"Getting Old Before Getting Rich": Origins and Policy Responses in China

The tragedy of history's greatest-scaled Malthusian stagnation—the famine and disorder of mid 20th century China—instigated not only dramatic economic reforms from late 1978, but also unique demographic agendas. Separately China's economic and demographic agendas have received substantial attention in the literature. Although their cointegration appears to have formed a fundamental pillar of China's recent economic development success, that integration has received relatively little attention in the literature. This article elaborates China's long-run economic demography approach to its modernisation agenda and the implications for China's ageing-intensifying development prospects. This contributes to the related academic record and sets out what is prospectively a very informative and useful economic development policy reference point for policymaking in all countries.