To deal with an out-of-control population boom, China instituted its one-child policy in 1980. This resulted in millions of baby girls being left to die because young couples wanted to have boy children — for both cultural and economic reasons (children traditionally support their family elders during the “golden years”).

But it has also resulted in a looming crises: there are currently six workers for every retired person in China. By 2040, this ratio is expected to reach two to one:

The proportion of elderly people is growing faster in China than in any major country, with the number of retirees set to double between 2005 and 2015, when it will reach 200 million. By midcentury, 430 million people — about a third of the population — will be retirees. That increase will place enormous demands on the country’s finances and could threaten the underpinnings of the Chinese economy, which has thrived for decades on the cheap labor of hundreds of millions of young, uneducated workers from the countryside.

One possible path to ease pressure on the pension system is to raise the retirement age from 50 for women and 55 for men to 55 and 60 respectively. But that will only exacerbate yet another problem: of the 4.13 million college graduates last year, 30 percent are still unemployed.

Which poses a question: will China try to avoid a war with the West at all cost because it cannot afford to lose any of their youthful resources, or will they push a nuclear confrontation because WMD isn’t age discriminatory?