the the, [000:00:00;00] the, the hello, i'm manila, chad. you're tuned into modus operandi. it's presently the most populated country

on earth. china with its nearly 1400000000 residents is projecting a different population in the coming years. while hawks are predicting a complete bust in its development. meanwhile, the united states are seeing the slowest birth rates in more than 30 years. so what does that mean for the world's top to super powers? we'll discuss it. all right, let's get into the m o. the, they're both economics super powers, as well as militarily the us and china, some 330000000 people in the us as compared to china is whopping 1400000000 with china is nearly 4 to one population. why are some predicting china will collapse on itself?

because it won't have enough people in the next deck it. now across the world, there is a birth rate bust, seemingly right in line with an economic slump experienced by everyone. yet some countries and some ethnic groups are divergent from this trend. joining us to discuss is rider scholar research or an activist. he's also a contributor to the book capitalism, on a ventilator page. i know is here to weigh in k j. i'd like to break up our conversation into 2 parts. the 1st part covering the western world's following birth rates, the united states, the you and so forth. and then secondly, we'll go into asia to include the middle east as well. most specifically will focus on china. so 1st, let's examine the united states. you and i are both here different coast, but we're both here. according to the us,

the official numbers are outburst in the us have dropped 4 percent in 2020. the 2021 numbers show a one percent increase year over a year. the 2022 numbers aren't out just yet. but generally speaking, there are fewer babies born nowadays than in generations past. here in the us, somebody blamed economic uncertainty. some blame abortion, some place blame on the destruction of nuclear families in america. what do you see as the primary driver of this generations lowered birth rates. so yeah, that's a really good question. manila, i think the 1st thing is that we have to kind of bracket uh 20202122 because it probably is influenced by cove it. so i think corporate definitely affected the both rate for a variety of reasons. but i think the key question is, you know, why is both right,

a problem with developing countries at all. and it's primarily economic problem. you know, you have the ratio of productive working h people to non working h people. and that creates a drag on the economy. the way that i understand it is the key issue for lowering both rates in developed countries is quite simply economic uncertainty or, you know, let's just name it increasing poverty and fatality it's, it's just too hard, too expensive to have children for a lot of young families and if we want to take that a little bit further, the cause of this poverty and fatality is neo liberalism. you know, the us capitalist economy stalled up in the seventy's. response of the government was to discipline labor and to remove social supports to force more people into the workforce and to work hard and for less. the scripts, uh, compet, competition to the bottom, you know,

creates increased productivity for awhile but. but when you have all the family members going to work, and some of them working 2 to 3 jobs couples don't have time for each other, let alone children. and so the choice not to have children you delayed until you feel secure or less precarious, but that they never comes or when it comes, it's too late. and i think these are some of the core reasons why both rates are dropping in western new liberal states. so until around, i'd say the 1980s, women in america were vastly outnumbered at universities and colleges around the country. today, the opposite is true. according to a 2021 p research study. they found that female graduation rates at universities were about 10 percent higher than their male peers. now this is not to say that women getting a college education is a bad thing, rather,

just like to examine how education in america contributes to a decline in birth rates or does it play a role at all? well, i think it actually does play a significant role. i mean, just to go back to the history, remember we call an undergraduate degree a bachelor's degree. and that's because traditionally, you will not allow to be married and study at university. you had the overtones of a monastic location and we still see echoes of that. in that if you study, you're not going to be able to go to school with your children. they're very little supports for mothers or parents in universe your, in any educational setting. and i personally think that parents and mothers should be able to bring that kids not only to work, but to school. an intergenerational workplace or academic setting is an absolutely good sick. but by and large women have had to make

a hard choice. do i go to school, continue my education, or do i have kids? and i think the difficulty is that it's just very, very hard. on the flip side, you have more women in graduate school, then you have men at the current moment. and of course, the, the causes are, you know, manifold, but boys tend to drop out of school earlier. they have more opportunities in work, or apprenticeship, or even manual work. they also have more difficulties in school day, sometimes find it an alienating experience. and of course, education is a way up in a patriarchal society that is stacked against women. so women get more education, they also do better in school and they also delayed childbirth, which also results in reduced both rates. and i think, you know,

these things can be changed through policy primarily by creating school as a more child friendly environment. so i always wonder about the name bachelor's degree. thank you for that. um, you know, having been an older american mother myself, the medical community calls expectant mothers over the age of 35 here. geriatric, but you know, i got married late, i started a family late. and statistics show, typically someone like me doesn't a tend to have more than one or 2 babies. i have one that was due in part to, you know, career chasing, and my own personal choices in life. but also because the united states doesn't really have any real federal laws that guarantee me, any job security or any substantive maternity leave or, you know, with good health care for me or my baby. those were only things i manage to secure for myself with age through the private sector. so, you know,

barring my husband from the equation, but do you think the u. s. federal laws such as fmla undermine america's claims. that family is important. yes, absolutely. you know, i think you're absolutely correct that it undermines this notion that sadly is important. you know, the fmla a, a provides a total of 12 work weeks of unpaid leave. uh for uh, you know, an expectant a month or uh, and it only applies to companies that 50 on more workers. uh and you know, the fundamental thing is that policy and the budgets attached to it are moral statements. and the simple fact is that the fmla has no budget backbone. that is to say, it has no moral back phone, so it's

a really hypocritical type of policy. the other thing i'll add is that, you know, very often as, as you also pointed out, you know, it's often framed as a personal choice whether to have or not to have a child. but as you point out, these personal choices are driven by policy and structural forces. if you don't have job security maternity leave health care, it's very, very hard to have children. and if you did, if you didn't have to worry about economics, i think many people would have children and more children and sooner. so k j is everything we've discussed here is this, you know, really specific to the us or do you see this more as a common trend, or maybe there's a threat over in western nations including those in europe. yes, i think by and large it's also similar to west and nations. you know, western european nations do tend to have better child supports better maternity leave,

but the trend is to diminish and to remove them. and so we see the same types of neo liberal austerity happening across the board. you see the for a large, you know, move months, a fight back against that. but it seems to be largely a losing battle. and so to the extent that they're subject to the same types of neo liberal austerity, you're going to see the same uh, influence. is that mitigate against having childbirth? uh and uh, and therefore lowered. uh, you know, uh, both rates coming up next. some analysts believe china will go bust in the next decade with the population decline to wrap it to maintain its economy. we'll discuss it with k j. know when we return, sit tight. the m o will be right back.

the, the, i look forward to talking to you all that technology should work for people. a robot must obey the orders given by human beings, except we have such orders that conflict with the 1st law should we live in justification. we should be very careful about the personal intelligence at the point, obviously is to trace a trust, rather than see it the areas. i mean with the artificial intelligence, we have somebody with him in the robot must protect his phone. existence was on

the by the middle of the 19th century. practically, the whole of india had been under the rule of the british and by the colonial authorities that impose that heavy desk, bringing the people into poverty ex, 40 natural resources. and moreover, these authorities absolutely had no consideration for the physicians of the local population, treating them like 2nd class citizens. the british were showing signs of disrespect even to those who operated with them. the fact of ignoring the religious beliefs of the hindus led to them, you need the voice mercenary soldiers serving under the british ground. 3000000000 began on the 10th of may 1857 in the garrison town of may river,

north of india. in the form of youth. the rebels quickly took over daily that he rode the resistance of the indian people lasted for one and a half years. however, the forces were not equal. the colonial authorities dealt with the rebels, cruel, late fee and slaves. the boy were tied to the mouth of the cannon and were shot right through their bodies for the amusement of the public. this type of execution was called the devil's with the obliteration of the mutiny. resolved the death of 800000 inhabitants of indians. however, the british empire never broke the free spirit of the indians and their will or resist the welcome back to the m. o. i, manila, chad. now if you ask most people outside of western countries, they'll tell you that the 21st century belongs to china. that the 20th century shines right for the west. the collective global south seems at odds with what some

analysts that predicts doom and gloom for china. writer and research are k j no is staying with us to continue this conversation. so k, j over in asia for much of the 20th century, china was leading the way and live birds. india also both account for populations in the multi billions the collective west, often chided asia for a population boom. looking back now. so was the birth boom. good thing for the region, you know, just to kind of break it down a little bit. for countries they have high birth rates, but they also have high mortality rates. and so then that you get very and population growth rates depending on the country and the specific situation as the country becomes more develop, the economies improve. and so we see continued high birth rates,

but we start to see dropping infant mortality rates. and then that results in the population growth, this is the kind of overshoot period. and then there's a kind of adjustment period where the bus rates start to lower because you don't need to have 10 children just to support yourself. and you also see low mortality rates and this is stable for a while, but then it leads to low population growth. and then the 4th period is a kind of a drag period. when you have low birth rates, low infant mortality, and also increased life expectancy. that is, you not enough working age people too many elderly, you know, it creates a drag on the economy. it's like having a small engine, but the car with the buses getting more and more full. and then so this is the issue that often developed economy space. and then the 5th stage,

which is often what you see in the western european states as you have this economic drag, which is dealt with through neo liberalism. and so you have low both rates, low infant mortality, but no social supports. you get very low birth rates, you have in balanced economy, and then you start to see increased mortality as well. for example, in the united states, you have the lowest mortality, the lowest life expectancy in 30 years. and so these are some of the kind of long term bad outcomes of a capitalist approach to dealing with this issue. and in certain countries, for example, in japan, you know, the japanese say, you know, we are on the verge of collapse. so just to get back to a question was the 1st boom, good. you know, it was inevitable. lowered infant more, i'm out of poverty. in india, it was much less effective because that's poverty. and so starting at the same population with the same population, same land mass, you know, china is 6 times,

well fear, per capita, then india. and i think that shows that if you have good planning or a socialist approach to planning, then that can work better and it can harness productive forces and really develop a country right now in the 21st century, china is seeing a slow down in birth. how much of that has to do with perhaps the inescapable western influence may be something like pop culture or is this declining birth rate attributable? uh, more to china is rapid economic advancement and, and their industrial boom. you know, i think it's a much more attributable to the economic stage at which it's at. so, you know, just kind of to go back. china isn't the 3rd phase. it has a low birth rate. it has a low infant mortality rate. and that is resulting in lowering population gross.

it's the, the overshoot is correcting itself. incident. income's rise, infant mortality drops, childbirth drops along with it because you don't need so many children. and then this starts to be an odd to shoot. so families and women are having less children, and overtime it falls to or below the replacement rate. uh, you know, the, the way that china will probably deal with this. it's not going to be, uh, it, it's not, it's not a problem that is in, on fixable for china. china currently has a very, very low retirement age. you can retire as early as 50 if you want, and often people retire at 55. so there's room for the retirement age to be increased, so you have a longer productive workplace. and then the other thing that china is doing, which is really quite astonishing,

is it is automating the workplace. so you see incredible amounts of 5 and 6, g enabled robots that are doing a lot of the work that was done before by people. and so i think this kind of drag or in balance of a productive workplace is actually less of a problem for china. simply because it plans for the long term and you can see these things coming. many wester analysts are blaming china is declining birth rate on the old one child policy. is that a accurate or even fair assessment? and, you know, i, i think it's multiple factors. you know, i think having fewer children was necessary at the time because the population was in that overshoot phase. and so they probably went too much in to, an under shoot stays through policy. so in 2015 it was correct to,

to children. and now it's currently 3 children, and it's not simply a, a, a policy that, you know, re most constraints, but it has a lot of positive supports in the child welfare support maternity leave. you know, shanghai has a 150 days of maternity leave. her 9 has a $190.00 days, 3 months of pretty much on that to leave. and when you leave, you get the equivalent of your highest income the previous year, or the mean salary of everybody in the company. and so, you know, there are a lot of supports for families and mothers to have children. and i think this is very positive, as we know, this allows for secure attachment for the child that creates the emotionally healthy child. and that, you know, goes a long way to creating a strong, healthy and emotionally healthy workforce. now conversely, japan never had any child policies and they went through

a much earlier economic boom in the late 20th century. how do we explain japan's slowing birth rates today? well, japan slink both rights. i refer to it as the 4th and 5th stage, or really the 5th stage. it's the neo liberal breaking when society cannot sustain a workforce to have to be both productive at work and to be productive and having children. and so just to look at the history a little bit, you know, japan has a neo liberal economy, developed through 2 large boons in the 19 fifties and 19 sixties and seventies. and these were related to the korean war and the vietnam war. japan literally built its economic system through a good measure of war. profiteering it's, you know, industrial giants were or machines and they developed during this period flush with

money from the korean war and the vietnam war. and this momentum kept to going to the 19 eighties and it became very big and economically powerful. us sold this as a threat and it decided it was going to cut it down to size in particularly using the plaza accords. and this got a t industries like she bought. and so japan has never recovered from that shock. it's a stagnant economy. it stumbles along its wages have been stagnant for 30 years. and that shift from developmental capitalism to neo liberalism. or i've been all mix failed completely and so in japan, currently what you see is people working too hard. husband sometimes don't see their wise, you know, they come home and a drop dead from fatigue. japan has a term cut or sheet, which means death from overwork. the same thing with soft gray, which is facing

a similar issue. and so you simply have lots of people who are employment age who simply have given up uh, they've given up having family and jo, bob's uh and uh, you know, japan uh, according to the statistics. currently, it has a population under the 8w12x8w, but it had 800000 birds last year. and it has the 2nd highest proportion of age people of any country in the world. and so she di, uh, according to the just that he says that you know,