China’s Achilles Heel: A Comparison With America Reveals A Deep Flaw In China’s Model Of Growth -- The Economist
LIKE the hero of “The Iliad”, China can seem invincible. In 2010 it overtook America in terms of manufactured output, energy use and car sales. Its military spending has been growing in nominal terms by an average of 16% each year for the past 20 years. According to the IMF, China will overtake America as the world’s largest economy (at purchasing-power parity) in 2017. But when Thetis, Achilles’s mother, dipped her baby in the river Styx to give him the gift of invulnerability, she had to hold him somewhere. Alongside the other many problems it faces, China too has its deadly point of unseen weakness: demography.
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My Comment: I remember reading a decade or two ago that China's long term goal (for the 22nd century) was to have a population between 500,000,000 to 600,000,000 citizens. It was calculated that for China this was the optimum number to achieve a standard of living comparable to the West, and still able to sustain it's environment. If the above statistical trends are to believe, China is well on its way to accomplish this goal.
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