Futureworld brings you Mindbullets: News from the Future, to spark strategic thinking about leadership, innovation and digital disruption. These fictitious scenarios aim to challenge conventional mindsets and promote understanding of the future context for business.
October 14 2051
Looking back over a generation, we’ve witnessed the rise and rise of China, and its subsequent collapse. For four decades, China was seemingly unstoppable, adopting urbanisation and market principles and tech innovation. Almost a billion people were hauled out of poverty in rural villages and inserted into the industrial economy of China’s teeming cities.
At one point, China was second only to the US, and poised to overtake it as the biggest economic gorilla on the global stage. Then the government blinked, and began to rein in the financial and civil freedoms that had created the Chinese miracle. Prosperity for all and social harmony was all well and good, but not at the cost of losing control. Tech giants such as Alibaba and Tencent were quickly brought to heel.
At the same time, China began to suffer the consequences of its own success. Workers were no longer prepared to follow the “996" rule — 9am to 9pm six days a week — despite higher salaries. The authorities promptly outlawed onerous contracts, to protect workers; which left China with another emerging crisis, not enough workers and not enough babies to replace them in the future.
In 2022 the climate chickens came home to roost, and China had no option but to start cutting back on coal, and curbing carbon emissions, at the very time pent-up demand was sending energy prices soaring. Despite building out solar and nuclear power at an incredible pace, China’s voracious heavy industries demanded more, if they were to continue being the world’s factory at the lowest price. But China’s international ambitions compelled them to agree to emissions targets and carbon reductions, worsening the energy crunch.
Meanwhile, the population continued to age and decline, despite the introduction of a “three-child policy” and government incentives for bigger families and more leisure time. Having become accustomed to more money and fewer children, China’s middle class was firmly committed to that lifestyle. Three decades later, and the population has dropped to 890-million, less than two-thirds of its former peak.
Don’t think China’s perfect storm has left the rest of the world unscathed either. Supply shortages, falling prices for commodities, and shrinking markets for imports and luxury goods have battered Western economies. When China falls, so do we all.
Date published: October 14 2021
Middle Kingdom reigns supreme
China beats the odds, and the analysts, and doubles its economy in a decade
August 8 2025
China has proven all its detractors wrong, again. Despite predictions of economic collapse by global doomsayers, China has doubled its GDP in 10 years, rising from the second most important economy to top spot, eclipsing even the US, though not by much. How did the “Middle Kingdom” do it?
China faced down its biggest demographic crisis, with the population segment that provides the workforce declining by 70-million people since 2010. Many feared this would precipitate a collapse, as the relaxation of the one-child policy was too late to boost fertility rates. Urban Chinese families choose not to have more children, even if they are allowed to.
But China astounded the economists; there’s another side to China’s population imbalance. Men of the marrying age outnumber women by more than 12%, which means that young men are supremely motivated to be rich and successful, to attract a wife. This social drive has ensured China’s entrepreneurs opted for deferred gratification and continued to perform way above global averages, in innovative ways.
Alongside this gender-fuelled ambition operates a further cultural driver, the highest rate of saving and investment in the world; it’s a China tradition to put more into savings, both households and companies, than any other nation. It’s relatively easy to shift the economy more towards consumption, and boost growth. The reserves are there.
So how did China follow the model of South Korea rather than Argentina of the ’90s, and avoid the middle-class trap? A high level of savings and a powerful desire to outperform merely needed wise policies, and leaders, to ensure continued stellar growth. China had one other advantage; coming late to the game, its leaders could observe — and learn from — the mistakes of its predecessors.
Now China can reclaim its title of Middle Kingdom, the centre of the world, and central to global growth. The question should not be how China got there, but rather: “Where to from here?” Is this the plateau for modern China’s supremacy? Or are there more wonders to come?
Date published: March 27 2014
• Despite appearances to the contrary, Futureworld cannot and does not predict the future. The Mindbullets scenarios are fictitious and designed purely to explore possible futures, challenge and stimulate strategic thinking.
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