易富贤Yi Fuxian《大国空巢》

Famed Chinese demographer Yi Fuxian recently wrote for The Diplomat on the effects of a cross-strait war on demography. He contended that one way to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is by putting the demographic issue front and center — last year total births in the PRC, he said, receded to levels not seen since 1762. Yi observes that Taiwan’s current fertility rate is already lower than Ukraine’s — a nation at war that is refusing to send its young into battle — and that its “demographic crisis suggests that Taiwan’s technological importance will rapidly decline, and its defense will become increasingly dependent on the United States.” He notes that low-fertility countries face slumping innovation, because of the lack of young people to staff and grow their technology industries. It is not difficult to read into Yi’s analysis and see that Taiwan has already peaked. But Yi goes on, relentlessly. Occupation of Taiwan by the PRC would have effects similar to its occupation of Hong Kong: declining birth rates and population flight. With Taiwan, the effects would be much worse, as the effects of sluggish population growth would likely precede PRC occupation. The PRC’s population too is in decline, and it’s likely that a young person reading these words will live long enough to see the US host a larger population than the PRC. Nor would the effects be limited to the nations involved. Yi says that economic dislocations, including inflation, caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reverberated across Europe, lowering birth rates in Poland and Germany. The PRC will export whatever economic problems it incurs, and it is one of the world’s leading trading economies. But here in Taiwan we are so advanced, we don’t even need a war to achieve these effects.