How China’s Demographic Crunch will affect Consumption in its Economy China is growing older. To be sure, the populations of other countries, especially developed economies and China’s northeast Asian neighbors, Japan and South Korea, are also turning grey. But this process has unfolded with exceptional speed in China. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) , an economy enters into its “aging” phase when the share of the population aged 65 or older exceeds 7%. China reached that demographic yardstick in 1998 and by 2023, the share of Chinese aged over 65 had more than doubled, rising to 15.4% . WHO estimates that by 2040, China will have 402 million people aged over 60, up from 254 million in 2019. As Professor Sabrina Luk of Nanyang Technology University told Business Insider , “China became an aging society in 1999. It will become an aged society by 2026, and a super-aged society by 2047.” This sh...