拜登：中国是一枚 '滴答作响的定时炸弹'

choi

木风, 拜登：中国是一枚 '滴答作响的定时炸弹' 中国官媒：唱衰中国只会碰壁. VOA Chinese, Aug 12, 2023
https://www.voachinese.com/a/bid ... 230811/7221057.html

, which is based on

Remarks by President Biden at a Campaign Reception | Salt Lake City, UT. White House, Aug 10, 2023 (under the tap 'Briefing Room' of the top horizontal bar)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/brief ... -salt-lake-city-ut/
(remarks were topped with "Private Residence[,] Salt Lake City, Utah[.] 2:43 P.M. MDT" (Mountain Daylight Time) )

nine and a half consecutive paragraphs (a half paragraph is presented at the very beginning of the quote):

" * * * you can't have tens of thousands of troops invade another country — and that’s the largest invasion ever since World War Two — and not expect it to spread around the world   And so, the bottom line is: We are working in that direction, so we've thus far, essentially, isolated Russia.

"And we have China to deal with.  And China is a ticking time-bomb in many cases.  But it is — I'm the only one — now people are beginning to agree: China is in trouble.  China was growing at 8 percent a year to maintain growth — and now closer to 2 percent a year.

"China finds itself in a position where it's — it's — it has the highest unemployment rate going.  It's in a position where it's — the number of — the number of people who are of retirement age is larger than the number of people of working age.  So, they got some problems.  That's not good because when bad folks have problems, they do bad things.

"So — but my point is: managing China and managing that relationship.  And I’ve spent more time with Xi Jinping than any world leader has.  They’ve kept every — they keep tabs of all of it — 68 hours of personally — just he and I with an interpreter each — and another 15 hours on Zoom.

"And this is a guy who is a — who I think I understand.  And this is a guy who — we're not looking for a fight with China.  But we're looking for a rationale relat- — a rational relationship to have with China.

"I don't want to hurt China.  But in the meantime, I watched what China was doing.  So I put together a thing called the Quad.  We brought together as an alliance India, Japan, Australia, and the United States.  We put ourselves in a position where now we have the Philippines and, soon, Vietnam and Cambodia wanting to be part of a relationship with us because they're — they don't want to — they don't want to have a defense alliance, but they want relationships because they want China to know that they're not alone.

"So, a lot of things are changing, but nothing is done yet.  We have to figure out how to deal with Africa.  There is going to be a billion people on that continent very shortly.  And there are — have some real problems.

"But we have enormous opportunities to deal there too, as well.  For example, we put together — or it became known as the Build Back Better initiative.  We — we got together literally billions of dollars in the G7 nations to provide for alternatives to China's — what they call Belt and Road Initiative, which is basically a debt and noose agreement that they have.  There is not much going on.  They're — they're — they're in real debt.  They're going in trouble.

"So, I guess what I'm saying is we have an enormous opportunity to bring the world together in different configurations than was before in a way that isn't threatening to others and provides a generic stability.  And so, we're spending a lot of time there.  It's not done yet.  We got a lot more to do.

Note:
(a) News reports said Biden gave the talk in Part City, Utah, which is ten miles of air distance from center of Salt Lake City, Utah. Specifically, the talk was given "at the Park City, Utah, home of Mark Gilbert, a former US ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa," according to New York Post.
(b) Biden said, "China was growing at 8 percent a year to maintain growth — and now closer to 2 percent a year."
(i) Nandita Bose and Jeff Mason, Biden Misstates China's GDP Growth, Calls Its Economy a 'Ticking Time Bomb.' Reuters, Aug 11, 2923
https://www.reuters.com/world/bi ... roubles-2023-08-10/
("SALT LAKE CITY, Aug 10 (Reuters) - US President Joe Biden on Thursday * * * Data from China's National Bureau of Statistics showed the economy grew 4.5% in the first quarter and 6.3% in the second, with gross domestic product up just 0.8% in April-June from the previous quarter after a 2.2% expansion in the first quarter.   There was no immediate comment from China's foreign ministry")
(ii) Bose is an Indian surname.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose_(surname)

But its pronunciation changes after immigrants with that surname came to America. See Bose Corporation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose_Corporation
(iii) I am unsure whether Biden misspoke. It is possible that CIA briefed Biden with the figure of 2. It is also possible that Biden was quoting the First quarter 2023 figure, which is quarter-over-(previous) quarter growth rate rather than year-over-year growth rate, the later comparing growth rate of a quarter of this year with the same quarter a year ago. The firmer (quarter-over-quarter) is what is practiced in America, whereas year-over-year is what is practiced in China and Taiwan. At the end of a year, both practices reach the same result, that is, the same growth rate for that year.

(c) Biden also commented that in China "the number of people who are of retirement age is larger than the number of people of working age." This is apparently wrong, and no nation can survive with that statistic. See
Chapter 2 Population. In Statistical Handbook of Japan 2022 (published by Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan 総務省統計局).
https://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/handbook/c0117.htm
("The working age population (15-64 years old) totaled 74.50 million, accounting for 59.4 percent of the entire population. This population is continuing to decline since 1993. As a result, the dependency ratio (the sum of aged and child population divided by the working age population) was 68.5 percent")

But nobody pointed out Biden's error in this. There is no need to read the rest of the following news report.
(i) Lo Hoi-ying, China Population: Re-employment of Elderly an 'Urgent, Realistic Problem to Be Solved.' South China Morning Post, May 30, 2023
https://www.scmp.com/economy/eco ... c-problem-be-solved
("China's mandatory retirement age for men is 60, 55 for female office workers and 50 for female blue-collar workers, while the country's average life expectancy is 77.93")

China wants to raise those ages.
(ii) Liyan Qi, China Is Facing a Moment of Truth About Its Low Retirement Age. WSJ.com, Apr 11, 2023.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chi ... rement-age-5ed9b57f

the first two paragraphs: "For decades, in China, middle age has been when many start to get ready for retirement.

"China has one of the lowest retirement ages among major economies. Under a policy unchanged since the 1950s, it allows women to retire as early as at age 50 and men at 60. Now, local governments are running out of money just as a wave of retirees hits. That is leaving Beijing with little choice but to ask people to work longer—a move economists say is long overdue but one still likely to meet with resistance.

(iii) Andrew Mullen, China Population: Raising Retirement ages won’t ‘make a big difference’ in workforce size amid demographic crises.
https://www.scmp.com/economy/eco ... a-population-raisin

two consecutive paragraphs:

"China's population plummeted by 850,000 people – to 1.4118 billion in 2022, down from 1.4126 billion a year earlier, after deaths outnumbered births.

"The official data also showed that China's ageing crisis is deepening, with 280.04 million people aged over 60 at the end of 2022, up from 267.36 million people in 2021 – an increase from 18.9 per cent to 19.8 per cent of the population.

(iv) "China's working-age population – those between 16 and 59 years old – stood at 875.56 million at the end of 2022, representing 62 per cent of the population, but this was down from 62.5 per cent a year earlier." South China Morning Post, June 22, 2023.
(v) Charlie Campbell, China's Aging Population Is a Major Concern. But Its Youth May Be an Even Bigger Problem. Time, June 6, 2023.
https://time.com/6284994/china-y ... aging-demographics/

quote:

"Last year, deaths outnumbered births for the first time since 1961

"China suffers from a skills mismatch meaning factories have faced worker shortages while graduates are bereft of opportunities that match their proficiency [this article cites no statistics for youth unemployment].

"Last year, China had 2.26 working-age people supporting each senior—but that is forecast to drop to 1.25 by 2042.