Even before COVID, China was facing stiff headwinds from an ageing population.
These headwinds stem from the nation’s ‘one child policy’, which came into effect in the early-1970s and was credited with preventing around 400 million births from 1979 to 2010.
The ‘one child policy’ initially produced a population pyramid that was optimal to economic growth, since there were less children to support. This meant that China’s population was dominated by people that were neither young nor old, but in the middle (i.e. working age).
