Will the Chinese economy go the way of Japan?

The Chinese government’s confirmation this month that the country’s population had shrunk for the first time since the late 1950s — when millions of people died of starvation in former Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s disastrous campaign to accelerate industrialisation, known as the Great Leap Forward — set off a frenzy of media coverage about the dire implications for the main geopolitical rival and would-be alternative pole to the West.

At one point, the New York Times alone had no fewer than four articles on its homepage heralding the development, and the sub-headline for one opinion column about the country’s now “undeniable” reversal of fortunes read: “Forget about a rising China. The dangerous part will be its decline.”

Among the signals confirming this coming decline and predictions of its consequences that were cited in other press reports were that India would soon surpass China as the world’s most populous nation and that the decrease in China’s demographic numbers might mean that it would have a much harder time surpassing the United States in overall economic size — and might not be able to attain that goal at all.