Page:The Elements of the China Challenge (November 2020).pdf/43

 whom economic development has left behind. Either way, continued economic growth as much as economic stagnation could spur a destabilizing demand in China for government accountability and for greater protection for basic rights and fundamental freedoms.

Second, China suffers from worsening demographic conditions. The size of the population is on track to peak in the coming decade and then gradually decline. To make matters worse, Beijing is about to experience an explosion of those 65 and above while its working-age population shrinks sharply. The absence in China of a modern social-safety net will impose strains as workers struggle to support a steadily growing retiree population. In addition, as a consequence of China’s one-child policy — abolished in 2016 but with consequences that will reverberate for generations — China’s working-age population will suffer from a prolonged gender imbalance (the 2010 census reported 120 males for every 100 females).

Third, China’s accelerated economic development has severely degraded the environment. The PRC has been for more than a decade and remains the world’s largest source of carbon emissions. Pollution produces dystopian conditions in many of China’s major cities while reducing the country’s arable land and clean water. As a consequence, life expectancy in China has been falling. A recent Lancet study found that every year 1.1 million people in China die prematurely due to air pollution.

Fourth, corruption — at the local level as well as in the party’s upper echelons — creates risks for the CCP. Many members of the elite have enriched themselves at the expense of the people. Along with uneven economic growth and demographic and environmental problems, repression and land expropriation exacerbate discontent, provoking more than 130,000 protests of varying types annually. Such protests are likely to shake the system for years to come.

Fifth, the CCP devotes considerable resources to the repression of ethnic and religious minorities. In gross violation of the principles set forth in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the CCP maintains a military occupation of Tibet that dates to the 1950s, conducts a brutal program in Xinjiang to “re-educate” Uyghurs and millions of other Turkic Muslims, oppresses ethnic Mongolians in China’s Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, and imposes onerous regulations on China’s Christians, who number around 70 million. Rh