Key Takeaways

• China faces a major, demographic shift. While precise forecasting is fraught with difficulty, there is a broad consensus that as the population falls, burdens on the working population will increase.
  
  
• While the biggest impacts might still be some way off, the first effects will be felt within the next decade.
  
  
• The government has already introduced legislation to try to offset some of the shorter-term consequences. This will have the biggest impact on those who are currently at the start of their working lives.
  
  
• The same generation of younger Chinese also faces more immediate challenges; not least finding the sort of jobs they want in the places they want to live.
  
  
• While previous generations have, for many years, more or less assumed that their lives would be better than their parents, this is no longer the case, creating an important legitimacy dilemma for the Chinese leadership.