Behind the population issue, innovation and inheritance are not only related to the fate of the country, but also inspire thinking about the meaning of life.
"China Entrepreneur" reporter Li Yanyan Zhao Dongshan
Editor|Li Wei
Head photo photography|Deng Pan
In China, there is no entrepreneur as obsessed with population issues as Liang Jianzhang.
But the first familiar to the outside world was his image of a genius boy and a business tycoon. The teenager who taught himself computer programs to write poetry at the age of 13, was admitted to the Fudan "junior class" at the age of 15, and obtained a master's degree in computer science from Georgia Institute of Technology at the age of 20 and was directly doctorated, personal experience and intelligence all the way, "genius" is a symbol that Liang Jianzhang cannot erase.
In 1999, at the age of 30, he returned to China to found Ctrip and led the company to go public on NASDAQ four years later. When his career was in full swing, he chose to go overseas to study, but whenever Ctrip entered a critical moment, he did not hesitate to go out again to escort Ctrip to the top position in online travel. In 2020, when the tourism industry fell into a historical trough, he put down his body and sang and danced cosplay live streaming to bring goods and led Ctrip out of the crisis again.
However, in the study of population issues, Liang Jianzhang is a lone walker.
For more than a decade, he has been on the front lines of influencing and rethinking population policy, always "wanting others to have children." His enthusiasm is always ignited when talking about population issues. Such entrepreneurs who care about population issues are rare in China, and as scholar He Fan said, "all problems can be classified as population problems by Liang Jianzhang."
From 2012's Is Chinese Too Much? By 2014, it would republish "Chinese can have more lives! From the population economics book "Population Innovation" to the population science fiction novel "After Eternal Life", and then to the recent launch of "Population Strategy", Liang Jianzhang has been in-depth study of population trends for more than ten years, and his Weibo, columns and other voice channels are almost occupied by "population".
In 2021, Liang Jianzhang co-founded the "Yuwa Population Research Think Tank" with a number of scholars, and proposed many specific measures to encourage fertility, such as cash and tax subsidies, housing loan subsidies, etc., which triggered a lot of public discussion. In the face of young people, Liang Jianzhang, who "fancy birth", seems to be "thankless", and he was dubbed by netizens as the "director of the birth promotion office".
For external controversies, Liang Jianzhang has always dealt with them mildly. But he has recently become increasingly anxious, because he realizes that behind the population problem, innovation and inheritance are not only about the fate of the country, but also can inspire thinking about the meaning of life. Some ultimate questions, such as the meaning of life, always haunted him.
At the end of May, on the occasion of the publication of Liang Jianzhang's new book, Population Strategy: How Population Affects Economy and Innovation, China Entrepreneur interviewed him to explore the reasons for his obsession with population issues, as well as wealth and fame in the secular sense, which Liang Jianzhang already owned, and what was he still looking for. How does he understand humanity, the world and life?
Population and innovation are two key propositions in China at present. In his new book, Liang Jianzhang ties them together and pioneers the "Demographic Innovation Model." In addition, the book analyzes and predicts China's future demographic situation and long-term economic competitiveness in detail, and gives detailed suggestions on how public policies can reduce the cost of childbirth and boost people's willingness to have children.
It is worth noting that Liang Jianzhang also emphasized the relationship between innovation and inheritance in the book. "Compared with the vastness of the universe, life is short and small, but as long as there is life and death, small human beings can continue indefinitely, thus giving birth to infinite innovation and passing it on infinitely in space and time." At the end of the book, Liang Jianzhang wrote this sentence.
The following are the core highlights of the dialogue between China Entrepreneur and Liang Jianzhang, co-founder and chairman of Trip.com Group, research professor at Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, and co-founder of Yuwa Population Research Think Tank:
1. China's rapid development is due to its largest population and market size in the developing world.
2. The fundamental factor influencing innovation is population, and innovation will become increasingly important as AI develops further.
3. In an inverted pyramid demographic, young people are not only less numerous, but also less energetic.
4. On average, the 30s are a golden entrepreneurial high, he has a certain accumulation, and it is a time of vigor.
5. One of the most important reasons for the declining birthrate is women's independence, and the opportunity cost of having children is high, which will also affect career development. But if women's equal rights are done well and good reproductive benefits are given, they can improve women's status and fertility at the same time.
6. Everyone or society as a whole should think, what is the meaning of your life? What can we leave behind?
The following is a transcript of the conversation (with deletions):
Population and innovation
China Entrepreneur: Population Strategy is your new book, what are the key issues you want to convey to the academic community and the public?
Liang Jianzhang: This book is probably about perhaps one of the biggest uncertainties facing China's economy in the future, which is the population problem. In recent years, China's new birth population has fallen very rapidly, seven years ago, the number was more than 18 million, last year more than 9 million, such a change will have a very far-reaching impact on the future social and economic development of the entire country.
The Population Strategy analyzes the impact of population decline on China's economy from multiple perspectives, the most important of which is innovation.
In this book, I pioneered a relatively complete "innovation model", quantifying innovation with several factors such as population size, population capacity, internal and external communication of the population, and made an in-depth analysis. I also used many countries as examples of how their demographic changes have affected their economies, including the United States and Japan.
China Entrepreneur: During the birth of this book or after its publication, have you received feedback from scholars and friends?
Liang Jianzhang: What I am studying is a relatively new phenomenon. Over the past few decades, the relationship between innovation and population has been particularly evident in emerging industries. After the Industrial Revolution, innovation has been an important factor in the economy. In the era dominated by manufacturing, there are certain scale effects at the level of industrial chain transactions, as well as the influence of demographic factors, but they are not as obvious as they are now.
Just like 30 years ago, the gap between the United States and Germany may not be so large, and the manufacturing products of Japan and Germany can also be sold globally, but in the past two or three decades, the information service industry (in a broad sense) has become the most important industry, and the United States has left Japan and Europe far behind.
Another key is that China has also developed rapidly, thanks to its largest population and market size in the developing world, giving birth to many world-competitive platform companies, Internet companies and AI technology companies. In addition, customers are participating in innovation, and the more they use it, the better the algorithms and processes will improve.
Compared with the previous manufacturing industry, the current information service industry has a stronger scale effect. Large countries often get ahead of small countries from the start, gaining a large user base that makes algorithms potentially a year or two ahead of small countries. When the algorithm is more mature and has gained benefits and experience in its own market, it can occupy the market of small countries.
Google is like that, conquering other markets after its success in the United States. These platforms of the big countries will have a head start. Therefore, the competition between major powers in these fields, especially the United States and China, has a great advantage, and the trend is becoming more and more obvious.
China Entrepreneur: The marginal utility of population in the digital age is still very different from the previous agricultural and industrial eras.
Liang Jianzhang: Right. Now the economic form is completely different, agriculture may only occupy single digits in the percentage of GDP, industry may account for ten or twenty percent, and a large part of the other part is information services, which is the innovation that users actually participate in, so you have to have a lot of research and development brains.
A person's innovation, (depends) many neurons of the brain, there are many connections to each other, that society, the country's innovation, also need a lot of smart brains, both internal and external have a good connection, young and energetic, to participate in innovation together, which is why innovation is positively correlated with population size.
China Entrepreneur: In your book, you talk about whether there will be fewer jobs with the development of artificial intelligence and robots. The recent explosion of ChatGPT, will it correct your understanding?
Liang Jianzhang: ChatGPT is actually a model of intelligent information services, which breaks the window paper between smart and non-intelligent. In the short term, unemployment is not yet a problem.
Taking tourism as an example, the average income of Chinese is now only more than 10,000 US dollars, and the average person takes a plane once a year, if you really want to achieve freedom of travel, your income may increase dozens of times. Tourism is an area where it is difficult for AI to significantly improve efficiency.
In the long run, AI does have the potential to replace almost all jobs in the next 50 years. At that time, it is not about whether artificial intelligence can be replaced, but whether humans dare to do it, whether they are willing to let artificial intelligence do it, I think humans will still control it in their own hands.
Source: Visual China
The fundamental factor affecting innovation is population, and with the further development of artificial intelligence, innovation will become more and more important, and innovation needs to be controlled by humans. When the population is small or old, the vitality of innovation will decline.
For example, if China now maintains the world's largest population size, China will be very strong in many industries, such as the robot industry, there are many R&D personnel to invest, and there are many scenarios. But if the population shrinks, the number of R&D personnel decreases, and the market size decreases, the commanding heights of these innovations may be replaced by other countries.
Young people and innovation
China Entrepreneur: In this book, you are fond of research on the relationship between young people and innovation, and you also give the example of your own entrepreneurial Ctrip. Ctrip did it together with a few young people. What new challenges does the current environment pose to the relationship between young people and innovation?
Liang Jianzhang: Whether the structural problem of the decline of young people affects the vitality of innovation is one of the topics of our research.
The normal population structure of a country is "222", 2 old people, 2 middle-aged people, 2 young people, and each generation is about the same size. Compared with the age structure of the declining birthrate, such as "421", 4 old people, 2 middle-aged people, and 1 young person, what kind of state will this be? The first is entrepreneurial vitality, because young people are definitely better than old people in terms of vitality.
If in an inverted pyramid demographic structure, young people will not only be small in number, but also their vitality will decline, because there are too many middle-aged or elderly people pressing on him, his promotion space will be affected, and the entire economy will be sluggish because of negative population growth without new investment.
This is a bit similar to the current situation in Japan. After the 90s in Japan, first, there were not many new companies coming out, unlike the United States and China, there were many new companies; Second, the existing high-tech companies, the innovation ability is also declining, the technology lags behind, can not keep up with the rhythm. This has something to do with demographics.
And what about China? In the next decade or so, on the whole, China's economy will be optimistic. However, China's population has gone down from about 25 million in the 1980s to 15 million per year in the 90s and 00s, and now there are less than 10 million, which will definitely have a negative impact on the competitiveness of China's economy in the future. This impact will be delayed until more than ten or twenty years later, so a lot of practical policy implementation will be required.
China Entrepreneur: You were only in your early 30s when you started your business, if you started your business 5 years later or even 10 years later, would you still have the impulse or momentum at that time?
Liang Jianzhang: For me, it was also the most suitable age at that time. At that time, the entire industry, the entire Chinese economy in all aspects was in a thriving state, China enjoyed a great demographic dividend, at that time young people are now the 60s and 70s, this group of people are born 25 million a year, to the 80s also have 25 million / year, but also ushered in the baby boom, which is very good.
On average, the 30s are also a golden entrepreneurial high. First, he has a certain accumulation, such as the accumulation of connections, money, and career. Second, 30 years old is just when you are energetic, you may just get married and have no children, the burden is not so big, you can move to another place, there is not much to worry about. In almost all countries, 30 is the best age to start a business.
China Entrepreneur: You also give the example of Israel in the book, Israel does not have that large population, but it is still a heart of innovation in the world, and you give an explanation - although Israel has a very developed innovation capacity, many innovative results are presented outside Israel.
Liang Jianzhang: Yes, Israel is very innovative. Almost one-third of the world's Jews are in Israel, one-third in the United States, and one-third in the rest of the world. But American Jews innovate far more than Jews in Israel.
We have also approached Israeli startups, but because the local market is relatively small, most of the companies in the past were B2B technology companies, made a technological breakthrough, and finally sold to American and Chinese companies, many of which were founded by Jews.
Chinese Entrepreneur: This book focuses on the relationship between population and innovation, but with economic development, the willingness to pass on the birth becomes weaker. How do you view this real-world dilemma? What is the root cause? If the cost of raising children is too high now, the ancient people had more children, in fact, it was a risk hedging mechanism at that time, the more children were born, the higher the probability of the family to reproduce, is it now because there is no need for this risk hedging, but everyone has no desire to have children?
Liang Jianzhang: Yes, now everyone has more entertainment opportunities, longer education time, and higher opportunity cost of work. The most important reason is the independence of a woman, the opportunity cost of having a child is high, and it has a great impact on career development.
Such a situation occurs in all modern countries. This is certainly a good thing, but it also has a side effect, which is a decline in fertility.
The relationship between women's status and fertility is not purely linear. In traditional societies with a relatively low level of development, women have a lower status and have to have many children. With social and economic development, the status of women and the proportion of participation in the work gradually increased, and the fertility rate declined. But this decline is not one-way, when the society further develops, women's status and economic independence are very high, and then increase the reproductive benefits, the fertility rate does not fall but rises. Of course, this requires a great tilt in social resources.
Source: Visual China
Interest in population research arose
China Entrepreneur: For more than a decade, you have been paying attention to China's population issues, and you are also on the front line of reflecting on and influencing population policies. When did you first become interested in population research? What are the opportunities?
Liang Jianzhang: When Ctrip was founded for six or seven years, I gave up my daily work to study for a doctorate. In 2007, the direction of my research was innovation, and gradually observed that the competitiveness of various countries actually had a lot to do with the population, and when the population of Japan had problems, I found that China was still implementing the one-child policy at that time, I felt very depressed, felt very responsible, let everyone know that there are actually many bad things in the small number of people, I began to write articles and write books to appeal.
China Entrepreneur: When you find the relationship between population and innovation, do you feel that enlightenment? When you were a Ph.D., you transferred from Stanford to the University of Chicago to specialize in demography?
Liang Jianzhang: Yes, in fact, economics has models about innovation, but they are often based on the size of the global population, not broken down into a country. I do a lot of national research, and of course it will be more closely connected to my own country, to the local population.
So I studied the relationship between population and innovation at the national level. Later, there were many emerging Internet industries such as platform companies and Internet companies in our country, and the relationship between population and innovation became stronger and stronger.
China Entrepreneur: Someone said, "Liang Jianzhang is the first scholar I know of who has disseminated complex demographic issues to the masses in a language and way that the public can understand." "When did you realize that academics or researchers alone cannot solve these problems, and that we need to use the power of the public to promote changes in population policy?"
Liang Jianzhang: The concept is not the main thing, from a rational point of view, it is true that now (raising a baby) is costly, stressful, including the pressure of education, you say that your child you don't have to care about him, go to stocking, conceptually it can be said, but now this education system, examination system is engulfing you. Therefore, the most fundamental thing is that there must be certain adjustments in policies and systems, followed by concepts.
"China Entrepreneur": Some netizens refer to you as the "director of the Birth Promotion Office", what do you think of this nickname?
Liang Jianzhang: I am not directly encouraging childbirth, but suggesting that the government encourage you to have children, that is, to reduce the burden of childbirth and encourage you to have children. The desire to have children is caused by the cost, and most people should still like children. So the cost of childbirth should be reduced, or the government can provide sufficient support.
After industrialization, the decline in the willingness to have children is a global trend, why is China's fertility rate much lower than that of other countries? It is true that some policies need to be adjusted.
We say that Japan's population has a lot of problems, but we now have a fertility rate that is 20% lower than Japan, and our fertility costs are higher than Japan's. Relative to our income, our fertility costs are almost the highest in the world, about the same as South Korea. The Nordic countries are models for encouraging fertility, and the birth reduction policy is very good, which is what we have to consider.
China Entrepreneur: In the past two years, you have proposed many specific measures to encourage childbirth, such as cash and tax subsidies, housing loan subsidies, etc., which has sparked a lot of public discussion. But there are also some people who are disgusted, do you pay attention to these voices? Did you receive some expected and unexpected feedback?
Liang Jianzhang: For the birth subsidy and the matter of giving money to have a baby, some people say that it may be useless to spend money, but in fact, it is useless to send very little money, such as a few hundred yuan a month, and it may not be able to persuade me to have one more child. But if you send a few thousand dollars a month, it will definitely be useful.
Some people also question, if we give a family of three children thousands of dollars, do we have that much money? It may depend on how old you are. When you reach the age of 20, then after 10 years, the number will accumulate more and more, maybe trillions.
If converted into a proportion of GDP, the total amount of our GDP is getting bigger and bigger, and the proportion of this subsidy to GDP is almost 2%~5%, which is relatively normal in the world, because many developed countries, especially the Nordic countries, have indeed issued about 3%, and Japan, South Korea are approaching the proportion of 2%~3%.
It sounds like a big number. But if we think about it the other way around, if our economy grows by 5% a year, if we take half of the economic growth and continue the fruits of consumption growth, then we can solve the biggest problem of China's economic future, and it will definitely be worth it.
On the other hand, China's savings rate is the highest in the world, and a large part of it is invested in infrastructure. In the early days of China's industrialization, this was very necessary, which was a very important reason for China's rapid economic growth. In the later stage of industrialization in the future, there may be no need to build so many new factories, new roads, and new high-speed railways. If we take out a part of the fixed asset investment and take out a few percentage points to invest in human resources, this return will be much higher.
Ctrip and population research
China Entrepreneur: There are many successful entrepreneurs, and there are many successful economists. What kind of life experience has the "amphibious" life in the business and academic circles brought to you over the years? Entrepreneur and academic, which role makes you feel more fulfilling?
Liang Jianzhang: Although entrepreneurship is not directly related to population on the surface, population research benefits from such an experience as an "entrepreneur" and promotes each other. As a travel marketing and distribution platform, we are at the forefront of technology, which is very helpful for studying the relationship between population and tourism, and the relationship between population and technology.
As for which is more fulfilling, of course, Ctrip is very satisfying, and Ctrip still has a lot of room in the future, especially our overseas business and inbound travel. But if population policy can really change, and it really works well, it may be a more macro achievement.
China Entrepreneur: Since 2020, you have become a model for corporate executives to bring goods live, all kinds of cosplay, what do you think of that period?
Liang Jianzhang: Indeed, at the beginning, there was no way, I was forced, because at that time, the company's business was almost zero, there was no cash flow, the cost was also very large, and I lost a lot of money, I hope to take the lead and drive the consumption of the company or industry.
At that time, I did more than 30 live broadcasts, I did all kinds of cosplay, Wu Song, Tang Monk, Xu Xian all dressed, it was quite interesting. This is also a new way to play travel, and later more and more of our marketing activities are through remote formats.
Photo by Deng Pan
We now have 2 working days a week and can work remotely from home. Employee satisfaction is high, and productivity has not decreased. We have made some innovative attempts during the epidemic, and we have achieved some good results, and the business situation has recovered very well.
China Entrepreneur: Of the more than 30 cosplay roles, which one are you more satisfied with?
Liang Jianzhang: Of course, the most satisfying thing is some creative roles, for example, when I was performing in Tianjin, I made up a crosstalk to introduce Tianjin's tourist attractions and hotel brands around the world.
China Entrepreneur: You enjoy experiencing attractions and hotels, have you been traveling anywhere lately? For example, the recent explosion of Zibo skewers is a new opportunity in the tourism market? Can the boom in retaliatory tourism continue as the pandemic recovers?
Liang Jianzhang: In the first year of live broadcasting, we went to various attractions and inspected many places, and then one year we mainly visited overseas, we traveled to dozens of countries, and we really found many formats and places that can be innovated.
The tourism industry will also have a lot of room for growth and innovation opportunities, traditional attractions alone are not enough, combined with local characteristics, artificially create some selling points or new things.
China Entrepreneur: Since 2016, Ctrip has expanded its international market through companies such as MakeMyTrip, Skyscanner, and Trip.com, covering about 200 countries around the world. In 2022, Ctrip's net profit of 1.4 billion yuan, which turned around and increased significantly by 355%, is it related to its global layout?
Liang Jianzhang: Last year, Ctrip was very difficult, making a profit of 1.4 billion yuan, mainly due to better cost control. Under normal circumstances, our revenue and profits should far exceed this figure, because our platform originally has nearly trillions in transactions every year. Tourism is not a very high gross profit thing, may only have a gross margin of 2%~3%. But this year's overall situation, we should be more than a billion.
China Entrepreneur: Many young people use social media to complete the planning and booking of some travel itineraries, is this a new challenge for Ctrip?
Liang Jianzhang: Everyone will travel more and more frequently, and they need a lot of inspiration. We do live broadcasting, in fact, it is also a way of inspiration, and we are also doing authoritative lists such as "the best parent-child destination" and "the best flower viewing destination".
Of course, our inspiration content is not the same as Xiaohongshu, we are an independent third party, specially someone to pull data, evaluate various indicators, evaluate which are the best and most suitable, to form our list, are more reliable.
China Entrepreneur: Back in China, in fact, Ctrip has many competitors, Meituan has been watching, Douyin is now also menacing, Ctrip has been very restrained in the border for so many years, but it is also considered too conservative, how do you evaluate Ctrip's current development status?
Liang Jianzhang: Tourism requires a long period of accumulation, we can't do social media immediately, do a lot of short video content, or do a good job of the foundation of certainty.
Of course, new technologies are coming, and we must embrace them. 10 years ago, we also got on the mobile Internet at the fastest speed, and in the future, we will have to keep up with technology very quickly. Keeping up is a part, and more importantly, the reliability and accuracy of the underlying information must be done for a long time.
Ctrip introduced the Six Sigma methodology very early, and the content seen in Ctrip, whether it is the hotel facilities or the photos of the hotel, is true, the accuracy rate is very high, 99.999%, this is a long-term infrastructure work, we work hard little by little, constantly improve, this is what we want to do.
Population and civilization
China Entrepreneur: You do not limit the population issue to the perspective of population and economics, but think in the dimension of human civilization? You can also see these logics in your previous book After Eternal Life.
Liang Jianzhang: Yes, in the long run, everyone or the whole society should think about life, because as society becomes richer and richer, people have a lot of leisure time and a lot of resources, what is the meaning of your life? What can we leave behind?
It is possible that like Einstein and Newton, left a huge scientific invention; Or like a process manager in our company, he made a small process improvement to make us more efficient. But you have one more thing left behind, and that is your children. Although he may be ordinary, he may also be a genius. The possibilities are endless.
"Chinese Entrepreneur": The book "After Eternal Life" talks about what to leave for the world. Through the "immortality" of artificial intelligence and through the continuation of future generations, which one will you choose?
Liang Jianzhang: I think in the end, it is interesting to have something new. If you do the same thing every day, living 10,000 years may not be interesting. But if you have offspring, and offspring have different possibilities, constantly creating things, that's interesting.
So are those immortals in the Heavenly Palace happy or not? They seem to be very happy, after all, they are immortal, but they don't seem to have children, and there is nothing new. Of course, occasionally there will be Monkey King to them, they should be happy, otherwise the days will pass too slowly, I think there must be new things constantly.
China Entrepreneur: Musk is an entrepreneur who is as keen as you to pay attention to population issues and the continuation of human civilization. If you had the opportunity, what would you like to communicate with him?
Liang Jianzhang: I think he is very similar to many of my views, of course, he has achieved particularly good results in space travel. What I want to say is the importance of population innovation and development, and the continuity of space and time are complementary.
If you're going to continue, you're going to spread the seeds throughout space in space, because you've messed up in one place and another place. And you'll go to different places, which, like travel, will give you new collisions.