When Jim Rickards Said China's Population Decline Would Result In 'An Epic Collapse'

Best-selling author Jim Rickards in January warned that the declining population in China will be disastrous, terming it would be an "epic collapse."

“China's population fell in 2022. That's just a start. They will lose 600 million people by 2070. Those left will be older, and more subject to Alzheimer's and dementia. This will be an epic collapse. One more nail in the coffin of the omnipotent China myth,” Rickards had tweeted.

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The author of "The Death of Money" and "The Road to Ruin" had mentioned a New York Times article that cited the Chinese government saying 9.56 million people were born in China last year while 10.41 million people died. This was the first time that deaths had outpaced births in China since the "Great Leap Forward" — Mao Zedong’s failed economic experiment which caused widespread famine and death in the 1960s.

Statistics: According to the National Bureau of Statistics of the country, Chinese births in 2022 fell from 10.6 million in 2021, marking the sixth straight year of a fall. China’s overall population currently stands at 1.41 billion and by 2035, 400 million people in China are expected to be over the age of 60, comprising about a third of its population.

Wang Feng, a professor of sociology at the University of California had told the New York Times that “in the long run, we are going to see a China the world has never seen.” 

“It will no longer be the young, vibrant, growing population. We will start to appreciate China, in terms of its population, as an old and shrinking population,” Feng had said.

Other prominent names have also expressed their concerns. Billionaire Elon Musk in January reiterated his potential global population collapse warning. “Population collapse is an existential problem for humanity, not overpopulation!” he tweeted.

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This story was originally published on Jan. 18, 2023