Opinion | Why the U.S. Could Beat China

And there’s been a new phenomenon in the U.S. called Chinamaxxing. Have you heard of this, Natasha? No, what is Chinamaxxing? Chinamaxxing is mostly a social media phantasm, but a lot of people have been looking at these videos of the skyline of Shanghai or the skyline of Chongqing, which is really amazing. There’s these drone shows out there, and people are feeling like, “Oh, you’re meeting me at a very Chinese time of my life.” You’re drinking tea more. You’re wearing slippers inside the house. People are playing mahjong more. – Maybe your students, Natasha —— – Not my students. My mother is obsessed with mahjong. It’s like they have a club, they play every week. I’ll play with her. So she’s Chinamaxxing is what you’re saying. Good, she’s Chinamaxxing too. And it’s attracting some more people, including young people who feel like they haven’t been able to see China for quite a while. And more people, more Americans, are starting to visit China and have a good time there. There’s all sorts of ways in which China still feels like it is building the future. So the subway lines are still expanding in a lot of cities, the air pollution has dropped pretty substantially. Now, every one in two cars sold in China is electric, and it’s much closer to one in 10 cars sold in the U.S. here. And so there’s all sorts of ways in which, you know, there’s more robots on the roads, too. There’s people nervous and excited about A.I. as well. But what you’re also seeing is kind of a skittish consumer that isn’t really able to spend. They have all of these big uncertainties about the value of their investments. The Chinese stock market has not boomed as much. And what’s really striking to me with China right now is how few people are having kids. China’s total fertility rate is about 1.0, so an average number of children that a family can expect to have is one. By comparison, in the U.S., – it’s roughly 1.6, 1.7 —— – Also declining pretty substantially, but not nearly as substantially as China. And you know what China also doesn’t have? Many immigrants. The country of Ireland, a country of six million people, has about just as many immigrants as the country of the People’s Republic of China. Both of them have about 1 million foreign-born people. – That’s wild. – Isn’t that crazy?