The population problem is not totally about quantity, although quantity is the top concern in this regard. But to what extent is quantity a contributing factor to population problems in all countries? It differs from one country to another. Wang Yiwei, a professor with the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, argues that the population problem will be one of the decisive factors in all countries' strength and prosperity.

Today the Western world is faced with a severe "identity challenge" caused mainly by the population problem. Big Western countries such as Japan and Germany face the threat of population decreases and aging societies-with Japan suffering the most. By now, one fifth of the Japanese are over 65 years old. By 2025, Japan will have a median age of just over 50. (The median age is the age at which half a country's population is older and half is younger.) At that time, 60 percent of the country's people will be older than 65. For this reason, Japan's cabinet has appointed a minister of state for youth affairs and measures for the declining birthrate.

The United States and Britain are among the few Western countries with high population growth rates, because both have benefited from their generous immigration policies. Statistics issued in August 2007 by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services indicate that 40 percent of the country's population growth can be attributed to new immigrants, both legal and illegal, while the remainder is a net growth resulting from the birth rate surpassing the mortality rate.

In strife-ridden lands farther afield, including Turkey, the Middle East and Sudan, discord has resulted from profound demographic factors that always present themselves in the forms of ethnic and religious conflicts. The presence of nations and religions is felt through the existence of population. Take the chaos in Darfur for example. Apart from the confrontations between rebel insurgents and government forces and the conflicts between the Arabs and black African tribes, the influx of immigrants from neighboring Chad into the Darfur region has added to the already severe clashes.

Population factors in international issues focus on the quality of a given population, the connection between the net population growth rate and the aging society, a population's structure (including age, gender, racial composition and religions), education levels, and science and technological progress and developments. Although the factors concerning population are long-term issues, they are only the tip of the iceberg. If there is no full exploration of these factors, it is easy to misinterpret the entire situation.

More and more facts show that the quantity, quality and structure of a population that participates in the global division of labor will decide a country's future competitiveness and international status. International politics is becoming increasingly regionalized and personalized, so that nation-oriented politics is transforming into human-centered politics. With politics now beginning to focus on the importance of people, it is evolving from rationality to sensibility and from singularity to diversity. This is a new inspiration from globalization when it has developed to a certain stage.

Population pains of Europe

Recently, some scholars discussed whether the West would decline. This is of special significance in the new stage of globalization. But the declines of the West and of Western Europe are two different things. European philosophers had predicted the continent's decline as early as the mid-19th century. Alexis de Tocqueville and Honore de Balzac agreed that as Europe had taking a downward turn on the international stage, the rise of the United States would end the myth of European hegemony since the Industrial Revolution.

Today, the decline of Europe is reflected in the gap of the continent's actual capability and its will to exert its power, and as a result, its determination and desire to use power in global affairs has fallen sharply.

The bombings of trains in Madrid and the London subway as well as the violent protests in the suburbs of Paris have exposed the root of Europe's decline-the immigrant problem and its challenge to the countries' own national identities. The setbacks that the European constitution has experienced have also clearly reflected the challenge that the EU's immigrant structure poses to national identities and the identity of Europe as a whole.

Western Europe's aging population is squeezing its social vitality. These countries can only depend on immigrants from "New Europe" (Eastern Europe) and the Mediterranean coasts to fill their population gaps. Today, immigrants account for 33 percent of the population of the EU, making it the political body with the largest number of immigrants. Germany, for example, has to absorb 400,000 new young immigrants each year to maintain its current proportion of 15-year-olds to 64-year-olds.

Besides the aging population and low social vitality that have resulted from low birth rates and an identity crisis based on its large immigrant population, the fundamental cause of Europe's decline is the United States. The Americans have fueled the splitting of old and new Europe by deploying a missile defense system in Eastern Europe and asking NATO to expand to the East. This also has caused a conflict between Europe and Russia. In the meantime, the rise of China and India is highlighting the decline of Europe, but not causing it.

Few realize that the conflict between Europe and the United States is caused by the differences in their population structures. Forty percent of U.S. population growth should be attributed to immigrants, mostly from Latin America. In 1910, about 90 percent of U.S. immigrants came from Europe. Today, 80 percent are from Latin America and Asia. The United States of America is becoming "the United States of Americans." On the contrary, Europe is receiving immigrants from the Mediterranean and Arab nations. The differences in these populations' compositions and cultural backgrounds will surely widen the gap between the United States and Europe.

From a demographic perspective, the long-term causes of the U.S.-European conflict are the source of immigrants and the different ways of receiving them. This is shown in the fact that the United States is becoming "more Latin American" while Europe is becoming "more Arabic." The former is trying to assimilate its immigrants, while the latter is tolerating its immigrants. As a result, the social question is again becoming the flashpoint for Europe's conflict, as ethnic problems act as the trigger of conflicts. Meanwhile, the Americans are perplexed by the question: "Who are we?"

China's advantage

Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger used to say in the same way that the rise of China would be the weightiest issue of the 21st century. Now, either China or the rest of the world has to be prepared for this to happen.

The rising role of non-Western countries like China and India in the international stage is placing unprecedented challenges before the old knowledge system that centers on Western culture, and the old system will prove to be increasing clumsy in explaining the ever-changing world.

However, Westerners and many Chinese still hold to the West-centered knowledge system and its concepts and perspectives to understand China's development. That is why we sometimes hear the rhetorics of "China threat," "China's collapse," or "China's chance." All these indicate that Western terms can no longer help explain China's path of development accurately. As the bridge between China and the rest of the world at China's economic and social transitional period, some foreign experts on China already have felt they are being marginalized and that their survival is being threatened. If they still follow the Western way of reading China, it's impossible for them to understand today's China. But the geographic distance between the West and China makes it difficult for Westerners to understand a true China.

Quite a few foreign scholars don't believe in China's rise, but instead have faith in India's ascent. Obviously, they have incorrect or incomplete knowledge of the whole situation. Although India's population is younger than China's, its low secularization rate hampers its modernization. In addition, China's population policy has greatly improved the quality of its population, which India cannot match.

Some experts already have refuted the hypothesis of India's population dividend, arguing that it's impossible to visualize the country with 500 million young people under 25 years old by 2030. The negative factors in India's population growth are its large rural populace, which is even larger than China's, its huge number of impoverished people and its large number of uneducated people.

Western logic is not fully based on China's national conditions, including all aspects of the Chinese society, so it's easy for Western demographers to have prejudices when examining China. To a large extent, China's population growth is curbed by its family planning policy. Therefore, a policy adjustment, new birth culture and a new concept of birth among the country's people can be corrected and guided in case of any problems. This is different from Japan, Russia and West European countries, which all try to encourage more births.

Moreover, China's elderly population hasn't become a complete social burden yet. On the one hand, the country's social welfare system does not consume so much government funding as it does in developed Western countries; on the other hand, traditional Chinese culture calls for respecting elders, so that families support senior citizens in many ways. Furthermore, China's culture of tolerance also helps to absorb foreign immigrants.

The viewpoint of this article does not necessarily represent that of Beijng Review