China’s population crash could mean war with India

For too long, the West spoke of the rise of China as threat to international stability. Those statesmen got it backwards. It is the fall of China that creates the most danger

Historically, countries with burgeoning populations covet space and their neighbours’ resources. Nazi Germany sought Lebensraum—living space—in Russia and Ukraine. Imperial Japan justified its invasion of Manchuria in similar fashion. More recently, Iraq sought to annex Kuwait.

Often, however, population decline can lead to aggression. Russia’s population peaked around 148 million in the early 1990s but then fell for much of the following two decades largely due to low birthrates, high male mortality, and emigration; today, Russia’s population is just 143 million. Russian President Vladimir Putin repeatedly cited demography as a national priority before invading Georgia in 2008, annexing Crimea in 2014, and then invading Ukraine in 2022.

Declining fertility was also a frequent worry for the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Beginning after the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, Iran suffered one of the world’s greatest declines in birth rates. The proportion of the Iranian population under five years old plummeted from 18% in 1986 to 10% a decade later. “This lack of interest in bearing children is a malady,” Khamenei declared in 2013. In 2020, Khamenei’s ally Hojjatoleslam Hossein Mirzaei said Iran only had five years to avert a disaster. “If this golden time is lost, we will definitely see a crisis,” he declared in parliament. Regime efforts to manufacture a baby boom failed. Khamenei instead steered the Islamic Republic into conflict.

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Russia and Iran’s population collapse pales in comparison to China. For 36-years, China’s communist leadership imposed a strict one-child policy. They believed larger population growth would eat up the gains of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, and they also worried about their ability to feed a large population. It was a foolish bet, albeit one they rooted in “science.” While there have always been pundits who warned of catastrophe caused by population growth—entomologist Paul Ehrlich, for example, who authored The Population Bomb in 1968—human ingenuity ensures food security and grows the economy.