Patrick Cox: China and the Consequences of Authoritarian Malthusianism

India’s population will soon not only be larger but much younger than China’s.

by Patrick Cox
November 20, 2015

Economists and geopolitical experts around the world pay a lot of attention to the Chinese economy these days, with very good reason. Today, I’d like to look past the immediate future to speculate about the ways life extension and reduced birthrates will affect Asia over the next several decades.

35 years ago, China’s communist leadership decided to blame the country’s economic problems—actually caused by massive top-down intervention in markets—on population growth. Facing the shortages that inevitably occur when the market’s distributed decision making is replaced by central planning, the government imposed mandatory population controls. Though often brutal, these policies were cheered by those who believed that overpopulation would yield global apocalypse in the near future. Chinese leaders promised a population accustomed to much larger families that reduced birthrates would produce an economy so powerful that the world would bend to its will.

Given Ch…