Can China remain a superpower as its population ages?

In 2021, China’s population hit a peak of 1.4 billion and then rapidly started to decline. This demographic picture presents enormous challenges in its own right. But Carl Minzner stresses in a new essay in Foreign Affairs that what makes China’s future “especially bleak” is the convergence of a demographic decline and political paralysis.

This, Minzner argues, is the real story of twenty-first-century China. That convergence will define Chinese foreign policy, threaten Chinese stability, and call into question the future of Chinese Communist Party rule.

Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with Minzner, a scholar of China at Fordham University and the Council on Foreign Relations, about the drivers of these demographic trends; about how and why Xi Jinping and Chinese policymakers are making the problem worse rather than better; about what those problems portend for Chinese power in the decades ahead; and about why all of this should serve as a warning for the United States.

This episode of The Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Rachel Powell, Adrian Feinberg, and Kanishk Tharoor, with audio engineering by Todd Yeager and original music by Robin Hilton. Special thanks to Irina Hogan.

Source: foreignaffairs.com