Comments by "Heads Full Of Eyeballs" (@HeadsFullOfEyeballs) on "Is China running out of people?" video.

It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks, and become one with all the people. -- Eternal Secretary Xi Jinping, 2051
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Except China isn't nearly at the level of prosperity that Western countries had when their birth rates started to seriously decline. They should still be having 2-3 children per woman. The one child policy has created a system where parents are expected to put all their eggs in one basket, investing enormous time and money on their only child's education to ensure they get into the best schools, universities etc. Most people simply can't afford to raise two or three children at that level of investment. And raising three "neglected" children that fail to succeed in competition with the one-child kids because you couldn't afford a private tutor for each of them isn't an appealing prospect for most parents.
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What gave you the impression that people are surprised? The problem is becoming more relevant, so they're talking about it more. That doesn't mean they were completely unaware of it in the past.
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The goal is to keep the economy going to maintain our standard of living. Wealthy people make fewer babies than poor people (this is true on a per-country level as well as on an individual level -- as a country's or family's prosperity increases over the generations, the birth rate drops). So poor countries have a surplus of young people that rich, aging countries can employ. It's a win-win system, if it's organised equitably. Unless you're scared of brown people for some reason.
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Even if they somehow convinced every single young person out of those 50 million to come "home", it'd be a drop in the bucket for a country of 1.4 billion people.
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