You know who should be terrified by that rate? Us.

China's one-child policy is finally starting to hit, and its population is actively shrinking. At the moment China is not in a crisis yet, as its GDP is still growing quite well - so clearly there's plenty of economic activity.

So if a lot of old people are now retiring, and the young can't find jobs, who is doing the work? China is still a factory powerhouse, so who's screwing together the gadgets?

The answer is that they have been pushing heavily for automation, and it is working. Our biggest chance of beating China on a free market was domestic automation versus cheap overseas labor - but they have gotten there first. And that should be absolutely terrifying you.

It doesn’t sound like their society or their economy is collapsing.

Like ours would if we had 15% youth unemployment.

Maybe we’re projecting our values?

The USA has sold its tech base off to enshittifiers. They defunded and destroyed most critical tech research.

https://www.dongascience.com/en/news/75540

China leads in 66 of 74 critical tech areas. The USA has a whopping... 8.

But hey, the USA's MBA "leadership" figures how much to worsen everything and extract more profit. I guess that counts for "innovation", in the Private Equity books.