On January 18th the National Bureau of Statistics (nbs) announced that the number of working-age Chinese shrank last year by a total of 3.45m. In the slow-moving world of demography, that is a big turning point. The mobilisation of Chinese labour over the past 35 years has shaken the world. Never before has the global economy benefited from such an addition of extra human exertion. Now the additions are over-and not just in China (see page 64).
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