Protesters recently took to the streets of China's cities in a rare show of political dissent. While the demonstrations are focused largely on the authorities' zero-Covid policy, they have sparked speculation that a pro-democracy movement -- and even a Taiwan-style political transition -- could come next. But this is unlikely, not least because decades of strict family-planning policies have left China with too few young people to join the fight.
A country can be said to be having a "youth boom" when the proportion of people aged 15-29 exceeds 28%. When a country is experiencing a youth boom, it may also find itself on the path to political change -- including, potentially, democratisation.
That was the case in Taiwan and South Korea. As the share of young people increased -- from 25% in each country in 1966 to a peak of 31% in the early 1980s. Both economies became democracies in 1987, when their populations' median age was 26. A youth boom also contributed to the eruption of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2010, when the median age across the Arab world was just 20.
A similar trend once seemed to be unfolding in China. The share of youths in the population rose from 24% in 1966 to 28% in 1979, when the median age was 22. Growing political fervour helped to fuel the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. Political engagement among youths also helped to drive the reform and opening up that Deng Xiaoping launched in 1978, and sparked some social unrest.
The government responded to that unrest by launching a three-year "strike hard against crime" campaign in 1983-86. But this did not temper the Chinese people's increasingly pro-democratic zeal. In April 1989 -- when the proportion of youth was at its peak of 31%, and the median age was 25 -- student-led demonstrators occupied Tiananmen Square in Beijing. It took a bloody crackdown that June to crush the movement.
In Xinjiang province, the unrest came later. While the region was not experiencing a youth boom in 1989, the proportion of Uighur youth exceeded 28% in 1996 and peaked at 32% in 2008. The next year, Xinjiang was roiled by the so-called Ürümqi Riots, which began as a peaceful student-led protest over the killing of two Uighur workers but quickly descended into violence. The 2008 Lhasa riots in Tibet are also correlated with a youth boom.
Today, young people are again at the forefront of protests in China. But there are not so many of them anymore. The proportion of youth aged 15-29 in China stood at just 17% last year when the median age was 42. And the share will only continue to shrink, likely dropping to 13% in 2040 when the median age is expected to reach 52.
It is difficult to achieve political transformation in a country with a median age over 40 and youth accounting for less than 20% of the population. The protest movement that emerged in Hong Kong in 2019 to defend the city's democracy ended in failure, partly because, with a median age higher than 44, the territory has entered political "menopause". Only 16% are aged 15-29.
What the Chinese authorities need to worry about is not the threat to regime security, but social rigidity, because there will not be enough young people to support benign reforms like the one in 1978.
Members of the one-child generation are overwhelmingly "little pinks", preferring to support the government rather than pursue socio-political change. With only one child to support them in retirement, they know they will have to rely on government support.
This led to a decline in China's average household size from 4.4 people in 1982 to 2.6 in 2020. In 1983, China's household disposable income accounted for 62% of GDP, but declined to 44% in 2021. Despite four decades of rapid economic growth, China does not have a large enough middle class and may never escape the middle-income trap or achieve a political transition.
But, despite its weaknesses, China's political system is not in immediate danger, though maintaining its governance model is a formula for eventual collapse. Tibet's political system survived for more than a thousand years after its population began to decline in the eighth century. Beijing should feel politically secure enough to return to a more benign Confucian system, with the government working to restore population sustainability and socioeconomic vitality, though it is hardly clear that they will.
When China joined the World Trade Organization two decades ago, many anticipated that the country's economic opening would inevitably lead to greater democratisation. Instead, China increased censorship and repression while becoming a producer of everything its people could want. What China has not produced is enough Chinese people to secure its future and sustain progress toward democratic reform. 2022 Project Syndicate
Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist in OB/GYN at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is the author of 'Big Country with an Empty Nest'.
