China won’t become a chaotic war monger seeking expansion or conflict as some claim. China has no gigantic youth masses clamoring for foreign glory (just a few wolf warriors). They want to position themselves as the anti-chaos choice, a stable option. Winning without fighting.

The China of today is not the kind of country that launches a SMO into its neighbor or suddenly attacks a country it deemed a long term threat to an ally. This is not a pro China sentiment. Just looking at this political, cultural, & demographic reality.

China has many weaknesses. Geography, lack of real allies, & demographics (of course) amongst them. America has many strengths, geography, natural resource abundance, alliances. But serious serious mistakes have been made & this will have very real and long term consequences.

https://x.com/andyd10/status/2032747988993368308

IMHO Uganda likely 3.75 TFR or lower by 2030. 3.0 by 2035 & close to local replacement by 2040. Smart phone in every hand & modest standard of living increases could supercharge falling fertility. Unless food crisis stemming from the possible fertilizer crisis crushes incomes.

But Uganda may also be in a phase where dearer food prices also push people to have less children.

https://x.com/comtewasright/status/2034608516955050250

As the Economist has pointed out, the African continent has more emigrants (20M) outside the continent than even India (despite having a smaller population). The publication views continued mass migration to Europe & the West as inevitable, this is untrue.

European countries could nearshore factories when there’s no longer working populations to support them at home. Then a tax (the difference between a good local wage & European low wage) could be paid into the pensions system of the European country whose company near-shored.

Solutions like this are certainly within the realm of the possible. It would be difficult and require rewriting international labor agreements but it is certainly not impossible just as continued mass migration is by no means inevitable.

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2025/04/24/emigration-from-africa-will-change-the-world

South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland have some of the lowest fertility rates in Sub Saharan Africa they also have the highest smartphone penetration rates. South Africa is barely above replacement, Botswana is on 2.5-2.7, Swaziland & Lesotho both below 2.8.

Kenya & Ghana also have high penetration rates and their TFRs have also both fallen to around 3.5 in recent years and will likely be at or below 3.0 by 2030. This compares to 6.0
in most of the Sahel with very low penetration rates.

https://prod-cms.gsmaintelligence.com/research-file-download?assetId=12080&reportId=50121

If this South Korean demographic rebound maintained then if anything UN projections were not optimistic enough lol. Even in the below projection RoK was not forecast to hit 0.90 until the 2030s & could conceivably come close this year even if coming months are not as positive.

This is happening even as Seoul property is more unaffordable than ever. My projection for South Korea’s TFR floor was 0.75 but it ended up being 0.72. Even this lower level is higher than floor of other places in East Asia like Taiwan (which may be sub 0.7 in 2026) & Hong Kong.

https://x.com/andyd10/status/2036714422043873703

Unlike Spain or Japan or Canada, or just about any other country, China is simply far too big to mitigate this with some mix of AI and labor policy changes. China certainly won’t collapse anytime soon but they will try radical solutions the rest of the world hasn’t considered.

Colombia has TFR close to 1.2 these days. Around the same level as Chile, Argentina, & Uruguay despite having far lower Per Capita GDP (in both PPP and nominal terms) & being far more ethnically diverse. The collapse is thus not tied directly to a specific race or income level.

Though it is worth noting that there is almost certainly a certain income minimum where past which point one is able to have a smartphone & engage in more non essential consumption & changing of economic & cultural priorities.

That is what we see in places as diverse as Nepal, Swaziland, Bhutan, Botswana, Sri Lanka, & Cuba.

Italians still emigrating in huge numbers. In 2023 158,000 people emigrated from Italy, including ~114,000 Italian citizens.  In 2024 this rose to 191,000, a 20.5% increase year over year. Of these, 156,000 were Italian citizens (36% emigration increase).

The annual Italian citizen emigration loss is larger than the greater metropolitan population of Salerno. On top of this Italy sees 37,000+ natural decline every year.

https://www.istat.it/en/press-release/demographic-indicators-year-2024/

As of 2026, total number of Italians living abroad surpassed 7.3 million (according to AIRE), now outnumbering foreign residents within Italy by nearly two million. BUT this is all Italian citizens abroad including those in ARG & BZ who gained citizenship.

These millions of Italian citizen Argentines & Brazilians should offer a potential demographic lifeline to Italy but this is unlikely as they are often among the better off & not doing horribly at home, & as Italian citizens they have the option to immigrate anywhere in the EU.

They may even move to Norway or Switzerland on their Italian passport. Sadly for Italy if 150,000+ Italian citizens emigrate annually it is doubtful they can convince a significant chunk of the citizens diaspora to return.

https://italianismo.com.br/en/italianos-no-exterior-ja-somam-mais-de-73-milhoes-aponta-governo/

Japanese fertility rate has been higher than South Korea’s continuously since early 2000s, & the gap had widened dramatically in recent years (with a 0.48-0.49 TFR difference from 2020-2023). The gap narrowed significantly in 2024 & 2025 & TFRs may converge at ~1.05 before 2030.

Many lessons to draw from the below fertility map of Nigeria. Fertility can & will fall fast in smartphone penetrated, changing values societies. Ghana, Kenya,South Nigeria etc will likely be below local replacement before 2040. Muslim Sub Saharan nations maybe not until 2050.

Does not take much economic development to reach a high level of mobile internet/smart phone penetration. But once a society gets to that point & former values are displaced, many see large families as holding them back so fertility plummets in the near total majority of cases.

Congressional Budget Office predicts natural decline is right around the corner for the United States. ~2030 deaths expected to outpace births for the first time in American history. The population is only expected to ⬆️ to ~364M by 2056 from 343M today.

This is a far cry from the estimates of almost 400 million Americans ~2050 we say just a decade ago. There are many perspectives on whether or not this is a bad thing. From my point of view the greatest concern is falling births (especially amongst the Middle Class).

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61994

American monthly casualties in the First World War were 35,626. Highest monthly casualties for the U.S. Armed Forces in its history. U.S. losses paled in comparison to those of the UK, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, & Italy. WWI wreaked enormous demographic damage.

Myanmar has lost 2.3 million emigrants to Thailand since 2021 coup ignited a Civil War (2M+additional Burmese emigrated pre 2021). Burma risks losing these assimilatable Buddhists to Thailand forever. However, Thai xenophobia may just push many back post war.

Myanmar also likely has below replacement fertility. So emigration ages the developing country faster.

https://www.economist.com/asia/2026/03/26/millions-of-burmese-struggle-to-find-safety-in-thailand

Thailand with its 68 million people is one of the largest countries in the world to fall below 0.85 TFR (3X Taiwan, 15M larger than South Korea). Its economy,pension scheme,& workforce are in for a wild ride.

Birth numbers for March for Thailand were just released. Despite an awful January showing a fall of almost 15% better birth figures in both February & March improved things a bit & births now down 10.8% in the first quarter of the year. TFR still on track to be sub 0.80 sadly.

Of all Central Asian countries here Turkmenistan is in worst shape. Mass emigration fuels population decline, horrifically bad governance also pushes. Tajikistan also has very high emigration but a TFR to partially make up for it. KZ has huge ethnic difference in fertility.

Uzbekistan falling fast but from 3.21 so it will likely not converge with KZ until 2028-2030. UZ also has a very decent population size & should just get to 50 million before plateauing. Kyrgyzstan may make it to 10 million before doing the same.

Back to Kazakhstan & the internal fertility differential. The fertility rate of ~3.0 for ethnic Kazakhs (~70% of the population) is roughly 3 times higher than the ~1.0 for ethnic Russians (15% of the population). This is based off of 2025 information from the Bureau of National Statistics of Kazakhstan

The fertility rate of Non Hispanic White Americans is higher than that of Mexico, the UK, Sri Lanka, Australia, Tunisia, Colombia, & Brazil to name a few. In 2025 having the largest U.S. race (191 million in size) with slightly increasing fertility rates above 1.5 is pretty significant.

https://x.com/birthgauge/status/2042261192433959239