Tag: China

China’s People Problem Swings From Too Many to a ‘Decline That Sees No End’

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-people-problem-swings-from-too-many-to-a-decline-that-sees-no-end-11620903602

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Excerpt:

Births in China plunged 18% in 2020, though Covid-19 may have played a part, and, if so, fewer newborns might arrive in 2021 as well.

China will remain enormous, but the figures signal a waning of the demographic trends that came to define its modern era, with its huge working-age population spurring 40-plus straight years of economic expansion. A drop in household size, for example, to 2.6 last year from 3.1 a decade earlier, highlights the effects of the birth restrictions since about 1980.

The challenge for China now is its shrinking working-age population versus its growing elderly one, represented by only 12 million annual births, a fractional number for such a populous country.

In the latest census, 63% of Chinese were ages 15 to 59, compared with 70% in 2010, while nearly 19% in 2020 were 60 years old or above, versus 13% a decade earlier.

Author(s): James T. Areddy, Liyan Qi

Publication Date: 13 May 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Investigate the origins of COVID-19

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1

Excerpt:

As scientists with relevant expertise, we agree with the WHO director-general (5), the United States and 13 other countries (6), and the European Union (7) that greater clarity about the origins of this pandemic is necessary and feasible to achieve. We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data. A proper investigation should be transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest. Public health agencies and research laboratories alike need to open their records to the public. Investigators should document the veracity and provenance of data from which analyses are conducted and conclusions drawn, so that analyses are reproducible by independent experts.

Author(s): Jesse D. Bloom, Yujia Alina Chan, Ralph S. Baric, Pamela J. Bjorkman, Sarah Cobey, Benjamin E. Deverman, David N. Fisman, Ravindra Gupta, Akiko Iwasaki, Marc Lipsitch, Ruslan Medzhitov, Richard A. Neher, Rasmus Nielsen, Nick Patterson, Tim Stearns, Erik van Nimwegen, Michael Worobey, David A. Relman

Publication Date: 14 May 2021

Publication Site: Science

Top researchers are calling for a real investigation into the origin of covid-19

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/05/13/1024866/investigation-covid-origin-wuhan-china-lab-biologists-letter/

Excerpt:

Now, in a letter in the journal Science, 18 prominent biologists—including the world’s foremost coronavirus researcher—are lending their weight to calls for a new investigation of all possible origins of the virus, and calling on China’s laboratories and agencies to “open their records” to independent analysis.

“We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data,” the scientists write.

The letter, which was organized by the Stanford University microbiologist David Relman and the University of Washington virologist Jesse Bloom, takes aim at a recent joint study of covid origins undertaken by the World Health Organization and China, which concluded that a bat virus likely reached humans via an intermediate animal and that a lab accident was “extremely unlikely.”

Author(s): Rowan Jacobsen

Publication Date: 13 May 2021

Publication Site: MIT Tech Review

As World Runs Short of Workers, a Boost for Wages—and Inflation

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-world-runs-short-of-workers-a-boost-for-wagesand-inflation-11620824675

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The U.S. population grew 7% between 2010 and 2020, according to census results. The age breakdown isn’t yet available, but a smaller sample by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the working-age population — those 16 to 64 — grew just 3.3%. Because the share of those people working or looking for work has shrunk, the working-age labor force grew only 2%, and actually shrank last year. Some of those missing workers will return when the virus recedes. But many won’t: Baby boomer retirements have soared.

Reversing this move would require either a dramatic increase in births, which has eluded countries with more-family-friendly policies, or immigration, which is politically hard.

The demographic squeeze is far more severe in China, which admits almost no immigrants and for years limited families to one child. Tuesday, authorities said the population in China had grown just 5.4% in the past decade. The working-age population — those 15 to 59 — shrank 5%, or roughly 45 million people. When worker shortages began emerging over a decade ago, factories began moving to poorer inland provinces and then cheaper countries including Vietnam. In recent years some indicators suggest jobs are getting harder to fill, though the data might not be nationally representative.

Author(s): Greg Ip

Publication Date: 12 May 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Is China’s population shrinking?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.economist.com/china/2021/04/29/is-chinas-population-shrinking

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The Communist Party has long known that, partly as the result of its brutal birth-control policies, China’s population would soon peak and start to shrink. It has been startled, however, by how rapidly that moment has drawn near. Now, it looks as if it might have arrived.

….

There are also indications that China’s total fertility rate (the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime) has dropped faster than previously thought. Chinese planners have assumed a rate of 1.8, but some Chinese scholars (and the World Bank) say it between 1.6 and 1.7. A working paper released in March by China’s central bank suggests the rate is no more than 1.5.

Publication Date: 1 May 2021

Publication Site: The Economist

The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/

Excerpt:

A tale of two theories. After the pandemic first broke out in December 2019, Chinese authorities reported that many cases had occurred in the wet market — a place selling wild animals for meat — in Wuhan. This reminded experts of the SARS1 epidemic of 2002, in which a bat virus had spread first to civets, an animal sold in wet markets, and from civets to people. A similar bat virus caused a second epidemic, known as MERS, in 2012. This time the intermediary host animal was camels.

….

Contrary to the letter writers’ assertion, the idea that the virus might have escaped from a lab invoked accident, not conspiracy. It surely needed to be explored, not rejected out of hand. A defining mark of good scientists is that they go to great pains to distinguish between what they know and what they don’t know. By this criterion, the signatories of the Lancet letter were behaving as poor scientists: They were assuring the public of facts they could not know for sure were true.

….

One of the very few establishment scientists to have questioned the virologists’ absolute rejection of lab escape is Richard Ebright, who has long warned against the dangers of gain-of-function research. Another is David A. Relman of Stanford University. “Even though strong opinions abound, none of these scenarios can be confidently ruled in or ruled out with currently available facts,” he wrote. Kudos too to Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who told CNN on March 26, 2021 that the “most likely” cause of the epidemic was “from a laboratory,” because he doubted that a bat virus could become an extreme human pathogen overnight, without taking time to evolve, as seemed to be the case with SARS2.

Author(s): Nicholas Wade

Publication Date: 5 May 2021

Publication Site: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

China says population grew in 2020 after report of decline

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://apnews.com/article/china-census-2020-business-2dff85f90c7f1bcfb3bfa3fe7fd6ce36

Excerpt:

China’s population grew last year, the government said Thursday, following a report that a census might have found a surprise decline, possibly adding to downward pressure on economic growth.

The National Bureau of Statistics gave no details in its one-sentence statement and said the population figure would be reported later. But the unusual decision to respond to the report by The Financial Times reflected the issue’s political sensitivity.

The Financial Times said people familiar with China’s 2020 census expect it to show the population, which edged above 1.4 billion in 2019, declined for the first time since famine in 1959-61 killed millions of people.

Author(s): JOE McDONALD

Publication Date: 29 April 2021

Publication Site: Associated Press

Is China’s population growing or shrinking? It’s a touchy topic for Beijing

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://fortune.com/2021/04/30/china-population-2020-census-growing-shrinking/

Excerpt:

China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) was scheduled to release the census it conducts once every decade in early April. But in mid-April a government spokesperson said publication of the census had been delayed for an unspecified length of time to allow for “more preparation work.”

China still has not indicated when it may release the report, according to Chinese media.

But on Wednesday, the Financial Times, citing “people familiar with the research,” reported that when published the census will show that China’s population was smaller in 2020 than it was in 2019, the first year-on-year drop in over five decades. In 2019, China reported that its population surpassed 1.4 billion people for the first time, up 4.67 million from the previous year. This year, China’s population fell back down below 1.4 billion, according to the Financial Times.

Author(s): GRADY MCGREGOR

Publication Date: 30 April 2021

Publication Site: Fortune

Pfizer Identifies Fake Covid-19 Shots Abroad as Criminals Exploit Vaccine Demand

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/pfizer-identifies-fake-covid-19-shots-abroad-as-criminals-exploit-vaccine-demand-11619006403

Excerpt:

Fake shots for the pandemic can be easy to distinguish from real ones, experts said, because legitimate ones can be found for now sold only to governments, making any shots for sale on the internet counterfeit and potentially harmful.

Police in China and South Africa last month seized thousands of doses of counterfeit Covid-19 vaccines in warehouses and manufacturing plants, arresting dozens of people, according to the international police agency Interpol. Mexico also is investigating a shipment of some 6,000 doses of purported Sputnik vaccine from Russia, which were seized from a private plane headed to Honduras in March.

The Russia Direct Investment Fund, which leads efforts to market the vaccine internationally, said an analysis of photographs of the seized batch “suggests that it is a fake.” The Mexican Attorney General’s Office said it was investigating the matter and declined to comment further. Authorities haven’t determined whether the vaccines are genuine.

For months, agents from the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, an investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, have been investigating fraud related to the Covid-19 pandemic globally, recovering $48 million of phony masks, personal protective equipment and other products. Last fall, investigators shifted their focus to include Covid-19 vaccines that were nearing potential clearance by regulators, beginning with online scams. They have removed 30 websites and seized 74 web domains, according to IPR Center officials.

Author(s): Jared S. Hopkins, José de Córdoba

Publication Date: 21 April 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

China’s young and old rail against raising retirement age

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Society/China-s-young-and-old-rail-against-raising-retirement-age

Excerpt:

The retirement age for employees in the public sector and at state-owned enterprises is set at 60 for men, 55 for female office workers and 50 for female blue-collar workers. This has remained unchanged since around the time of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, even as life expectancy has risen to more than 80 in urban areas.

The government work report presented to the National People’s Congress in March stated that “the statutory retirement age will be raised in a phased manner” as part of the new five-year plan for 2021 through 2025.

Beijing sees this as necessary to alleviate pressure on the social safety net and head off a labor shortage that could set it back in its power struggle with Washington. But resistance is strong from young graduates concerned about the impact on their career prospects as well as from grandparents expected to care for grand children after retirement. 

Author(s): Iori Kawate

Publication Date: 4 April 2021

Publication Site: Nikkei Asia

China to Raise Retirement Age to Offset Funding Shortfall  

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/voa-news-china/china-raise-retirement-age-offset-funding-shortfall

Excerpt:

 The current statutory retirement age in China is 60 years for male workers, 55 years for female cadres and 50 years for female workers. Cadre is a general term for civil servants working in the government, public institutions and state-owned enterprises. Labor regulations do not differentiate between male cadre and male workers.

Beijing did not specify a target retirement age. By comparison, the current retirement age in the U.S. is 66, although that depends on the year of birth. The global average was 62.7 years for men and 61.3 years for women, according to an analysis of 70 countries by insurer Allianz SE, reported Bloomberg. 

You of MOHRSS said that the retirement age was set in the early 1950s, when people were expected to live about four decades. In 2019, life expectancy in China was 77.3 years nationwide, with city dwellers expected to keep going past 80 years.

Author(s): Yang Ming

Publication Date: 17 March 2021

Publication Site: Voice of America News

China to raise retirement age in stages – state researcher

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.pionline.com/economy/china-raise-retirement-age-stages-state-researcher

Excerpt:

China plans to raise retirement ages gradually over a number of years instead of in a drastic one-time change, a government researcher said last week, without providing any detail on when the changes might start.

When the retirement age starts being lifted, it will be by a few months every year, or by a month every few months, according to Jin Weigang, head of the Chinese Academy of Labor and Social Security under the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. Mr. Jin didn’t say when the changes would begin, but the current five-year plan calls for “raising the retirement age in a phased manner.”

“People in different age groups will be retiring at different ages,” Mr. Jin said in an interview with the state-run Xinhua News Agency published March 13. “For example, in the first year of the policy’s implementation, female workers who were originally scheduled to retire at 50 will retire one month or a few months after 50.”

Author(s): Bloomberg

Publication Date: 15 March 2021

Publication Site: Pensions & Investments