Just four years from now, China will pass a milestone. Its huge workforce will peak and start shrinking. This will make it more difficult for the world's second largest economy to continue the turbo-charged growth that has played a key role in the rise not just of China, but also its Asia-Pacific trade and investment partners like Japan. They depend heavily on exports to the Chinese market.
Part of China's success since economic reforms and market-opening were started in the late 1970s has rested on its army of low-cost workers in industry and export manufacturing. As labor shortages have developed in parts of China in the past few years, wages and other costs have risen, making exports less competitive and investment less attractive.
But the decline in the workforce is part of a bigger problem for China, the world's top exporter. Its population is aging, so sharply that the state-run China Daily recently called the trend a "ticking time bomb" for the government as it struggled pay the rising pension and health care costs of an increasingly elderly cohort.