Commentary Even as China announced slowing growth and its plans to boost growth after the Lunar New Year, it could not hide the collapse in demographics. For many years, as growth continued to roar ahead, bureaucrats wondered whether China would get rich before it got old. China already is old and will face a falling population, if not already. This will define the future of China and its place in the world. Widely attributed to the introduction of the one-child policy under Mao Zedong, Chinese birth rates fell in tandem with the widespread introduction of birth control. With a replacement rate of 2.2 children per couple required to keep the population stable, China’s current fertility rate of 1.3 portends further problems. While the total population of China has leveled off, the working age population has been falling for nearly a decade. Officially, China’s working age population peaked in 2014, declining …