Longtime readers are familiar with my refrain regarding Chinese foreign policy, "they just keep pushing and pushing" and the corollary question "why now?"
This may be the answer.
From The National Interest, March 23:
China this century is on track to experience history’s most dramatic demographic collapse in the absence of war or disease.
Today, the country has a population more than four times larger than America’s. By 2100, the U.S. will probably have more people than China.
China’s National Bureau of Statistics typically releases population data for the preceding year in early March. This year, NBS delayed its announcement because the central government is scheduled next month to announce preliminary results of the 7th national census, conducted in November and December.
The image of Chinese economic and geopolitical dominance will be severely dented when Beijing releases census data. Xi Jinping may believe “the East is rising and the West is declining”—the money line from one of his speeches late last year—but that view will be exceedingly hard to maintain.
The Chinese take great pride in being part of the world’s most populous state. Beijing reported China’s population in 2019 hit 1.4 billion in 2019, up from 1.39 billion the previous year....
....MUCH MORE
Where this gets very interesting is the simple fact that GDP growth is comprised of only two factors: population growth and productivity improvements. As noted last June:
The Chinese Communist Party is Snared in a Multidimensional War
The query that intro'd to one of the India - China stories, Why now?
It would seem the CCP has a lot on their plate at the moment, what with their belt-and-road "partners" unable to make the payments and swine fever and coronavirus and who knows what else running through the vectors and the very likely demographic outcome that China gets old before it gets rich and on and on and on and on.
Is sabre rattling some sort of wag the dog to keep the population distracted?.....
