On Aug. 18, 2025, Beijing Daily published an article in its Theory Weekly section titled “We Must Establish Views on Population as a Resource, as a Force, and as an Ecosystem — China Needs Institutional Demography.”
At first glance, it seemed like another lofty policy essay. But upon closer reading, it reads more like a state-level manual for population extraction — a candid admission by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that its “human mines” are running dry.
The article’s author, Professor Mu Guangzhong of Peking University’s Population Research Institute, coined the term “institutional demography.” It sounds academic, but its essence is brutally simple: how to use state mechanisms to maximize the extraction of human labor as a resource.
The piece divides China’s population into three categories:
- Ages 0–14: “Reserve human resources” (reserve mines)
- Ages 15–59: “Active human resources” (main mining veins)
- Ages 60 and above: “Third-tier human resources” (redevelopable tailings)
This framework reduces human life to an industrial mining model — children as unmined reserves, adults as active extractions, and the elderly as recyclable waste. The language itself is steeped in dehumanization and contempt.
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In short, Mu’s so-called “institutional demography” is less a study of population than a science of state-driven exploitation — not how to protect human welfare, but how to squeeze citizens longer, harder, and more efficiently.
From ‘mine control’ to ‘forced mining’: Four decades of policy whiplash
For forty years, every major CCP population policy has been a political pendulum swing — from suppression to coercion, with ordinary people caught in the middle.
In the 1980s, the regime declared that “China has too many people” and enforced the one-child policy through forced abortions, sterilizations, and crippling fines. It was a campaign of “mine control” — limiting how many new “workers” could be produced.
Now, as the birth rate collapses and the workforce shrinks, the same system has reversed course, urging citizens to reproduce under slogans like “revitalize the fertility culture.”
Thus began the era of “forced mining” — pressuring families to supply more human labor for the state’s needs.
The slogans change, but the logic remains: people are never the purpose — only the means.
Whether too many or too few, citizens remain fuel for the Party’s machinery.
Beijing Daily warns that “a declining birth rate will lead to economic downturn and weakened competitiveness.” The logic may sound plausible, but the fear is misplaced.
Across the world, countries from Japan to Germany face aging populations without resorting to coercion.
They rely on innovation, education reform, and immigration — not state intrusion into private life — to sustain development.
For instance, Australia’s MATES Program allows young Indian professionals to live and work there for two years, easing labor shortages and boosting cross-border talent exchange.
By contrast, the CCP’s anxiety stems not from “too few people,” but from too few people it can mobilize and control.
The crisis is not demographic — it is political. With fewer youth, the regime fears losing its supply of labor, tax revenue, and unquestioning obedience.
Systematized dehumanization
Perhaps the most chilling passage in Mu Guangzhong’s essay describes:
“Ages 0–14 as reserve human resources; 15–59 as active resources; 60 and above as tertiary resources available for redevelopment.”
This is not the language of demography. It reads like an engineering blueprint for human utilization.
From the CCP’s perspective:
- Children are future labor stocks.
- Youth are dividend machines.
- The elderly are residual assets to be “re-exploited.”
Even retirement offers no dignity; older citizens are expected to “contribute remaining energy” — not for personal fulfillment, but to sustain the state.
The Beijing Daily article also praises youth for their “creativity, competitiveness, combativeness, and consumption power.”
On the surface, it sounds like encouragement; in essence, it portrays the young as multi-functioning harvesters — expected to fight, innovate, consume, and pay taxes simultaneously.
Even more telling is its comparison with India:
“India has more young people; its reserve resources are richer.”
Such words reveal the mindset of a mine owner. The difference is not about innovation or governance — it’s about who controls more exploitable bodies.
True national vitality, however, arises not from population size, but from individual freedom and creativity.
India may not be perfect, but it does not call its citizens “reserve resources.”
The CCP, by institutionalizing “population extraction,” displays not strength, but civilizational regression.
From ‘birth culture’ to ‘uterus mobilization’
The essay’s closing calls for “rebuilding population value,” “rebuilding family structures,” and “rebuilding fertility culture” repackages familiar CCP rhetoric.
In the one-child era, slogans read: “Fewer births, better births, for the nation’s future.”
Now, they have morphed into: “More births, better raising, for the nation’s future.” The message remains the same: citizens exist to serve the regime.
Women’s wombs become national assets; youth are expendable fuel; the elderly, residual resources.
If trends continue, refusing to reproduce may one day be branded “unpatriotic” — or even illegal.
The article ends with an optimistic note:
“Youthful population, youthful nation.”
But beneath the slogan lies an ominous truth: the CCP’s “youth” depends on each generation’s exhaustion and sacrifice.
When a government’s vitality is sustained only by consuming its people, it ceases to represent the nation — it becomes a system that demands life merely to prolong its own.
Behind the academic jargon of “institutional demography” lies Beijing’s deepest fear: its human mines are running out.
The CCP’s obsession with controlling reproduction and labor reflects not confidence, but systemic decay — a regime that sees its citizens as resources, not as people.
Once a state begins to categorize and exploit its own population like raw material, it has already lost its humanity — and its future.
“When people exist only to sustain the regime,” one scholar remarked, “the regime itself is already dying.”
By Jing Chen, Janet Huang
