What is the ultimate outcome of "Made in China"? Can China maintain a complete industrial chain indefinitely?

At the current rate of societal aging, in 24 years, the average age of China's population is highly likely to exceed 50.

You cannot expect a highly aged society to maintain its competitiveness forever.

Look at Japan today. In 1990, it was still one of the world's top five wealthiest nations. Japan also gradually understood this principle 👆 and thus, in 2005, launched a national policy shifting from "trade-oriented nation" to "investment-oriented nation".

In hindsight, this seems like a case of "foresight".

If you asked people in the Soviet Union in 1965 what the USSR would be like in 1990, no one would have predicted its dissolution. That would have seemed utterly absurd, unbelievable. On the contrary, Soviets would have painted you a rosy picture. The USSR began economic reforms in 1965, but 26 years after the reforms started, it collapsed.

You can have a rough idea of what Chinese society will be like in 2050. With the lessons from the Soviet Union and Japan, and now with AI, population projections can be made with basic accuracy using mathematical models and big data.

Don't tell me nonsense like "China exceptionalism". China, like Japan, has experienced a real estate crash, debt deflation, an aging population, declining birth rates, young people lying flat, 10 million vacant houses... Japan had all these, China has them too, and it will only be more severe. What makes China so special? Where is the exception?

In the future, China will also face pension fund depletion, local government fiscal collapse, currency devaluation...

Historically, "China exceptionalism" has appeared many times:

The "Great Leap Forward" to enter communism, trying to surpass Britain and catch up with America behind closed doors, which crashed the economy;

The "China Model" after reform and opening up, which nobody talks about now;

The One-Child Policy, which has failed;

The last instance of "China exceptionalism" was "Dynamic Zero-COVID is sustainable and must be upheld".

What was the result?

"China exceptionalism" has never yielded good results. Promoting it is tantamount to telling the world that universal demographic and economic laws do not apply to China.

China is not exceptional. If it were truly exceptional, it would be the first country in human history with a massive population to be "getting old before getting rich" and "getting into debt before getting rich".