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The US government launched a social media propaganda campaign in the Philippines in the spring of 2020, according to a recent Reuters report that cast doubt on the effectiveness of the Covid pleasure help China had delivered.

Under the pithy slogan# Chinaangvirus (# ChinaIsTheVirus ), these fake accounts explicitly and repeatedly doubted the effectiveness of China’s Sinovac Covid vaccine, in some cases calling the vaccine “fake”. In some cases, it suggested that the disease’s nature was all the necessary proof to make suspicion of the vaccination, whose origin was also in China.

The reasoning may be obscure, but the mood seemed to relate. At first, the Philippines struggled enormously with immunization uptake; only about a third of the population vaccinated itself over the first eight month of its supply.

This was n’t the only such campaign. The military mental operations staff apparently expanded its frontiers to the Middle East and Central Asia from its operations gateway in Tampa, Florida.

In these instances, it furthered the myth that pork jello was present in the Covid vaccinations from both China and Russia. More than 150 Facebook and Twitter accounts repeatedly stated that Sinovac and Sputnik V were no kosher. Do not get the vaccination.

Almost everyone who asked to comment on this history condemned the motion, citing both the immediate destructive result this strategy may have had on Covid illness severity and death rates during the pandemic and its wider effect of encouraging vaccine hesitancy in general. As expected and truly, as appropriate, and almost everyone who asked to comment on it.

Some people were shocked that the US would support such a plan, but others pointed out that this situation had already occurred and had occurred recently.

Not the first day

A CIA-run operation was launched in 2011 to gather DNA from Osama bin Laden’s relatives compound in a neighborhood of Abbottabad, Pakistan. However, it was so misrepresented as a hepatitis B vaccination strategy that concerns were raised right away.

The battle immediately moved from a relatively weak area of the city, where pylori B immunization was a fair undertaking, to the wealthier suburb where Bin Laden lived, an entirely unlikely location for a hepatitis B vaccination drive, not to mention that vaccinators failed to return with the necessary next dose.

Scenarios like these surely drive vaccine hesitancy. Sometimes they even seed violence.

The Taliban issued a fatwa against vaccination programs in response to the CIA’s sham vaccination campaign, and various localities in their area prohibited vaccination teams from entering.

As Lawrence Gostin, an American law professor, has described, vaccination campaign workers in the area ( often women ) were attacked and even killed.

The CIA agreed in 2014 to stop using vaccine programs as a cover because of public health leaders ‘ pressure. Perhaps the Pentagon did n’t get the memo. Although, even if it had, it seems likely that those directing the Covid vaccine disinformation campaign would have gone ahead, anyway.

According to military news outlets, the Pentagon” stands by” its activities. Its justification is that the campaign was merely a response to China’s own disinformation campaign, which suggested America was to blame for the virus ‘ spread.

This admission makes a context clear in which to comprehend the significance of these interventions. Vaccins have long had a political significance that almost outweighs their significance as agents of health prevention.

From the days of the 19th- century European empires, vaccines were lauded for their effectiveness as agents of colonialism. They made it simple to incorporate” Western” medicine into colonial holdings, displacing traditional indigenous medicine, and they also strengthened a relationship between colonizers and colonized people.

Vaccine diplomacy

By the 20th century, and especially during the Cold War period, “vaccine diplomacy” rendered a similar relationship, now not between colonized and colonizer but between so- called” client states” and the behemoths of the geopolitical order – chief among them the US and Soviet Union.

Though vaccine diplomacy has positive valences, as an antidote, for example, to vaccine nationalism, it has an explicit dark side, where the price for receiving vaccines on the part of a client state is “policy concessions and favorable geopolitical reconfigurations”.

During the 1958 smallpox epidemic in Pakistan, both the US and USSR rushed to provide aid. Without a doubt, humanitarianism played a role, but the risks were also the geopolitical advantages a foothold there would bring. Vaccines frequently cost a lot of money.

And that’s what we’ve seen over the Covid era as well, as Russia and China especially raced to supply vaccines “in exchange”, as one commentator put it,” for favorable foreign policy concessions”.

The Pentagon’s actions in the Philippines, where the US perceived China as pursuing the Philippines with Covid aid, are clearly explained by this context. This was deemed inacceptable because it serves as the US’s crucial military base of operations and because it is close to China.

The heightened attention to dis- and misinformation in recent years has rendered the significance of the Pentagon’s disinformation campaign, like the CIA’s sham vaccination drive, too narrowly. When disseminated in terms of misinformation, conspiracy theories, or in terms of science or medical literacy, vaccine hesitancy is poorly defined in these situations.

Instead, the global context’s long history of vaccines has made vaccines just one more potent illustration of the injustices caused by the yawning power imbalances of the world order.

After all, the CIA’s sham campaign did n’t start vaccine hesitancy in Pakistan, just as the CIA’s sham campaign did n’t start with America’s disinformation campaign. We need to take a much longer view if we want to start putting a dent in global vaccine confidence.

Caitjan Gainty is Senior Lecturer in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, King’s College London

This article was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Residents of the European Union ( EU) cast ballots to elect a new European Parliament between June 6 and 9.

In advance of a far-right breakthrough, there were concerns that this might happen, which was surprising given the recent political success of extreme nationalist, conservative, and elitist parties, many of whom had xenophobic tendencies and were fascist or inspiration.

Six of the 27 EU states – Italy, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, and the Czech Republic – have much- right parties in state. Sweden’s majority government relies on the assistance of the republican Sweden Democrats, the next- largest pressure in Parliament.

In the Netherlands, the Partij pro de Vrijheid ( PVV ) of Geert Wilders won 37 votes in the 150- chair Parliament after a battle filled with racism and extra- Islam attitude.

His political constituency is substantially larger than those of the liberals of former prime minister Mark Rutte and the red/green empire of European Commissioner Frans Timmermans, who won 24 and 25 chairs, both. At the time of the German elections, Wilders was occupied forming the most correct- wing authorities in his country’s current history.

Although the Netherlands is a relatively modest nation, the extreme-right’s rise in popularity also raised concerns in big European nations. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, a group that traces its origins back to the totalitarian movement of Benito Mussolini, has been in power since October 2022.

The Rassemblement National of Marine Le Pen topped the pre-election polls in France, while the AfD, Alternative für Deutschland, the extreme right army in Germany, constantly placed third in elections ahead of any of the three controlling events.

The results of the German election confirmed this continent-wide accomplishment of far-right parties. More than 28 % of the vote was cast in favor of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance group, which received just half as many seats, humiliated Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, which was the party of choice for almost one in three citizens. In Germany, the AfD won almost 16 %.

Although it may be less impressive than the extreme-right in Italy and France, the Liberal Party, and the Social Democrats are the only three remaining members of the current customers light coalition.

However, has the extraordinary proper actually taken control of the European Parliament? No truly.

Their political achievement in a number of nations are obvious, as the illustrations of Italy, France and Germany have currently illustrated. Standard centrist parties have suffered the most from the rise of the far-right. The Greens and Liberals each lost roughly one-fourth of their chairs in the European Parliament. The Social Democrats seem to be firm, though, losing just four seats.

However, the center-right European People’s Party ( EPP ) Group is even expanding and continues to be by far the largest group in the European Parliament. Collectively, these four traditional social groups also have a lot in the European Parliament.

Besides, although the severe- right parties did make progress in the June 2024 elections, they are utterly divided among themselves on important issues such as monetary policy, international relations, and EU integration. For instance, while some advocates a complete withdrawal from the EU, another favor renegotiating the terms of membership.

As a result of these groups, there are two political parties that contain much- right events. On the one hand, there are the right- nationalist European Conservatives and Reformists, dominated by the Fratelli d’Italia and Poland’s Prawo i Sprawiedliwość ( PiS ) Party.

On the other hand, there’s the even- right Identity and Democracy Group, whose members include France’s National Rally but also the Hungarian Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs and Geert Wilders’s PVV. The AfD was a part of this organization up until it was expelled weeks before the European elections in response to a number of scandals.

There are also far-right organizations that do not belong to any of those parliamentary groups because they are detained or have already been expelled.

When they left the center-right European People’s Party in 2021, Hungary’s Fidesz party grew to be the largest among them. There’s also a whole range of smaller parties. Since it is unaffiliated with any parliamentary group, the AfD recently joined their ranks.

There are two reasons, therefore, why the extreme- right is not able to dominate the European Parliament. On the one hand, the centrist parties, and especially the EPP Group, remain relatively strong. Besides, the far- right groups are too divided among themselves to become dominant.

The concern that fringe, extreme-right parties may take control of European mainstream politics seems unfounded, at least for the moment. Nevertheless, the influence of the extreme- right is growing undeniably. The real danger might be caused by the tense distinctions between the far-right and mainstream parties.

We have recently seen how center-right extreme political parties have started to imitate center-right parties in exchange for a seat at the table, especially if they can join the government. In addition, Giorgia Meloni’s party is the only of the three major far-right parties in Italy to support NATO and support Ukraine without being contradictory.

Once in government, she became an outspoken supporter of military support. Geert Wilders, from his side, was ready to swallow much of his extreme party program in exchange for his ascension to government.

The French Rassemblement National is also changing its name, and rallies featuring slick firebrand Jordan Bardella do not resemble Jean-Marie Le Pen’s, the party’s founder ,’s nostalgic National Front meetings.

The distinctions between the extreme right and the mainstream have also gotten blurred. The center-right is also slowly but surely moving to the right. The new migration pact, which is defended by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and includes measures previously supported by the far right such as stricter deterrence through border control and stricter asylum procedures, shows the shift of center-right parties to the right.

Likewise, it also reinforces the extreme right’s framing of migration as a threat to European values. The real danger, therefore, might not be that of a takeover of European politics by extreme- right parties but of the alliance between the old center- right with the “new”, supposedly more moderate, extreme right.

Therefore, the only way to stop the rise of the extreme right is to be sought in the left of the political spectrum rather than in the center. Because of its commitment to inclusive and egalitarian policies, which directly oppose the far right’s exclusionary and nationalist rhetoric, the left is positioned to defeat the far right.

However, the left is also divided and is missing a clear strategy. Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht in Germany, a new phenomenon, combines restrictive immigration policies with a more progressive economic program, even though they received a 6.2 % vote in the European Parliamentary elections, which was lower than expected.

La France Insoumise ( France ), the Kommounistikó Kómma Elládas ( Greece ), and Partij van de Arbeid van België/Parti du Travail de Belgique ( Belgium ) scored well, winning the support of some 10 % of their countries ‘ electorate. The left is also displaying resilience in other nations.

In the end, these parties and the social movements they are rooted in will have to provide an answer to the rise of the far-right in Europe.

Wim De Ceukelaire, a member of the People’s Health Movement’s global steering council, is an activist for social and health issues. He is the co- author of the second edition of” The Struggle for Health: Medicine and the Politics of Underdevelopment” with David Sanders and Barbara Hutton.

This article was produced by Globetrotter and is kindly reprinted here with permission.

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According to a top aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine has strongly ruled out any agreements in its conflict with Russia.

Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian government’s chief of staff, said that while Kiev welcomed advice on how to approach a” only peace”, Ukraine is” certainly ready to go to the bargain for the very critical issues and beliefs … freedom, freedom, democracy, territorial integrity, sovereignty”.

Yermak’s remarks came a moment after Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, suggested that Kiev may agree to a ceasefire with Moscow. Orban, who is well-known for being close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and who has only assumed the role of the rotating presidency of the European Council, brought up the idea during his first war visit to Kiev on July 2.

Orban has expressed the most receptivity toward the EU’s leaders when it comes to the country’s financial and military aid for Ukraine. He played a significant role in putting off the signing of the 50 billion euro ( US$ 54 billion ) aid package for several months earlier this year.

However, the EU just agreed to a bilateral security agreement with Zelensky while he was in Brussels on June 27 despite Orban’s reservations.

According to the terms of the agreement,” the European Union and its Member States will help to security pledges to Ukraine, which will help Ukraine defend itself, resist collapse work, and hinder acts of aggression in the future,” along with colleagues.

The EU package is the latest of 20 for diplomatic agreements, including with the US and major European powers. However, they fall short of offering real security guarantees, even though they represent a show of support for Ukraine.

Nothing of Kiev’s partners are willing to send troops to the defense of the nation, mainly because it views this as a means of a full-scale conflict between Russia and NATO.

So, it’s unlikely that any of these security arrangements will stop Putin from starting his anger. They are, however, not at all inefficient or pointless. They provide ten- yr commitments to educate and equip Ukraine’s military forces, to improve the country’s defense business base and lead to its financial recovery.

They also stress the need for sanctions against Moscow to be in place, as well as the need for Russian leaders to be held responsible, and that they should also be extended. All of this signals to the West that Ukraine’s lovers are serious about supporting them.

Beyond the symbolic significance of the numerous agreements, they have also had beneficial, useful effects on Ukraine. Kiev’s ground rude last month may have failed to conquer little place, but Ukraine’s forces have decimated the Russian Black Sea fleet. It has had to move to locations on the Soviet island from Sevastopol, where it had traditionally been.

This has made it safer for Kiev to establish a safe maritime trade corridor in the northern Black Sea, facilitating its agricultural exports, and reduced the risk of Russian forces landing on Ukrainian shores of the Black Sea.

Similar to this, Ukrainian drones have been able to attack Russian military installations, provide routes, and energy infrastructure it. Ukraine’s standing on the ground has gradually improved as a result of less restrictions on the use of advanced defense arsenals against Soviet territory.

This can, and should, not detract from the fact that Russia has made gains in the area conflict and continues to do so while even targeting Ukraine’s vital national network. But it does suggest that for as long as Western help is timely, it is doubtful that Putin’s aggression may succeed.

All gaze on Washington

Despite its bravery on the ground, Ukraine is still far from establishing a clear path to victory. Moscow’s sector is still strong, and Moscow is still mobilizing more troops than Kiev, and its alliances with Iran, North Korea, and China provide it with significant economic, military, and diplomatic support.

How long will Russia be able to maintain this at least relative strength position? But neither is it clear that Ukraine’s situation will continue to improve.

A Donald Trump return to the White House after the US presidential elections in November 2024, which is currently looking more likely, would bring with it a resurgence of Trump’s so-called” America first” foreign policy.

The US would then likely try to persuade Ukraine and its other Western allies to agree to negotiated terms.

Kiev would find itself back where it was a decade ago if there were no real, hard security guarantees for Ukraine in such a settlement. Faced with Russian occupation of Crimea and a sizable portion of eastern Ukraine, it had to rely on a worthless “agreement” with Russia and no assurances against further Russian aggression.

But this is n’t a foregone conclusion, whatever the outcomes of November’s presidential election in the US. Instead, the numerous security agreements that Ukraine has signed over the past few months also allow for a different future.

With Western assistance, Kiev can demonstrate the futility of Russian aggression by regaining more territory and providing its population and infrastructure with more effective air defenses.

Russian military bases will benefit from Western military aid and the right to attack them, which will help to obliterate the supply lines that have allowed Russia to win on the battlefield.

Putin may not appear to be the kind of winner Trump prefers to support in this situation. Over the next six or so months, Ukraine’s Western partners will have an opportunity to increase and strengthen their support for Kiev, which may prove to be a winning strategy in a war of attrition after all.

Stefan Wolff is Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

The Conversation has republished this article under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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As both foe countries battle it out to develop arms with an increasingly destructive force, North Korea’s recent testing of nuclear weapons, with at least one capable of carrying a” super- large warhead,” has raised new concern in neighboring South Korea.

According to many media reports citing North Korean military options, North Korea launched at least three missiles carrying fake warheads in late June. According to the reports, Pyongyang promised “offensive and mind-boggling” reactions to new US military training with South Korea and Japan. &nbsp,

According to the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA ), North Korea had the ability to successfully test a multiple-waffen system that could release three independently targeted warheads and a decoy.

But, 38 North says that North Korean military film suggests that one of the rockets good malfunctioned at an altitude of 100 meters, raising uncertainties about North Korea’s statements and capabilities.

Despite the likely setback, the tests show North Korea’s ongoing commitment to developing sophisticated missile technology, including multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles ( MIRV ) missiles, 38 North said in an analysis of the tests.

38 North points out that some of the tests involved a new payload section and what appeared to be the initial stage of a Hwasong- 16 solid-propeller intermediate-range ballistic missile ( IRBM ) launch. According to the 38 North research, this was the first time North Korea had mentioned several warhead advancement since January 2021.

The tests, according to 38 North, may eventually lead to the use of more sophisticated and possibly weakening military technology in the field. Because North Korea is able to increase the number of scalable weapons for a given range of weapons and missiles, this could further aggravate regional security relationships.

Despite North Korea’s new MIRV test, Pyongyang is still far from mastering the systems, Choe Sang- Hun claims in a June 26, 2024 New York Times article. The writer adds that condition media altered images of one of the tests while claiming there was “deception and understatement” in KCNA’s news about the assessments.

He points out that South Korean authorities flagged one of the tests involving an reported hypersonic missile as a loss, with the weapon apparently exploding over North Korean waters after traveling 240 meters.

Choe points out that Pyongyang has not yet demonstrated that it can design a weapon that could endure reentry into the environment and present a credible threat to the US, let alone launch advanced MIRV-tipped missiles, despite the fact that they have long been on North Korea’s wish list of weapons.

Despite North Korea’s visible MIRV check loss, it does get a prospect helping hand from Russia, its longstanding Cold War supporter. Russia has changed since the start of the Ukraine war to potentially affecting international efforts to control Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs by becoming a reluctant executioner of sanctions against North Korea.

Last month, the two monarchies made a strategic alliance. Although the relationship appears to avoid missile and nuclear weapons technologies markets, the possibility of such transfers may be discounted.

Russia has used North Korean nuclear weapons against Ukraine, according to Asia Times ‘ report from last month, and Pyongyang may have exported more than 5 million artillery shell to Russia to help with the country’s weapons deficit on the front lines. In trade, North Korea could get from Moscow terribly needed energy supplies, food aid and many- desired missile technology.

In contrast to conventional missiles that only have one warhead, MIRVs were developed in the 1960s to allow a missile to carry several nuclear weapons to various targets. Although the early MIRVs were not intended to penetrate missile defenses, they are much more difficult to intercept than conventional missiles.

In November 2023, the Asia Times reported that MIRVs can be incredibly unstable for strategic security because they favor first strikes because they can hit multiple targets at once.

MIRVs permit states to launch multiple warheads at a single target, with the exception of a single warhead the size that causes more harm. Additionally, MIRVs make it easier to defeat missile defense systems.

Additionally, MIRVs increase the likelihood that small and medium-sized nuclear arsenals can be easily targeted and destroyed in a first strike, leading to a significant capacity loss with each destroyed launch platform.

MIRVs compel nuclear-armed nations to increase and disperse their arsenals to ensure a second-strike capability. Additionally, MIRVs require the manufacturing of additional nuclear warheads for missile deployment.

North Korea had previously claimed to have tested for hypersonic weapons, with the exception of MIRVs.

North Korea tested its Hwasong- 16B hypersonic IRBM in April 2024, according to an article in Asia Times that made a thinly veiled allusion to the US, South Korea, and Japan. North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un referred to the missile as a crucial component of the nation’s nuclear deterrent against its “enemies.”

The missile’s 600-kilometer flight was confirmed by South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, but North Korea was accused of exaggerating its capabilities. Nevertheless, they acknowledged that North Korea’s missile capabilities were improving.

North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is highly dependent on missiles because it lacks sophisticated aircraft or submarines to launch them. South Korean officials claim Pyongyang is far from succeeding despite developing solid-fuel missiles that are easier to conceal, move, and launch and having been testing hypersonic missile technology.

North Korea has a history of nuclear weapons, with Pyongyang continuing to develop its missile and nuclear programs despite having one of the world’s poorest and most heavily sanctioned economies.

North Korea can use its nuclear weapons to obstruct the logic of South Korea, Japan, and the US by threatening a direct attack on the US, which would turn off the latter three when they engage in joint military action.

The Kim dynasty is still in power thanks to North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, which is only made up by Supreme Leader Kim. That raises the possibility of nuclear retaliation in the event that the Kim regime is threatened or there is nuclear instability after it collapses.

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In conversations about China’s market, the issue of populations comes up quite a lot. In 2022, China’s population&nbsp, began to decrease&nbsp, ( and coincidentally, India’s population&nbsp, surpassed China’s ). The government’s fertility rate, which had already fallen below replacement rates years previously, &nbsp, fell suddenly late, to only 1.09&nbsp, — one of the lowest rates in the world, and also lower than Japan.

This is prompting a lot of hands- shaking about the future of China’s business, both from citizens within China and from unusual spectators. For instance, &nbsp, how’s a phrase in the WSJ:

” As the population mountains, China is showing signs of Japanification”, Yin Jianfeng, deputy director of the National Institution for Finance and Development, a express- backed consider container, wrote in an essay published in June. Yin urged the Chinese government to invest more in education and child rearing to prevent Japan’s demise, which has endured centuries of stagnation.

These ‘s&nbsp, The Analyst:

China’s economy threats shrinking, also, as a result. The state sensations a near-imminent disaster because it has a lot of attention ahead, and China is getting older before it becomes wealthy. In 2008, when Japan’s people started to fall, its GDP per person was previously about$ 47, 500 in today’s money. China’s is only$ 21, 000. Less of that money will be available for the working generation to eat or invest because more of it is spent on preserving older citizens.

And here’s the most severe post I could discover, from&nbsp, The Conversation:

As lower production begins to change production in certain sectors, China may be forced to raise imports to meet the demand in those sectors, which could have a significant impact on innovation and innovation, which could further reduce productivity. &nbsp, New ideas…drive economic development. The labor size has an impact on innovation because as the number of employed people shrinks, the lake of fresh ideas shrinks. If population growth is bad or at zero, the understanding behind those suggestions stagnates.

Additionally, there is proof that the highest peak of a person’s modern activities and academic output occurs between the ages of 30 and 40. Current demographic trends are known to stifle technological advancements and innovation in China. This reduces the economy’s vitality and causes slower economic growth.

Then, I absolutely&nbsp, do &nbsp, think&nbsp, this is a concern for China in the long term. In fact, China is far from unique in this regard — every developed country is aging rapidly, and most developing countries are n’t far behind.

And there really&nbsp, are &nbsp, adverse effects to population ageing. In this post, I addressed those issues.

In fact, the shrinking of the population is n’t really the problem — it’s the&nbsp, aging. Working people are under a lot of financial strain as a result of rising old-age dependency rates, and an aging workforce likely reduces innovation and productivity development. This is true despite technology. A world where younger people must work harder and harder all over the world will be a universe where old people will be the most prevalent.

But in the short term, I think the catastrophizing over China’s populations is overdone. Americans who are desperate to find a reason to ignore China’s dynamic threat might be drawn to the country’s lower fertility. But China’s economic might is not going to go “poof” and disappear from population aging, in fact, as I’ll explain, it probably wo n’t suffer significant problems from aging until the second half of this century.

However, there’s an even greater danger that China’s leaders will stress over the country’s demographics and do something really impulsive. In response to my former Bloomberg colleague Hal Brands, who claimed that China may start a war in Asia in the coming years out of concern that its influence will decline if it waits any longer. This is similar to how Germany went to war in 1914 because its leaders believed their window was closing. That worry is unfounded, as I’ll show. But it would n’t be the first&nbsp, rash blunder that Xi Jinping has made.

Therefore, understanding the non-epidemic nature of China’s demographic situation would be beneficial for both Americans and Chinese citizens.

China has a baby bulge in the pipeline

The first and most significant factor in China’s demographics is that there are many young people, between the ages of 5 and 15, who will relieve demographic pressure in the upcoming years.

Wikipedia has a good&nbsp, animated population pyramid&nbsp, for China, with data taken from UN forecasts. Here’s what the pyramid looks like for 2024. Generation labels, roughly corresponding to the similar generations in the United States, have been added to the graph.

As you can see, China’s current young working generation — the Zoomers — are a small generation. But the generation younger than that — the Alphas, currently aged 5 to 15 — are a bigger generation than the Zoomers.

China’s Alphas are not a true “baby boom” in the classic sense — there was no surge in fertility rates 5 to 15 years ago. Instead, the Alphas are a&nbsp, demographic echo&nbsp, of the large Millennial generation, which is itself an echo of China’s extremely large Baby Boom generation. The US had a fertility rate of 3.5 during its Baby Boom, &nbsp, China’s was over 6. China is a major Alpha country because there were so many Boomers in the 1960s.

Anyway, as the Alphas reach working age over the next decade, they will stabilize China’s demographics. China’s working- age population is actually projected to&nbsp, increase&nbsp, over the next few years, before beginning a slow decline:

As Charlie Robertson&nbsp, has shown, this will stabilize China’s dependency ratio at a very favorable level through the end of the decade:

China’s dependency ratio in 2030 will still be as good as Japan’s at the height of its economic miracle. Only by mid- century will China’s ratio deteriorate to the level of Japan’s in 2020.

So aging basically wo n’t be a problem for China’s workforce until mid- century. Around 2050, things start to look worse. No significant young generation will be joining China’s large Millennial generation as they age out of the workforce:

This forecast assumes, of course, that the post- pandemic plunge in Chinese fertility rates does n’t bounce back within the next decade. That remains to be seen. But whatever happens, China’s demographic structure is unlikely to have major problems for a quarter century.

China has the ability to make up for aging in the near future.

Even though China’s demographics do n’t get severe until 2050 or so, it will still experience gentle aging over the next 26 years. Its median age is expected to increase from 39.5 to 50.7:

After 2027 or so, China’s working- age population will start to decline, and its dependency ratio will start to worsen.

None of this spells catastrophe, for reasons laid out in the previous section. But it does present a challenge. There are a few relatively simple policies that China can use to make up for its short-term effects of aging, fortunately.

First, and most importantly, it can&nbsp, raise the retirement age. The country currently has the world’s lowest retirement age — just 60 for men and 50- 55 for women. Simply changing this to 65 will decrease the dependency ratio significantly, and reduce the burden on working people. In fact, China reportedly&nbsp, plans to do this:

Jin Weigang, president of the Chinese Academy of Labor and Social Security Sciences, said China was eyeing a “progressive, flexible and differentiated path to raising the retirement age”, meaning that it would be delayed initially by a few months, which would be subsequently increased.

According to the Global Times, “people who are approaching retirement age will only have to delay retirement for a few months,” according to Jin. Young people may need to work a few more years, but they will also have a protracted period of adjustment and transition, he said.

China has already used the second policy to boost college enrollment, according to the report. In 2010, only 26.5 % of college- aged Chinese people were enrolled in postsecondary education, by 2023&nbsp, that increased to 60.2 %.

As every labor economist&nbsp, knows, a better- educated workforce is a more productive workforce. The Gen Xers and older Millennials who will retire in China over the next quarter century are not very well educated. The Alphas, the replacement employees, have a very high level of education. That will make up for a large portion of the population under the age of working.

China should experience few issues from the gentle demographic headwinds of the next two and a half decades because of the large youth cohort, raising the retirement age, and sending a lot more kids to college. Its leaders still need to think about the long-term demographic challenge after 2050, but the majority of its rivals are even worse off.

Overall, the idea that demographics will shift China’s position of economic and political power away from it in the coming decades seems overblown and unrealistic. The rest of the world will be concerned about more competition as a result. However, it also means that China wo n’t be able to compete internationally in the near future.

Footnote:

1 Many people will claim that China can also use automation to make up for the country’s declining human labor and move more people to cities. I’m skeptical of both of these. Regarding the first of these, &nbsp, the finding&nbsp, that aging&nbsp, decreases productivity&nbsp, holds true&nbsp, despite&nbsp, significant automation over the last few decades.

So automation helps, but it does n’t fully plug the gap yet ( though perhaps with better AI it will ). As for moving more workers to cities, official statistics claim that China’s urbanization rate lags that of other developed countries, but&nbsp, satellite evidence shows&nbsp, that China is already more densely urbanized than Germany.

So I do n’t see much upside there. But in any case, I do n’t think China&nbsp, needs&nbsp, these factors to offset aging over the next 25 years — increased education and a higher retirement age should be enough to take care of it.

This&nbsp, article&nbsp, was first published on Noah Smith’s Noahpinion&nbsp, Substack and is republished with kind permission. Read the original here and become a Noahopinion&nbsp, subscriber&nbsp, here.

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