KJCKorea
Journal Central

China's aging population, accelerated by an increase in the elderly population and a decrease in the working-age population, affects economic growth, market supply and demand structure, and industrial structure changes, especially by shrinking the demand base, can curb inflationary pressure. This study constructed a dynamic panel based on the New Keynes Phillips curve model using unbalanced panel data from 31 Chinese provinces from 1998-2023, and applied the AMG estimation method to analyze the effect of aging on inflation. As a result of the analysis, it was found that the inflation lag term was estimated to be a negative sign, which has the characteristic of mean regression, and that the proportion of the elderly population and the elderly support ratio, which are aging variables, suppress inflation. In particular, the suppressing effect was stronger in rural areas than in cities. In addition, the output gap, real GDP growth rate per capita, fiscal expenditure, urbanization, and trade openness caused inflation, and real fixed asset investment suppressed it. Therefore, China needs fiscal and monetary policy, expansion of labor participation for the elderly, and social security system reform to cope with the risk of deflation caused by aging. This study provides implications for price stability and macro-policy establishment in an aging society.

China’s grid governance has rapidly expanded nationwide since the zero-COVID era, aiming to maintain social stability and strengthen grassroots services. Yet the system depends on grid workers (网格员), who are low-wage and precariously employed laborers. This study analyzes how Chinese citizens perceive this contradiction using LDA topic modeling and deep-learning sentiment analysis of approximately 3,500 social media posts collected from Zhihu (知乎), Weibo (微博), and Baidu Tieba (百度贴吧). The results show predominantly negative sentiment, with “Job Environment and Compensation” the most negative (–0.80). Drawing on Scott’s (1990) notion of “hidden transcripts,” we argue that netizens indirectly criticize the gap between the state’s discourse of stability and the unstable means of its implementation, often through complaints about labor conditions rather than overt dissent. These contradictions may weaken confidence in the state’s stability narrative and raise questions about the long-term viability of performance-based legitimacy.

This paper examines China-Russia relations as of the mid-2020s. It first reviews the existing literature on China-Russia relations and clarifies their limitations. Next, it explores the conditions that differentiate a “long-term, trustworthy, and strong interstate partnership,” which is indicative of “an enduring alliance,” from an “unstable, temporary, and essentially distrusting partnership,” which represents “a competitive coalition.” As for the case study, it investigates China-Russia relations across three key domains (i.e., historical development, economic connections, and military relations) to determine whether they meet the criteria for an enduring alliance, as often argued in previous research. The following analysis reveals that although the two countries appear to form increasingly closer ties in the face of a common threat (i.e., the U.S), they do not fully satisfy the conditions necessary for a long-term, trustworthy, and strong interstate partnership. Instead, their relationship is largely characterized by instability, temporariness, and fundamental distrust. Consequently, it concludes that contemporary China-Russia relations are better described as “competitive coalition,” rather than as an enduring alliance.