Making matters worse is that Western countries (especially the US and Australia) have a huge amount of mineral wealth, but the greens always stand in the way. To be fair, there is currently no way to mine without polluting and contaminating the local ecology. There are ways to reduce pollution, but that is damage mitigation. You do not want to live near a mine.
Because their economy is bullshit. Dumping isn't working as much, their real estate bubble is about to pop, and they are turning into weak borrowers. They also haven't recovered from COVID and there's a serious problem in the country of young people simply not working because - surprise, surprise - their options are bad. This is all exacerbated by a fertility rate worse than Japan, created by their stupid 36-year one-child policy.
I have a conspiracy theory that the pro-NEET propaganda and all the shit about declining Western birth dates originates from CCP shills.