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Others sounded the alarm about global overpopulation, resurrecting Malthusian fears about the human population growing faster than our food sources can sustain us.

But as a wave of economic liberalization swept through India in the late 1980s, the Malthusian nightmare never materialized.

At the World Economic Forum, organizers tried their best to change the gloomy Malthusian narrative about aging.

Still, the words “voluntary human extinction” often elicit reactions of spluttering horror, and terms like “eco-fascist” and “Malthusian” are often lobbed at the group.

This is traceable in large part to its Communist government’s “one-child” policy, in force between 1980 and 2016, which was an especially simplistic — and, with its coerced abortions and sterilizations, harsh — application of Malthusian thinking.