Brave New Saw Wave World

6

USING SAWTOOTH THINKING TO UNCOVER DEMOGRAPHIC INFLECTIVE SEEDS

Coming to terms with costly ageing in China

 

Before the crest of a sawtooth wave is reached, the breaking point is often visible. Transformational leaders in tooth wave arenas have to think in nonlinear terms and excel in propagative pattern recognition at different levels of analysis, spotting the early signs of ruptures. Demographic trends are particularly important indicators of profound future changes. China, with its tremendous impact on global developments, offers great opportunities to practice demographic saw wave thinking at a grand scale. A thorough analysis shows that in the next decades, the country's growth prospects will be dampened by its “demographic IOU,” which ...