The standard of living in China for the average individual is much lower than it is here in the USA especially in the rural country side. Also it is much easier to go back to something when you haven't traveled that far from the starting point. Also lest us not forget that China is still a totalitarian regime and has no qualms about destroying the environment or displacing millions of people (Three Gorges Dam). While the Chinese attempts at being more self sufficient are laudable their export driven economy does not bode well for an era of waning oil.

Oil has also increased the carrying capacity of farmland. I worked around and with the Amish for the past 8 years or so. Their farming methods are similar to those used 80 years ago or more. It's painfully obvious that going back to the old method of farming will result in much higher food prices and possible starvation. The yields for the Amish are at best half of a modern farm. Average dairy production is half to a quarter of what a similar sized herd of cows. Not to mention horses eat up a lot of extra land that could be productive farm land otherwise. Their farms are much more sensitive to weather changes because plowing and harvesting is so much slower. Task that take minutes with powered machinery take hours by hand. Large families are required to make such farms work. Obviously large farm families worked in the past when the population was much smaller. To think we could go back to that now and not run into issues of starvation is pure fantasy.

Also food will have to be much more expensive for smaller farms to survive. The only farmers who can compete with mainstream commercial operations on price are the Amish who use child labor and live like it's the early 1900s. Very small farms rely on niche markets where price is secondary to other considerations. An increase in food prices means less disposable income for other goods and services. It's part of the reason why food is so heavily subsidized, it's a form of economic stimulus.

Endless growth is not possible on a finite planet. But decreasing the population to advert an ecological/energy crisis along with decreasing consumption does not make for a growing economy. We just had a great example of what decreased consumption does for the economy. People lost jobs and our government along with those across the world (including China) have been trying to pump in various economic stimuli to restart the consumption machine ever since.

We need to do something but until people ditch the idea of instant comfort and embrace financial sacrifice we are indeed doomed to experience a hard lesson in the realities of resource depletion.