Elon Musk sees himself as the CEO of everything.
As his influence has grown alongside the number of his Twitter followers, the Tesla (TSLA) – Get Free Report boss and SpaceX founder has been making his voice heard on global issues.
He doesn’t limit his areas of interest, and his blunt approach draws acclaim from his followers. He has established himself as a kind of global CEO.
And China has just given him a new opportunity to put on his visionary’s hat.
China, the world’s most populous country — one-sixth of the planet’s inhabitants live there — saw its population decline in 2022. That’s a statistic that was unheard of for six decades, and demographers say that it’s a historic turning point.
The country’s population had doubled since the 1960s, to more than 1.4 billion today.
But in 2022, the number of births in China was 9.56 million, the National Bureau of Statistics reported. At the same time, 10.41 million deaths were recorded. The drop in the population was thus 850,000 people.
Musk Calls Population Decline a ‘Massive Danger’
This is a first since 1960-1961, when a famine that began in 1959 killed tens of millions of people. That famine followed the errors of the economic policy known as the Great Leap Forward.
Paradoxically, this current decline occurred even as China relaxed its birth-control policy in recent years. Ten years ago, the Chinese were allowed to have only one child. Since 2021, they can have three.
This drop, which could continue until the end of the century, could severely harm the economy and the pension system.
For Musk, the Chinese announcements reinforce his warning that the biggest problem facing the world is population decline.
“Population collapse is a massive danger to the future of civilization!” the billionaire commented on Jan. 16.
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Photo: “Elon Musk” by Thomas Hawk is licensed under CC BY-NC
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