Comment by torginus

Do not watch it please unless you want to consume worldview-distoring propaganda and become more ignorant as a result. It's made by 2 American expats who gotten kicked out of China when visa-requirements were tightened, and no-skill immigrants were no longer welcome.

They've become anti-China youtubers serving the hungry China-hating audience on how China is bad and a paper tiger.

Instead watch this guy (https://www.youtube.com/@Awakening_Richard). I'm not saying he's unbiased, either, but he's thoughtful and I think he brings insight into how the Chinese intelligentsia thinks about how the world works.

But back to your point - it's oft repeated that Chinese population decline will destroy China in the long run and poverty in Chinese society.

He made a video on this exact issue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdRH7aPWGGc

The TLDR version is that about half of the Chinese population lives in desperate poverty (and are economically invisible), and just a couple decades ago 90+% of Chinese lived like this. One cannot bring about a transformation into an industrialized wealthy lifestyle overnight, but coming from the experience of the past decades, the Chinese have been remarkably effective in this, and the following decades will see these people lifted up to modern societal standards as well.

By this alone, one can conservatively expect a doubling of Chinese GDP, as there will be twice as many consumers and laborers who consume and work at the level of the current workforce.

This also means that China has a huge and high marginal utility domestic demand for goods, and even if sanctioned, they wont run of people to sell to.