The views expressed on this podcast are those of the participants, not of Roiders' News.

Welcome to the Viewsroom. I'm Rob Cox, the editor of Breaking Views, the financial commentary

wing of Reuters News, coming to you from Missouri, Switzerland. This week, my colleagues,

Pete Sweeney and Yawin Chen chew over Chinese demographics.

Once in a decade, census data released on Tuesday showed the country's population of 1.4 billion people is barely growing, adding to fears that a shrinking workforce will hurt the economy.

In turn, as Yawin and Pete discuss, this could make it harder for the Middle Kingdom to pay off its prodigious debt load, a chunk of which was spent rather wastefully on excess housing, infrastructure,

and underfunded pensions. After that, I speak to Lisa Yucca and Milan and Neil Unmac in London

about, well, what else? Spacks. This week saw the blank check party arriving in Europe, but with

a little less froth. British investor and

SPAC pioneer Ian Osborne and Goldman Sachs alumnus Claudio Costamania are just two of the latest

to import special purpose acquisition companies to the continent. Yet to win over investors,

they are offering vehicles that link founders rewards a little more closely to shareholder returns.

That trend should probably catch on, says Lisa.

Now, give a listen.

Hello, everyone.

I'm Pete Sweeney.

I'm here in Hong Kong chatting with Chen Yawen.

And we're talking about what has become a very big matter of debate in China, specifically

the recent release of the population data,

a census that happens every 10 years. And it startled people on the downside, I think,

but it was a subject of some debate before it was even produced. It was the publication was

delayed by quite a bit, which was unusual. And then there was a report in the Financial Times that said that it was going to show

...