Given the scale of the demographic collapse in China -- the over-reporting of girls by 100M, the situation where 20M men have no chance of the possibility of having a stable heterosexual relationship due to the lack of women, the rapidly aging population (highest in the world) that is post child bearing age -- doesn't it begin to seem reasonable the steps that the government is taking to curtail and shape public opinion?
China has no replacement generation, and they are facing internal turmoil within the next decade on a scale that has no historical precedent.
The Communist Party is the reason China is in this mess in the first place, and further control and oppression by them isn't going to magically fix it.
That's a fair observation. I'm curious though, do you have any ideas to improve the situation? What would you do if you were responsible for 1.5B people and were facing a situation where the labor force participation drops by half over the next ten years and continues to drop every year since? Will you be able to arrange for the population to be able to be fed, clothed, housed, and given medical care?
It's not possible to "magically" create several hundred million young people, communism or no, to "fix it". So what do you do?
The CCP isn't 'responsible' for the people under its boot. It is their lack of responsibility for the people of China that has led to this problem. You act like the socio-demographic situation is not the direct outcome of the policies pursued by the CPP regime.
"Will you be able to arrange for the population to be able to be fed, clothed, housed, and given medical care?"
The government of China does not do any of these things. China, despite their lip-service to historical Communist revolution, has some the worst social programs in the world.
I guess I'd try to find a comfortable place to live in exile, start pocketing cash, and figure out how to get there before the doomed ship sinks and angry mobs try to kill me.
Well, because it's a totalitarian regime, they actually don't have to do anything. The party members just live in wealth and let the others live with the problem.
That's the difference with democracy. In a democracy, the leaders have to explain themselves to the entire public. Also in a democracy, you can criticize governmental decisions, which might lead to better solutions, or even prevent them.
The solution? Make your country attractive for young Indian (and other) immigrants. Or just make the older generation "disappear". Communist seem to be especially well trained in letting people disappear.
The main propagator in the US of the Chinese demographic collapse is Peter Zeihan, who may not be the best source here. Even if some of his predictions have been right wrt Europe, he tends to have and present unsourced information for anything Asia/China related.
I've read some of his material, and have tried to find some independent sources regarding their demographics, agriculture, and imports. Those sources (via naive online search, filtered by bias) seem to line up pretty well: China's population is rapidly aging and their pyramid has inverted, China subsists on grains and pork but they must import corn to feed the hogs and struggle with outbreaks of ASF. Extreme weather (drought, rain) is ravaging their harvest. The war in Ukraine and the Russian sanctions have pushed up global fertilizer costs to which China -- the top producer -- has responded by implementing strict quotas on phosphate exports, a strange choice.
China has no replacement generation, and they are facing internal turmoil within the next decade on a scale that has no historical precedent.