DEMOGRAPHICS IS DESTINY: China has lost 41 million workers — almost the size of Germany’s workforce — in 3 years. “The data stems from a rapid rise in the number of people retiring, likely raising pressure on Beijing to accelerate unpopular plans to raise official retirement ages The drop reflects factors such as higher youth unemployment due to the pandemic as well as a shrinking number of people in the ‘classic age group of the working-age population,’ said Stuart Gietel-Basten, a demographer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.”

That last group is the one that matters. Young people can be enticed to work once they get hungry enough and the retirement age can always be raised to keep older workers in the workforce longer.

But when the cohort of working-age people is shrinking, as it is in China, you’ve got a real problem.