Why immigrants are US trump card versus fast-greying China
China's rapidly ageing population and shrinking workforce could prevent it becoming an economic and military superpower, while America's growing workforce should keep it No. 1 - provided it doesn't turn against migration
On opposite sides of the globe, two debates that will profoundly affect the future of the world are raging. One of them has become shrilly public while the other remains almost secret. On the surface they might seem to have little to do with each other but, in reality, they are inextricably linked.
The first debate, which is unfolding in America, concerns immigration. Republicans such as Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have staked out some of the more radical positions in this debate, such as urging that the US build a wall to keep out illegal immigrants and that it deport the millions who are already in the country. The other debate, which is playing out in Beijing, is about how big a navy China should build, and how much it should contest America's primacy in the world's oceans.
To a degree scarcely suspected by most people, both debates - and more generally, America's chances of maintaining its standing in the world - are bound up in the two countries' sharply contrasting population dynamics.
Demographic time bomb? China’s army of young, educated and willing workers will keep economy on track
Under President Xi Jinping, China has until very recently appeared to be a global juggernaut - hugely expanding its economic and political relations with Africa; building artificial islands in the South China Sea, a body of water it now proclaims as almost entirely its own; and launching the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, with ambitions to rival the World Bank. The new bank is expected to support the One Belt, One Road initiative, a collection of rail, road and port projects designed to lash China to the rest of Asia and even Europe. Projects such as these aim not only to boost China's already formidable commercial power but also to restore the global centrality that Chinese consider their birthright.
As if this were not enough to worry the US, China has also showed interest in moving into America's backyard. Easily the most dramatic symbol of this appetite is billionaire Wang Jing's plan to build a canal across Nicaragua that would dwarf the American-built Panama Canal. But this project has stalled, an apparent victim of recent stock-market crashes in China.
It doesn’t matter what happens now with the fertility rate. The old people of tomorrow are already here