>Do not downplay it

Alternatively, do not overplay it with popular but flawed Zeihan analysis.

By 2050, PRC will be replacing 300M generally unproductive, undereducated seniors with 200M new births who will be disproportionately educated. We're talking another ~100M STEM workers at current rates. All the news last few years of PRC moving up value chain, leading science and innovation indexes (controlled for quality not just citations) was built off lag effects of ~30-40MM STEM graduates from 00s-20s as result of 90s academic reforms finally delivering, only now are PhDs and R&D exploding, expect productive application to explode in next 10 followed by decades of sustained growth in every sector since PRC pop is still large enough to produce talent of roughly OECD block combined. Now augment that with aggressive automation and you have a recipe for _quality_ development. How that translates into GDP numbers is difficult to say, but it’s not just a matter of PRC growing but PRC moving up the value chain and stealing shares from existing developed incumbents, i.e. how PRC auto exports in the last few years is coming at the expense of developed country producers. PRC growing at 2% is still relative success if others grow at 0% or even contract.

>middle income trap

Even at 2% growth PRC is going to reach high income in a few years, but the trap part of middle income trap is really about being trapped in terms of industrial development for which PRC has already eclipsed in majority of sectors - at this point it's just leading edge semi conductors and commercial aviation. Nearly everything else PRC has solid footing in and continues to advance. The fundamental reality is that PRC, even with declining population, is generating 9M new bodies (while trending down), that's magnitude more than the US is projected to grow inclusive of immigration. But functionally, PRC has already escaped the actual middle income trap.

>China got old before it got rich.

Part of PRC got old before it got rich, primarily underdeveloped interior provinces who frankly never had a chance, the 600M making 2000 USD per year or ~1T of 18T economy. Coastal tier 1/2 cities (and now increasingly 3+) PRC have been rich for a while, and for the purpose of being globally competitive and productive, that's really the demographic who is going to matter.

More productive talent + less unproductive mouths to feed (less import dependency) = PRC has functionally increasingly optimal demographics for building national power relative to peers. A lot of western analysis confuses demographic decline with losing demographic dividend or stalled geopolitical competitiveness, but what PRC is going to experience is the most significant SKILLED demographic dividend in recorded history with decline in net resource dependencies, which is a recipe for building strategic power. Like population projection of PRC in 2100 is still 800M, which is 200M more than 600M US is projected to grow.

Now that doesn't mean there won't be increased economic pressures dealing with aging society, but IMO much less western analysis assumes. PRC has some of the highest household savings rates specifically because most people do not expect the state to support them with onerous welfare safety nets. The ones that will get fucked will be disproportionately already the have nots, while the high end talented tend to come from privledged backgrounds already. If anything, expect this cohort to live easier lives as 4:1 dependency ratios means wealth transfers from relatively wealthy parents/grandparents into single childs or 8:2 transfers which will likely start consumption + baby boom among high income skilled workforce couples as wealth redistributes. The poor will die as most poors have died in human history, relatively unsupported and forgotten, but in PRC case, less poor than their predecessors.

>cynic

Cynically, most of high vulnerable 80+ population are frankly expendable and not worth the 5000 RMB paxlovid course. Even at the elite level, a bunch of 80 year old tenured professors making way for new blood is a win.