Do you mind if I go first?
I'm thinking of a recent column by Mr. Ibbitson, which touched on those things. I agreed with his description of the problem. I'm not sure I entirely agreed with the conclusions.
It is certainly true that the Chinese population is irrevocably going to decline. There's no factory churning out 18-year-olds. The percentage of the economically unproductive group, aged over 64 or below 15.... That bothers me a bit, because I'm over 64. Am I economically unproductive? However, over half of the monies being spent on robots is being spent in China. Can that compensate? Only partially.
However, if I look at Japan, which is a bit further along that curve, I don't see the Japanese economy collapsing. What I see are a couple of decades of very slow growth. The idea that China is going to outproduce.... There was that time, you will recall, when Japan was expected to own the world and real estate in Tokyo would be worth more than all the real estate in the United States on paper. That's not true. What you've seen is slow growth and a flattening.
China's not going to disappear. Things like youth unemployment and the declining population of those of working age can be brought into balance. They're teaching the wrong skills. The parents want them to do certain things. Those aren't the jobs that necessarily are there for them. That's a mismatch of the labour market with the economy, and that can be fixed.
The U.S. economy is not about to collapse. It will have the largest economy for the foreseeable future. There will be two great economies. I am skeptical about the decline, but we must be ready for whatever comes. Beware of the unexpected. The Chinese political system seems remarkably stable. It is remarkably stable, but to me—and I've lived in communist countries on three different continents—it's that strength of iron, not of steel. It can crack. I served in eastern Europe at the onset of the collapse of the Soviet Union. I didn't see it coming. My job was to follow the dissident movements in politics, and I got it all wrong. I'm wary now about getting things badly wrong again, but I'm skeptical of collapse.
I think there will be slower growth and difficult growth. Quite frankly—and I've had this conversation with many Chinese—a China that has 700 million people would be a much more livable place than a place with 1.4 billion, and most Chinese agree. It would be easier on the environment and have more space and a higher quality of living, so let it be less dynamic—not overtaking us all, but perhaps relatively stable at a level where the gross GDP remains number two in the world.