yang definitions from the previous post on this topic, Chinese society is reducing its consideration of the active, energetic male principle and orienting evermore towards the passive female principle. The traditional Confucian balance is no longer being maintained.
Today’s reality is that growing numbers of Chinese women, particularly the educated class, are less interested in family than previously. Freedom beckons, including economic and sexual freedom. And no, one can’t particularly fault them for it – they’ve absorbed the western narrative of marriage, children and home-making as ties that bind, chains which prevent women from rising to their fullest potential, which they may very well be. Many men certainly agree.
What does the future hold? Stay tuned for an unexpected outcome in Part 3.