I’m saying that CPC already took anti-worker neoliberal measures like raising the retirement age therefore it should not be trusted to not take further anti-worker moves like enabling automation for the sake of profits and growth.

They cheered on Deepseek even though AI is bad. Now nobody should give them the benefit of doubt naively thinking “humanoid robots” will also not be cheered on when the porkys are all happy China found “new source of sustainable growth” or some garbage and in fact its just capitalist ghoul shit with a red paint.

The working age population is dropping like as expected from an industrialized nation. Source MR’s blog

The 15-64 population is stagnating. As you can check from every metric here, its not even “news” this is what is happening since 2010.

The difference was the rate of urbanization, the massive infrastructure projects brought a lot of people from the rural areas into the cities and industrial centers, counteracting this population issue.

As you know though this is not enough on its own, its why China has turned to mainstream neoliberal consumption incentives last year. China is trying to boost consumption because their neoliberal advisors think this is the solution and the party happily accepts because there are no Marxists economists in positions of power, period.

This is quite literaly the reason they increased the retirement age which unfortunately rather than criticizing people just look away as some sort of necessary compromise, its 2025 behaving as if its 1985, smol bean China as if not China already biggest world economy and industrial power. This is a huge capitalist victory that is downplayed or ignored among pro-China circles. The CPC recycled their neoliberal excuses rather than risk economic growth. What is special about 5% a year? Does it justify neoliberal victories like this?

I do not know what your news article is meant to reference, I do not invoke liberal or “American meme” arguments. That population is an issue is undeniable. The question is entirely on what the CPC chooses to do and sadly if you want to label it doomerism than go back to the very beginning, as I said ask the CPC official here why did they raise the retirement age?

I like Michael a lot, this is what he had to say back then

But Western economists reckon that this target will not be met. First, they argue that China’s working population is falling fast and so there will not be enough cheap labour to boost output. But more output does not just depend on a rising labour force but even more on the increased productivity of that labour force. And as I have shown in previous posts, there is good reason to assume that China’s productivity of labour will rise enough to compensate for any decline in the number of workers.

The issue is he like everyone else just assumed that China will just keep doing things correctly yet fast forward not even 12 months later China is doing neoliberal consumer incentives exactly like he argued against. Barely 12 months later

Liu Qiao, dean of Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, reckons that China’s average annual TFP growth has declined from 4 per cent to 1.8 per cent between 2010 and 2019. But even on his measure, TFP growth is still higher than the US at 0.5 per cent per year for the past 20 years. If labour productivity growth stays at about 4-5% a year and TFP growth stays around 2-3% a year from hereon, then 5% real GDP growth is achievable over the rest of this decade and through the next five-year plan, even as the working population declines.

At the NPC, the Chinese leaders set the 2025 GDP growth target at “around 5%”, keeping the same pace as the prior year. Li Qiang announced plans to boost domestic demand by expanding fiscal spending. The central government will increase borrowing to do so, with the official government deficit rising to 4% of GDP, the highest ratio in 30 years.

China could combat the rise in the prices of its goods sold to the US by devaluing the yuan, but that could lead to an inflation shock. So instead the NPC is going for fiscal and monetary stimulus worth about 3% of GDP. It remains to be seen if that will boost domestic production and consumption enough to compensate for any GDP losses from trade.

Despite his optimism he did not mention the retirement age increase, Chinese AI good vs US AI bad or CPC praising “humanoid robots”. Come on we know exactly where its going now.

Expect the same Japanese cope about robot shit, but because its China we will look away. They literally doing it with Deepseek vs US. The same copium excuses will be made, “oh its just for elderly care” “oh its for just some poor village can afford more workers”, “look its not that bad because Chinese robots are actualy functional and cool and not Japanese Honda scam garbage from 1998 lol”