Raising the retirement age won’t defuse China’s demographic time bomb – but mass immigration might

With a fertility rate of 1.1 children per woman – way below the 2.1 births per woman needed to maintain a native population – and more deaths each year than births, China’s future is one of declining population, with an enormous increase in the numbers of elderly. Compounding the problem, China has long been hostile to the idea of supplementing its native population through immigration; just 0.1% of its population is foreign-born – that’s the smallest percentage of any major country in the world.