China Ends One-Child Policy 279
jones_supa writes: China has scrapped its one-child policy, allowing all couples to have two children for the first time since draconian family planning rules were introduced in 1979. The announcement followed a four-day Communist Party summit in Beijing where China's top leaders debated financial reforms and how to maintain growth at a time of heightened concerns over the economy. China will "fully implement a policy of allowing each couple to have two children as an active response to an ageing population," the party said in a statement published by Xinhua.
Hell, why not? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Doesn't matter (Score:5, Informative)
People in the west don't understand that for most Chinese, the one child policy doesn't have effect. Because there are so many exceptions.
1) If you and your partner were single kids, you can have two kids.
2) Ethnic minorities have higher limits, and foreigners, including Hong Kong and Taiwan can have unlimited
3) Rich people just pay the tax and have another child, because they are so rich from corruption money is nothing for them.
4) Some provinces had already lifted the ban, or lessened it greatly.
5) Children born outside China, including HK and Taiwan, don't count. Hence the large amount of birth tourism.
So this is pretty much a symbolic act, but at least it's the communists admitting they can't control everything. I wonder how this will be spun off in China, since there the communists are still treated as nearly perfect, the thing everyone should aspire to be.
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:5, Informative)
To be fair, "Taiwan can have unlimited" in much the same way that Finland can have unlimited. It's not China, despite what they'd have you believe.
Also I like the phrase "birth tourism". Kind of a nice counterpoint to Switzerland's "suicide holiday".
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:5, Interesting)
I have three kids (all born outside China) and we have been to China several times. It is surprising to see how many people come up and ask how much the "tax" was on the third one.
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:5, Informative)
It is surprising to see how many people come up and ask how much the "tax" was on the third one.
I don't know how much for a 3rd, but the tax was 5000RMB, or about $700, for a 2nd child in Shanghai back in 2002, when I helped my wife's brother get a permit for his second kid. I have heard it was cheaper in the countryside, and in some western provinces, it wasn't being enforced at all.
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One thing from the summary, are they limited to two children or could they have more?
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You know the Republic of China (Taiwan) is a sovereign state, right? Not under PRC control at all?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Did you mistype your point (2) and mean some actual part of the People's Republic of China?
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The PRC doesn't see it that way, as you should know.
Neither does the USA, actually-- thanks, Nixon and Carter.
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The PRC doesn't see it that way, as you should know. Neither does the USA, actually
Neither does Taiwan. They officially consider themselves to be part of China. Taiwan also considers Tibet, Xinjiang, and all the islands in the South China Sea to be part of an indivisible China. Although China has recognized the independence of Mongolia, Taiwan has not, and considers Mongolia to also be Chinese territory.
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The DPP would disagree. You can no longer conflate Taiwan with the KMT.
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You know the Republic of China (Taiwan) is a sovereign state, right? Not under PRC control at all?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Did you mistype your point (2) and mean some actual part of the People's Republic of China?
You should ask the Chinese Government about the status of the Provence of Taiwan :)
From the wiki link
The People's Republic of China (PRC) claims that the Republic of China government is illegitimate, referring to it as the "Taiwan Authority"
While, I think Taiwan is it's own nation. I would not be surprised if the PRC passed laws/policies that read like they control the ROC
Re: Doesn't matter (Score:2)
That isn't what study after study says about Chinese society and the gender disparity. It might not have a direct affect on many Chinese couples wanting to have children, but most Chinese are greatly affected by its long reaching and longterm societal impacts.
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Re:Doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
People in the West think that government telling people how many children they can have is one of the highest forms of tyranny, regardless of actual results.
It still is especially when you consider actual results.
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
It still is especially when you consider actual results.
The actual result was matching the population to the food supply and eliminating famine.
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
...and a skewing towards males, for cultural reasons, that means there's a pretty big gender gap.
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2... [turner.com]
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:5, Informative)
...and a skewing towards males, for cultural reasons, that means there's a pretty big gender gap.
Sex selective abortion is common in many Asian countries, so the one-child policy is not the root cause. Many provinces in India have a more severe problem with female infanticide [wikipedia.org] than China.
Also, in Chinese provinces that have already relaxed the policy from one child to two, the problem has gotten worse. Families are reluctant to abort their first baby, and less than 10% of first born baby girls are aborted. But if the first baby is a girl, then they want to be damn sure the second is a boy (so they have someone to support them in old age), so a second girl is much more likely to be aborted.
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I'm not saying you're saying this, but just wanted to point out, the solution is not to revert to the one child policy or remove the child limit policy. In fact the source of the problem is education and economic development. By education I mean raising the general education level of the population and not just 'educating' people to not do certain stuff.
This problem occurred elsewhere in the world, with other ways of old-style, feudal thinking. Once populations are educated and their economy provides the
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In fact the source of the problem is education and economic development.
The evidence shows the opposite. Sex-selective abortions are worst in areas with higher education and development. In China, the problem is worst in the coastal cities. In India, it is worst in richer provinces like Gujarat. One reason is that richer and more educated people have greater access to sonograms, and can afford the abortions.
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The actual result was creating a gender imbalance and far too small of a working age population to support the older generation when they are unable to work. They are predicting that in the near future there will be 4 retirees per one working age adult and that is unsustainable.
If you want to control the population you need a gradual drop, not a sharp one.
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It still is especially when you consider actual results.
The actual result was matching the population to the food supply and eliminating famine.
336 million forced abortions and 196 forced sterilizations according to China's own Ministry of health [telegraph.co.uk].
Re: Doesn't matter (Score:3)
So in that 'matching of population to resources' logic...would you be pro forced abortion or casual abandonment, perhaps drop the newborn across the nearest border?
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The actually results lowered a famine and starving population and kept it from growing.
Without the one child policy China would have over 2 billion right now.
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I didn't know that the British and Japanese Empires were Marxist.
Japan was an industrialized power well before WWII and China was a colony force-fed opium by those capitalists you so adore. That'
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If you put a closed border around the solar system and consider the entropy within, it will increase whether or not you have a child. The sun is winning the "who's increasing entropy most" battle.
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No-one in the Chinese government actually likes the one-child policy. It's seen as a problem in many ways. However there are many people tied up administering it. If you were to abolish it completely you'd be seen as the evil politician who put all those people out of jobs. So instead they make lots of exceptions to it, and now change it to a two-child policy. So all those public servants can keep their jobs.
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Well, they ARE Communists, you know!
Foreign policy affects (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Foreign policy affects (Score:5, Insightful)
No family of their own, no children to go home to, and quite possibly no parents alive. China has tens of millions of potential soldiers, none of whom have to worry about what they leave behind when they ship off.
Re:Foreign policy affects (Score:4, Insightful)
India has the same lopsided gender ratio, along with an infinite-child policy, and they doesn't seem to be getting into a lot of wars.
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That's arguably more than China has, although both are a lot less than the US has in the same time period.
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Anybody who's spent more than 10 seconds thinking about the math already understands that it was a farce all along.
Ergo the one child policy has never been strictly enforced. Claims that it was were nothing more than
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Although there were certainly exceptions, the one child rule had huge effect on China's demographics. If you look at the 2015 population pyramid [populationpyramid.net], you will see that there is a clear drop between the 40-44 age demographic and the 35-39 demographic, which corresponds exactly to the age that someone would be today (37) if they were born at the start of the policy in 1978. But they weren't born, so they aren't there.
336 million abortions (Score:5, Informative)
People in the west don't understand that for most Chinese, the one child policy doesn't have effect. Because there are so many exceptions.
1) If you and your partner were single kids, you can have two kids.
2) Ethnic minorities have higher limits, and foreigners, including Hong Kong and Taiwan can have unlimited
3) Rich people just pay the tax and have another child, because they are so rich from corruption money is nothing for them.
4) Some provinces had already lifted the ban, or lessened it greatly.
5) Children born outside China, including HK and Taiwan, don't count. Hence the large amount of birth tourism.
So this is pretty much a symbolic act, but at least it's the communists admitting they can't control everything. I wonder how this will be spun off in China, since there the communists are still treated as nearly perfect, the thing everyone should aspire to be.
According to China's Health Ministry [telegraph.co.uk], the one child policy had forced 336 million abortions as of 2013. It also had forced the sterilization of 196 million men and women.
In the grand scheme of things, this is something it's worth making a big deal about. Certainly more worthy of a mention than female stereotypes in media and other injustices against women that get a lot more coverage. But yeah, they've been relaxing the restrictions for awhile now.
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People in the west don't understand that for most Chinese, the one child policy doesn't have effect. Because there are so many exceptions.
1) If you and your partner were single kids, you can have two kids.
2) Ethnic minorities have higher limits, and foreigners, including Hong Kong and Taiwan can have unlimited
3) Rich people just pay the tax and have another child, because they are so rich from corruption money is nothing for them.
4) Some provinces had already lifted the ban, or lessened it greatly.
5) Children born outside China, including HK and Taiwan, don't count. Hence the large amount of birth tourism.
So this is pretty much a symbolic act, but at least it's the communists admitting they can't control everything. I wonder how this will be spun off in China, since there the communists are still treated as nearly perfect, the thing everyone should aspire to be.
1) If this were true, then just about everybody could have multiple kids in the past.
2) As pointed out by others, despite you apparently believing PRC propaganda, no part of Taiwan ruled territory has ever been under PRC control. So PRC rules/laws don't apply there. Hong Kong and Macau operate under their own laws under the SAR agreements.
3) Famous directory Zhang Yimou and his wife tried this and got into a lot of trouble. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it may be as easy as you think.
4) Thi
Logic (Score:2)
So the solution to having to many people is to make more people? Got it.
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Re:Logic (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is extreme consumerism of a select few.
Even if every human lived like francis of asissi, which they won't because they are humans, and not every human wants to live like a monk, we still would face the problem of overpopulation a few billion humans down the line. The earth is limited, it has limited space. I don't want to live in a world where the environment is destroyed so that we can get room for feeding / clothing / housing / etc. billions of additional humans.
One day we find out how to eliminate natural causes of death, we perhaps might want to stop reproducing completely. Otherwise this little planet of ours gets crowded too fast.
20 billion humans, so be it. Ok with me. But unlimited growth leads to collapse. Why isn't this recognized on a global scale, why is population control frowned upon? And I don't say an one child policy is good. I guess a limit to have a stable population would be more between 2 and 3 children, as some people don't want to get children, some die, etc.
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So what you're saying is unlimited growth isn't unlimited. It's ultimately self regulating, just like with everything else in nature.
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Yes, I agree, human population is self-regulating. The regulation mechanisms are usually "war", "hunger" and "thirst". I'd rather have those eliminated than having no population control.
Re:Logic (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, it's self regulating, but it also would leave those remaining with a hellish quality of life.
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So you've decided to remove yourself from the equation and abstain having children to help diminish overpopulation?
Or is it that (as it so often is perceived) that it is everyone else but not you/your kids that is the problem?
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Telling a woman that she can't have a fourth child is in my eyes not as bad as telling her grand-grand daughter that her child died in battle, or her not being able to feed her child.
But to answer your question: I haven't thought about it myself yet tbh, but yes, to be consequent I would have to limit the number of my children. I guess I'd chose a value where if everybody had it we'd have a stable population.
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So you've decided to remove yourself from the equation
A quick death, vs a slow death (80 years) has the same effect on the population 100 years from now. So why imply that anyone who disagrees with you needs to commit suicide to prove their point? I've removed myself from the equation, it's jut going to take a few years for that to take effect.
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Fairly illuminating TED talk on understanding population growth:
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_... [ted.com]
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Current projections don't ever reach 20B people. Population peaks somewhere between 9B and 15B (depending on your assumptions), then declines to lower than current population.
Note that those assumptions all include everyone attaining a "Western" standard of living. The "West", for all its issues, seems to have found the answer to population growth - enough prosperity that raising kids isn't the be-all and end-all of existance..
Re:Logic (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't believe me? Look at the birth rates in places like the US, Europe, East Asia, even South America. Consider places like Mexico or Brazil. In 1970, Mexico had a birth rate of 6.72 children per woman, and Brazil was at 5.02, compared to 2.48 in the U.S. In 2012, that has fallen to 2.22 for Mexico and 1.81 for Brazil, while the USA is 1.88. For comparison, the "replacement level" at which the number of births balances out the deaths from age/etc is around 2.1. China is at 1.66 as of 2012, which while not as bad as Japan (1.41) or South Korea (1.3), is still pretty bad. Even India has started slowing, down to 2.5 as of 2012.
Overpopulation is not going to be a problem, unless you're falling prey to an extrapolation fallacy (see https://xkcd.com/605/ [xkcd.com] ). Even if it is a problem in the shorter term, the answer is easy - improve living standards, access to health care, and provide access to voluntary family planning/contraception. You don't need to force it on people, they'll use it - and far more than most governments want them to. Lots of governments are starting to realize that their problem is how to convince their citizens to have kids, not stop having them.
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"Overpopulation" is not a problem. The problem is extreme consumerism of a select few.
Doesn't that depend upon what is a reasonable quality of life? At least describe what "extreme consumerism" you're talking about, because I think what you believe is reasonable might differ from the rest of us. Is it a "Tragedy of the Commons" case when those who can't afford their own stuff, decide to have more offspring?
Re:Logic (Score:4, Informative)
So the solution to having to many people is to make more people? Got it.
China doesn't have too many people. Their working age population is already falling, and the population as a whole will begin to fall within a few years. By going to a two-child policy, they are not "making more people", they are just leveling off. Two kids from two parents is just population replacement, not growth.
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It's not even that. 2.1 kids is ZPG. Because accidents happen.
Two kids per two parents is fine, as long as every one of those kids grows up to have two kids. If one is run over by a milk truck on the way to his wedding....
Death! Doooooooom! (Score:4, Insightful)
Nature will find a level.
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If China has had 1-child policy since '79, why has their population increased so much? Shouldn't it have halved by now (2 parents replaced by 1 child)?
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Because government policies can rarely be summed up in three words of a foreign language? There are many exceptions to the policy.
Re:Logic (Score:5, Informative)
If China has had 1-child policy since '79, why has their population increased so much? Shouldn't it have halved by now (2 parents replaced by 1 child)?
When some species of spiders hatch, they eat their mother. In humans it is different. When a woman has a baby, she continues to live. So 2 doesn't become 1. 2 becomes 3.
In the long run, people die. So eventually, if the birth rate is below 2, the population will fall, but there is a lag of a generation before that happens. The women having babies in 1979 are only in the 50s and 60s today.
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You're a bit inconsistent with your accounting. Not that it really matters but for accuracy's sake it should either be
When a woman has a baby, she continues to live. So 2 doesn't become 2. 2 becomes 3.
or
When a woman has a baby, she continues to live. So 1 doesn't become 1. 1 becomes 2.
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If China has had 1-child policy since '79, why has their population increased so much? Shouldn't it have halved by now (2 parents replaced by 1 child)?
Well, if you check an AC post about exceptions, you would have an idea (there are many work around). Also, if they have not had the policy, I am sure that population number of India -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] -- wouldn't be able to catch up with China -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] . If you look at the trend for 1950s~1980s for both countries, it is very similar (double in population). Then look at 1980s~2010s again, you would see the difference -- India still has similar trend (2x), but Chi
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Oops, clicked too fast. Anyway, you also assume that when a child is borned, 2 adults would die soon. In human population, this is NOT the case because the increment of population could be from adults live longer.
Re:Logic (Score:5, Insightful)
For simplicity let's assume a perfect 50/50 male/female ratio, that everyone gets married, and every family has six children been ages 20 and 40, thus tripling the population every generation. Let's also assume everyone lives to sometime between 60-80 before dropping dead from old age. That means the population of people from 0 to 20 will be thee times that of the population from 20 to 40. However that also means that the population from 60-80 will be one third of that from 40 to 60, which will be one third of that from 20 to 40.
So every 20 years for a given X people in the child bearing range, there will be 3X children being born, but only X/9 old people dying. If you enforced a birth rate of one child per family then for the next twenty years instead of 3X children you would have X/2 children, but that would _still_ be more than the X/9 old people dying during the same period, so the _total_ population would continue to rise for awhile. If you enforced that policy for another 60 years you then would have a steadily decreasing population instead of a steadily increasing one, but the effect does not happen instantaneously.
Obviously the math doesn't work out nearly as neatly in the real world* and the numbers we're talking about usually aren't that extreme. But that should demonstrate how such a thing is possible and this kind of thing is pretty common in delayed feedback loops.
(*Among all the more usual factors, i'm guessing the combination of WW2 and the Cultural Revolution had a significant effect on demographics. I believe such things usually disproportionately affect older people and lead to "bubbles" in the population pyramid.)
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They have to populate all those new "islands" they're building in the middle of the ocean, otherwise they may not have a believable claim on them. Can't have them going around making unsubstantiated claims about them now, can we?
The population ponzi scheme... (Score:4, Insightful)
We have a lot of old people so need even more young people in the hope that some will look after them. ANother generation down the line - those young people become an even bigger population of old people. Rinse and repeat until the human population size causes complete eco collapse.
Whats the solution? Wish I knew.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
How about implementing some sort of "one-child" policy?
Fight for your bitcoins! [coinbrawl.com]
Re:The population ponzi scheme... (Score:5, Funny)
Whats the solution? Wish I knew.
Soylent Green Szechuan.
Try it with the soy sauce dip . . .
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Well, robots and automation in general, will replace need for more humans.
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No, it will drive the utility derived from some humans to other humans downwards, much like all manner of technology has done. The need for scullery maids per household is a lot smaller than in the past, for instance, so if you are the sort of person that would have employed a scullery maid, automation has likely replaced the need for more scullery maids for you. Note that this doesn't mean that the scullery maid is needed less, it means that her utility TO YOU is reduced or eliminated.
Your "neededness" i
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Whats the solution? Wish I knew.
Uhh ... the solution is to have fewer kids. This has already happened in China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Europe, and much of Latin America. It has also happened in America if you ignore immigration. The only places where population is still growing significantly are South Asia and Africa, and even there the rates are falling quickly as literacy and healthcare improve.
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"Uhh ... the solution is to have fewer kids."
Yeah, I know that. I meant what is the solution that all the whining masses and spineless politicians are likely to accept. If even the chinese can't keep a policy like this going then what chance anyone else?
Re:The population ponzi scheme... (Score:5, Insightful)
what is the solution that all the whining masses and spineless politicians are likely to accept.
1. Improve education, especially early education of girls. Literate women have fewer babies than illiterate women.
2. Improve healthcare, especially for early childhood diseases. People have fewer babies when they are confident their kids will survive.
3. Public pensions. People will have fewer kids if they don't need them for financial support in old age.
4. Make contraceptives available and affordable. Many women have more kids than they want.
Population growth has declined, often dramatically, everywhere these policies have been adopted.
If even the chinese can't keep a policy like this going then what chance anyone else?
The Chinese are not ending it because it failed. They are ending it because it succeeded. Their population has stopped growing and has leveled off.
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1. Improve education, especially early education of girls. Literate women have fewer babies than illiterate women.
2. Improve healthcare, especially for early childhood diseases. People have fewer babies when they are confident their kids will survive.
3. Public pensions. People will have fewer kids if they don't need them for financial support in old age.
4. Make contraceptives available and affordable. Many women have more kids than they want.
Population growth has declined, often dramatically, everywhere these policies have been adopted.
Phew. Glad I live in the United States. No chance of any of those policies being adopted here.
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Whats the solution?
Elder-care robots, coming soon to an assisted-living community near you. God forbid we pay anyone.
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Whats the solution?
Elder-care robots, coming soon to an assisted-living community near you. God forbid we pay anyone.
I can't find anyplace for less than $40k/yr currently (my mom needs one). God forbid we find a way to reduce the cost. How the fuck are we supposed to be able to afford that?
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Start charging admission to the "Old People Zoo"?
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Whats the solution? Wish I knew.
This problem is self regulating. The solution is famine, disease and war. Maybe not now, maybe not in our lifetime, but endless growth will lead to activation of that self regulating system.
Misleading title (Score:2, Insightful)
They haven't ended the policy. They've changed it to a two child policy.
They've still got their hands in things they have no business being in.
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They've still got their hands in things they have no business being in.
While I do not in any way, shape, or form, agree with the Communist Chinese government in oh so many ways, I will say that humans, as an entire global race of beings, does need to learn to manage their population growth. We are running out of resources. Most immediately, we are running out of ways to keep everyone fed. If we, as a race, don't evolve to overcome and control our primary urge to reproduce, we will produce our own extinction-level event, probably in the form of a World War to end all World Wars
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Re:Misleading title (Score:4, Insightful)
I think we can continue to scale-up crops to satisfy linear population growth for many centuries to come. And at that point, humans should be colonizing other planets, which opens-up a whole new surface area to grow food upon.
Funny, the big thing people are bitching about right now is that California brought water to the arid central valley to grow crops... No forests were harmed, yet people object.
We have a LOT of empty, arid lands, which will work as farmland, once initially fertilized and irrigated. There's even more marginal lands, which will work great with the simple addition of a greenhouse. In fact we've only tapped the tiniest fraction, thus far.
And when that available farm-land gets scarce, the economics will shift to make it more profitable to grow staple crops (rice, wheat, potatoes, beans, etc), rather than feeding and raising cattle...
Genetic modifications of crops will help them continue to grow more efficiently... Requiring less fertilization, less sunlight, fewer insecticides, growing more dense, etc.
And further down the road, technology will intervene. PV panels are already more efficient than plants at turning sunlight into usable energy... LEDs have gotten extremely efficient, too, and they can be built monochromatic to produce just the wavelengths plants need, with little wasted energy. While it'll take many decades for the economics to work-out, in the future, fields will be covered with PV solar panels, with crops underneath, illuminated by LEDs, and still producing excess electricity to the grid. In fact that's what's needed for multi-story farms to work... One roof-full of PV panels producing enough power and light to grow multiple stories of crops. And later, maybe those solar panels will be up in orbit, much more efficiently harnessing the solar energy...
This kind of progress can continue for centuries, unhindered. With all the untapped land area, we could surely support several orders of magnitude higher global populations without even needing to start doing significant harm to the environment. Although, at some point we will also find ways to make those wild forests considerably more efficient, too.
Honestly, your fatalism is ridiculously myopic. There have been such fears of scarcity since the origin of humanity, but the future CHANGES, it doesn't just scale-up the same methods used in the past. I can imagine your counterparts hundreds of years ago were concerned that there weren't enough trees in the world to support building log-cabins for increasing populations of people... Which is why everybody simply doesn't live in a log cabin, today. Perhaps bronze-age man worrying about the limited available supplies of copper & tin, which in-turn led to the iron age... These problems practically solve themselves, when the time comes. But it's certainly not easy to predict accurately with distant foresight, long before there is any need to address them.
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Re:Misleading title (Score:4, Insightful)
It takes a capacity for being deliberately obtuse to fail to acknowledge that Malthusianism has been discredited for decades. Indeed, population growth is already going negative in many countries. All you need is to have good education and easy access to birth control.
Good decision... (Score:2, Insightful)
China needs more cheap labor, increasing the population will ensure that
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China needs more cheap labor, increasing the population will ensure that
They need more consumers so they can rely less on exports.
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They can easily do that by paying most of their population more so they can afford the products.
Re:Good decision... (Score:4, Insightful)
China needs more cheap labor, increasing the population will ensure that
This is also the justification I heard a European politician talking about the influx of Syrian refugees. Europe needs the labour to support their aging population.
Now that China has had a taste of (Score:2)
Chinas economy and society exploded in a mass rush to bring its populations out of an agrarian based society into the 21st century in a single generation. They have come close to achieving that, however, those millions(billions?) now experiencing their "first taste of the First World", the Chinese middle class, with their new found luxury goods, cars, etc; will start to behave more like those
The one-child policy benefited boys (Score:3)
But the demographic that came off worst was men.
Coincides with their other economic shift (Score:2)
China has also been doing everything it can to convert most of its population into at least middle class consumers of domestic products. There are huge shifts going on now -- rural people are being picked up and moved to cities to increase efficiency of delivering services to them. Infrastructure projects are being undertaken to basically force-build a consumer society, kind of the same way the Soviets forced industrialization on a largely agrarian society in the early 20th Century.
In my opinion, this is wh
islands! (Score:2)
Well, they do have all those islands now to put them on...
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What if the whole world adopted the 2-child policy? Won't that stabilize the population so that it won't increase or decrease in the long term? Any imbalance can be corrected with a 1-child policy (for overpopulation) or 3-child policy (for underpopulated countries).
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And you need more than 2 because some people don't reproduce. Also, some children die after the parents are too old to make another, but the child was too young to make their own. So to cover the non-reproduced deaths, you need more than 2.0 children per family.
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Probably the upper middle class, the wealthy and the poor. The rich need to spread their wealth somehow. The poor need more children to help in their old age, chores etc.
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[citation needed]
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And now time for me to get modded down
Well, at least he got 1 thing right ... ;)
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Bullshit.
It is well documented that all you need to do to push the reproduction rate below replacement is to have comprehensive sex education and easy access to birth control.
We will probably have to move to ever more generous paid family leave policies just to keep the population stable.
So fuck off with the discredited Malthusianism.
Sure, birth rates are falling due increased urbanization and all that stuff - that is pretty clear. Are they falling fast enough to give us a max population figure that allows for the rest of the planet's ecosystem to thrive? Not so clear. Saying that we should be seriously studying the impact our population is likely to have on the planet is not really "discredited Malthusianism".