Can't really be shocked when nation states enact laws to protect industries + workers.
To compare, 2024 (UN) fertility rates (highest-lowest):[1]
US: 1.62
Japan: 1.23
China: 1.02
ROC: 0.86
ROK: 0.75 (where an increase to 0.8 in 2025 was cause for celebration, as is a predicted increase to 0.85 by mid 2026)[2]
US: +10%
Japan: -16%
China: -8%
ROC: -6%
ROK: -12%
[2] https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2026/01/24/IVHGRT...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_and_...
China's one big advantage over other work forces is massive amounts of labor that can be directed by central planning. As their labor costs have gone up, labor intensive manufacturing has already started shifting away. When population declines cause labor costs to go even higher, they lose their advantage.
China threatened to pull rare earths from the menu which is how they beat Trump in the trade war, among other things which were not going to be sustainable aka farm stuff.
They want to take Taiwan eventually and that will cause potential confrontation.
So the key to China is that it just can't be a lynchpin for anything.
Major trading partner - yes.
Key partner for anything - no.
The US is already a material player in Chips, outside of Trump's 'knee jerk' and reactionary instinct based on 1980's geopolitics and stupid understanding of trade (aka 'importing = getting ripped off', or 'other people doing similar things = stealing from us') ... it does make sense to have material domestic capabilities.
The only place that can be more or less trusted to not play hard shenanigans is Europe. They will do their own regulatory things, and play rough with exports, but they would not threaten something hard.
Europe has underplayed the value of ASML etc..
China has also flipped from 'Quiet and Bide Time' to the opposite, and are not a nice geoplitical actor in their direct environs like S. China sea, although are relatively 'neutral' on most other things.
Best thing is to a) have 'reliable domestic capability' b) learn to build stuff, if not labour intensive ways c) don't depend on sketchy places for key things d) moslty carrots, have a big stick when needed.
China will never 'play fair' in terms of what we would consider 'fair' - they have their own views of everything - that's fine - but it just means has to be manaaged.
Also China should not have any access to data or popular social media / entertainment etc. TikTok must be locally managed, and strong data sovereignty rules also apply.
More of a 'good fences make good neighbours' think with them.
See former Aussie PM Rudd on 'Strategic Guardrails' - he has a good understanding.
This changed under Xi Jinping and no one knows what the effects will be.
> inevitable decline or elimination of China as a production and/or trading partner
I don't think this will happen anytime soon, that companies will need short-term planning.
Granted, I don't think continuing to shift to places with slave wages is a good thing overall, but we need complete factory automation to solve that problem (the problem of wanting cheap goods AND ethical labor). But the major players have seen the writing on the wall ever since covid lockdowns and have been slowly moving out of China since.
https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2024/chinas-popula...
Massive immigration (on a scale never seen in human history) would be required. I don't see that happening with one of the most xenophobic cultures on Earth.
This isn't a problem confined to China, they just have the worst numbers. The entire "first world" is facing declines of varying degrees.
This coupled with climate change is why immigration policy is probably the single most important thing for most countries right now.
It's a reason they began to be called nation-states - states without a nation backing it tended to flop, and nation's without a state tended to slowly (or quickly) be absorbed into the dominant culture.
There are roughly five working-age adults to support every retiree today. This is going to crater. United Nations projections show that by 2050, that ratio will more than double, climbing past 50%. At that point, China will have fewer than two working-age adults for every retiree. The west grew rich before growing old. China, Vietnam, Brazil are aging as middle income countries.
The one child policy was like doing speed, it temporarily freed up massive amounts of capital and labor. But China's work force peaked over a decade ago. The bill is now due, and all the those "single children" know that they are expected to support 2 parents and 4 grandparents.
Aside from the dubious wisdom of similar interventions, cruelly forcing abortions was a lot easier policy to enforce then it would be to try to shove pro-natalist policies on people increasingly overburdened with caregiving for elders because of earlier interventions.
I don't think they're foolish enough to invite the entire third world into the country to bolster low birth rates like the west does. So that leaves doing it the old fashioned way, which is a slow ship to turn around.