In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party devised an artful strategy to replace the United States as the world’s superpower by 2049. But after more than three decades of a draconian one-child policy and a coming demographic plunge, China’s ambitious “hundred-year marathon” may never reach the finish line.
Despite a slight increase in the number of births in 2024, China’s population declined for a third consecutive year. Its fertility rate is just 1.0, meaning the present generation of Chinese newborns will be only half the size of its parents’ generation, absent a spontaneous and momentous natal surge.
New research suggests that the fertility rate of 2.1, often cited by demographers as required for long-term population stability, is misguided. A study published in PLOS One reports that 2.7 is a more accurate replacement-level fertility rate to “avoid extinction.”
According to the researchers, the 2.1 figure doesn’t take into account population “stochasticity,” defined as random differences in the number of children people have, sex ratio imbalances, and mortality rates. The “extinction threshold” is reduced if the sex-ratio imbalance is biased toward females.
This has major implications for China, with a surplus of 35 million men due to the Chinese cultural preference for sons and the disproportionate abortion of girls. China would have to nearly triple its fertility rate to sustain its population — and in a relatively short period of time.
But Chinese women’s desired fertility makes a demographic collapse inevitable, regardless of Beijing’s frantic attempts to boost fecundity. Even after the one-child policy was overturned in 2016, only a minority (39 percent) of Chinese women of childbearing age wished to have a second child.
Young Chinese increasingly describe themselves as “the last generation,” a phrase that went viral during the COVID pandemic when a young man who refused quarantine was threatened by police that his punishment would affect his family for three generations.
“We are the last generation, thank you,” the young man replied.
China is betting on artificial intelligence and big data to mitigate the economic effects of low fertility, but a technological “solution” to an aging population is one-sided since robots don’t consume or pay taxes. While it may be unwise to forecast China’s imminent economic downfall (such predictions date back to at least 1990), a demographic nosedive is a question of when, not if.
China will lose at least half of its population by 2100 — a modest assessment by the U.N., which often underestimates population decline. Supporting the elderly with fewer resources to extract from a shrinking working-age population will pose significant challenges for the CCP. Unlike Western governments, its restrictive immigration policies don’t enable many newcomers to attain citizenship and temporarily offset its low birth rate.
China is already experiencing a slowdown in GDP growth, which may worsen as the population decreases, especially under the Chinese model of “state capitalism” that hinders innovation and productivity.
Immigration provides the U.S. with a strategic advantage in this new era of great power competition, but a convenient sit-back-and-wait geopolitical approach to China is insufficient and dangerous.
Chinese intellectuals and political leaders have long held a social Darwinist and zero-sum mentality regarding international relations. Yan Fu, who translated British eugenicist Thomas Henry Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics into Mandarin, wrote that “the weak are devoured by the strong, and the stupid enslaved by the wise, so that, in the end, those who survive … are most fit for their time, their places, and their human situation.”
Mao Zedong viewed China’s socialist cause in Darwinist terms and invoked Charles Darwin to justify certain policies. “Socialism, in the ideological struggle, now enjoys all the conditions to triumph as the fittest,” he said.
As the Chinese people wither away, the CCP could become aggressive to “prove” China is fit to survive and remain a dominant world power.
When desperation sets in, such bellicosity should be expected from authoritarian regimes. Vladimir Putin has repeatedly sounded the alarm about Russia’s dwindling birth rate, warning, “Russia’s fate and its historical outlook depends on how many of us there are.”
With Russia’s population expected to wane by as much as 50 percent by 2100, demographic anxiety may have been a factor in Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. The Russian military’s systematic kidnapping, deportation, re-education, and adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families is potential evidence of such motivations.
The CCP could follow a similar playbook, which is why the U.S. must prioritize its national security, prosecute intellectual property theft from China, and strengthen its relationship with Asia-Pacific allies, particularly through free trade agreements. President Trump’s withdrawal from the Trans–Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, which sought to contain China’s economic and geopolitical influence, was likely a missed opportunity.
If the U.S. maintains a commitment to free enterprise, open trade, legal and merit-based immigration, and preserves its constitutional order, the 21st century could be the second American century. We may be an empire in decline, with astronomical debt, political polarization, and a culture in crisis, but even the fall of the Roman Empire took centuries — and it never collapsed entirely. Byzantium survived another millennium, and the Western half rose phoenix-like from its ashes into something more holy.
A depopulating world might become increasingly hostile, unstable, and less affluent, but there is hope that freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and human dignity will triumph once again.
Aidan Grogan is a history PhD candidate at Liberty University, a contributor with Young Voices, and the donor communications manager at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER). His work has been published in The Daily Wire, The Federalist, Law & Liberty, RealClearMarkets, and AIER’s The Daily Economy. Follow him on X @AidanGrogan.
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