Actually, cascaded NAT can be used provide simple Internet service for more than 65,000 people. Although cascaded NAT means limited range of IP services... (many online applications would not work ...)

"Personally I hate IPv6 because the address space is too large (we know exactly who you are....no use hiding.....) and the packet headers are variable length (makes for inefficient packet handling). But then who am I to comment on such things..."
Ummm.... It's IPv4 that has variable packet headers. IPv6 makes them fixed.

And "no use hiding"? Wtf? You mean because you might get a dedicated IP? That's hardly a property of IPv6 itself, and I'm sure you can find ISP's who'll assign IP's dynamically.

But sure, don't let facts get in the way of something that might solve a lot of problems.

Great post Teller! I have just what you are looking for, fully furnished for immediate sale and ready for you to live under.

Assuming every person only used 1 port (that is, basic applications that use only a single connection at a time), NAT will enable up to about 64000 users per public IP. But it is even less than that because every user has multiple programs running, each program may use multiple ports at a time

If you want to sell kit to China (don't laugh, it happens) then it needs to be IPv6. They're big on it in Asia.

I suspect the "Great Firewall" is also "The Great NAT Box" since the rest of us are happy with IPv4. One address won't do because of the limited number of sockets.

Personally I hate IPv6 because the address space is too large (we know exactly who you are....no use hiding.....) and the packet headers are variable length (makes for inefficient packet handling). But then who am I to comment on such things...

Since there are a maximum number of 65535 ports how are you expecting to fit 1 IP address to a country of over 1.3 billion people...
Just because you can fit that many people within a subnet VLSM or not, the outgoing IP at the main "1 ip" router to the internet will be the same with NAT (set to overload which would actally be port address translation) for all users? you cannot fit a billion people into 1 ip address, atleast not for internet use. Also, many higher level protocols such as FTP require separate connections for control traffic commands/handshakes.
how about we take some CISCO classes before making network design proposals?

China is the large thief of intellectual property in the history of the world, so why not steal that too?

For a country that likes to clamp down on internet usage, they need exactly 1 public IP, and make everyone go through NAT. That solves your problem of excessive gaming, using VPN to get around web service blocks, etc. Most networks do not need to be built around public IPs; nearly all would suffice with consolidating down to 1 IP and using a NAT server, and China would get lots of "side benefits" from the deal too.