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Subscribe to RSSChina's new census shows its population growth rate is slowing down, raising the question whether it should still follow the one child policy. NBC's Adrienne Mong reports.
YICHENG COUNTY, SHANXI PROVINCE – It’s the kind of statistic that makes one pause.
In 10 years, mainland China added 74 million more people.
That’s about the size of Iran’s entire population.
Adrienne Mong
Children at a school in Yicheng County.
But new figures from China’s latest census (2001-2010) also showed that the growth rate of its 1.34 billion-strong population is slowing down. Maybe too much.
In fact, if looked at another way, the average population growth each year in China over the past ten years was 0.57 percent, down almost half of what it was from 1990 to 2000.
Compare that to India, which has the world’s second largest population. It's population grew at an average rate of 1.7 percent a year in the same period. Or the U.S., the world’s third largest population, which grew at an annual rate of 1.1 percent – the highest of any industrialized nation.
Chinese state-run media, in reporting the census, have credited the one-child policy with curbing the nation’s population growth.
But increasingly over the past year demographic experts within China have voiced skepticism about the family planning practices that limit urban couples to having only one child and rural couples and ethnic minority households to two. (More recently, parents have been allowed to have two if each parent is a single child him/herself.) They say China didn’t and doesn’t need such an extreme policy.
An experiment within an experiment
Liang Zhongtang is one of those skeptics. A demographic expert affiliated with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, Liang has been a long-time critic of the one-child policy – which has been in place for just over 30 years.
“[Some Chinese] demographers said the population would be 300 or 400 million more without the birth control policy,” said Liang. “I think it’s meaningless to talk about this issue. The decrease in the birth rate is the result of industrialization and modernization.”
The slowing population growth rate, he continues, is just “a natural result as Chinese society develops.”
Liang should know.
Adrienne Mong
A billboard outlining family planning guidelines in Xingtang.
He’s responsible for an experiment within China’s great social engineering experiment: In Yicheng County in Shanxi Province, all families are allowed to have two children – as long as they follow two stipulations.
“They can have another one as long as they wait four years [between the first and second child],” explained Wang Honglu, the family planning chief in Yichen's Xingtang town.
The other is that couples wanting to have two children must be married at an age later than the national average marrying age. In China, the legal marrying age is 22 years for men and 20 years for women, but in Yicheng men must be 25 years and women 23 years if they want to marry.
County officials devote a large part of their time to public awareness campaigns. Residents are encouraged to visit family planning clinics. Authorities visit homes, especially after a couple has just wed, to distribute literature and discuss birth control methods.
“We give out free condoms and birth control pills every month,” he said. “Everything is free.”
"This policy has been in effect since 1985," said Wang, who's worked in his field for 16 years. "But our birth rate here has been lower than many other parts of the country [which did not have a two-child policy]."
'Too expensive' to have children
But talking to some families in Xingtang, it became clear that it wasn’t simply the existence of family planning that was keeping the birth rate low.
“One reason to have only one child is to follow the nationwide policy,” said Wang Weigang, a 36-year-old who works in agriculture. “But the other reason is economic. It’s a big burden to bring up children.”
Wang and his wife, Ma Zhengxia, decided to have only one child. Their daughter, Yujie, is almost 2 years old.
“I’m not going to consider having another child for sure,” said Wang.
In fact, that’s exactly the sentiments of Wang Honglu, the family planning official. He is also 36 and has a daughter who is 12 years old.
“It’s just too expensive in general,” he said.
Both Wang families said they wanted to be able to afford to pay for school fees and other expenses for their daughters.
But like many aspiring middle class households in China who are seeing the cost of living skyrocket as their quality of life improves, they also want to have enough money to buy their own home and a car.
Yicheng’s experience, says Liang – the man who designed the county's experimental two-child policy, shows that “a looser [birth control] policy is better than a strict policy.”
More problems than solutions
Even if Liang is right, there are other compelling reasons for the government to reconsider its views on family planning.
“China doesn’t have overpopulation pressure,” said Zhang Juwei, the deputy chief of the Population and Labor Economics Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “A structural imbalance is the real problem we’re facing.”
By that, Zhang means a whole host of problems that the one-child policy has engendered.
Adrienne Mong
By the time this little fellow's marrying age, there might not be enough single Chinese women to go around.
“Like the distribution of people in the rural and urban areas, like aging, like the gender imbalance. These are the problems we are facing, not too much growth,” he continued.
Key findings of the new census confirmed Zhang’s points, even prompting the official Communist Party newspaper, the People’s Daily, to say “a crisis looms” and giving rise to a catchphrase found in much of the Western media coverage, that “China will grow older before it gets richer.”
Among the findings:
- the number of people age 60 or over has grown nearly 3 percent while the number of people under 14 has decreased by more than six percent;
- the male to female ratio among newborns is roughly 118 to 100, higher than the 116 to 100 ratio of boys to girls in 2000;
- the number of urban residents has increased to just over 49 percent of the nationwide population, up 13 percent.
A rapidly growing aging population, combined with a shrinking low-cost labor pool, is worrying. All last year, reports of a labor shortage in China’s manufacturing belts in the south and east were on the rise. Add to that, the growing urbanization rate –residents moving from the countryside to seek work in the cities – means the country will have to change its economic growth model. It can no longer depend on cheap labor or, ultimately, on being the “factory of the world.”
The highly skewed ratio of men to women brings with it many social implications, particularly for a government that says it’s pursuing a “harmonious society.” Although to be fair, the one-child policy is not the sole reason for the imbalance. In many parts of the country, particularly in rural areas, families have a traditional preference for sons.
Officials in Beijing know all this, and since late 2009 the debate over family planning has been played out openly in the local media. And there have been regular reports about the possibility of loosening the policy or allowing families in certain regions to have two children.
Even so, any changes – if they were to happen – would be over several years. Pilot schemes have been mentioned, in which five or six provinces may allow couples to have two children under certain circumstances. But a nationwide two-child policy was unlikely at the very least until 2015.
At any rate, President Hu Jintao finally waded into the fray two weeks ago when Xinhua reported his comments in a politburo meeting that there would be no change to the one-child policy.
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Liang Zhongtang is half right, his theory works fine for educated people with nice jobs (at least nice for China) mostly middle class folks, which are not the majority of the Chinese population; the rural, uneducated and poor don't care about that, you can even see it here, in the US, they get pregnant at 16 and keep going, becoming a heavy load for welfare programs and tax payers in most cases.
"they get pregnant at 16 and keep going" Is this the reason the US will have a declining population, and the total fertility rate is below replacement value ?
That's not the fault of being simply being poor and uneducated. It's the result of miseducation--abstinence only miseducation.
I agree that there are many folks everywhere that breed like rabbits. Have a big litter, let them generate big earned income tax credits so we don't have to work full-time, then maybe one of them will take care of us in our old age. That kind of selfish thinking will lead to more people than resources, and that future day will be painful. Wait until it's a problem ..... pretty stupid idea. Now is the time to encourage people to do the smart thing, and soon will be the time that government needs to step in if people aren't smart enough to listen.
Poiuy,
Is the assumption that negative population growth is undesirable in and of itself? Or is it merely that, the Chinese policy is unnecessary since the US may at some point experience negative population growth if the decreasing growth trend continues ad infinitum?
(1) If the point is that negative population growth is undesriable, I strongly disagree. 6.8 billion people is far too many. It's unjustifiable.
Every additional human being born at this point both (i) takes something away from those currently in existence (e.g., food, space, water, etc.) and (ii) decreases the probable longevity of the human species. At what point does your "right" to have as many children as you want become subordinated to the "right" of those around you to eat and otherwise live in a world free of overpopulation?
I'm of the opinion we've passed that point. Something like a universal rule stating "until everyone living has enough to eat, no one breeds beyond the replacement rate" sounds pretty good to me. It's really a pretty base philosophical question. Does your right to create offspring trump someone elses right to live in a world with enough food and space to permit them to reach old age? Must someone die young and hungry so you can have a third baby?
(2) If the point is that the US appears to be trending toward negative population growth, so "why does China need such a program"...the ridiculousness and naivety of this statement is breathtaking.
China's population density, even having had the program in place for 15+ years, is still 4X higher than the United States. Have you been to China? Please try to imagine a shabby, more polluted, underdeveloped version of the US where many people are hungry. Now imagine that dingy US with 4 times as many people per square mile, each of whom make an average of $4,000 a year (rather than the US average of $45,000) and many of whom are undereducated rural farmers.
Then, please tell me again about this theoretical "industrialization leads to lower population growth" argument. China needed a solution in the 1980's; it still needs one today. What it doesn't need to do is to wait around with its population growing exponentially so that it miraculously develops an economy 12 times larger than it currently has so that it can be an equivalently industrialized country (per capita) to the US so that, once this level of industrialization is achieved, its population will *theoretically* start trending down. There are too many assumptions...too many "so thats".
What if China's economy bottoms out (and India's economy replaces them as the go-to low cost producer) around 3x the size it is today (still, a huge growth assumption). At China's current growth rate, this tripling would take approximately 30 years. If, if, we hold the population constant over those thirty years (so as not to negate per capita GDP growth), then China's per captia GDP would be $12,000. If, if, we hold both the US GDP and the US population constant, the US per capita income is still 3.5X that of China.
Even if we made these untenable assumptions, in 30 years time, would China be "industrialized enough" to have it's populations tart trending down. Now imagine the scenario if we don't hold China's population constant (i.e., if China doesn't have population controls in place). The entire population continues to live in relative poverty ad infinitum.
The "China should rely on negative population growths experiecned by other industrialized countries" argument is, as evidenced above, ridiculous. Good on them for keeping their controls in place despite pressure.
(3) Moreover, in ten or twenty years time, every living person in China will not consider unfettered reproduction a "basic human right" as we've been taught to believe by those who've socialized us. You can see this phenomina of generational attitudinal changes in the US if you study the history of circumcision.
The effect is already evidenced in the province they mentioned where people are maknig intelligent family planning decisions. Many say they do so because it is no longer a social norm to have 12 kids. Other say they do so because of the financial constraints. You might say "well, no attitudes have changes, they just don't have enough money for kids". But, ask yourself this, if the financial constraints and the genocides didn't stop anyone from having kids in the 1940s-1970s, why are the financial constraints (absent the genocides) stopping them now? Again, you must conclude that the social attitudes have changed as a result of the 1 child program and children beyond one (even if allowed) are becoming considered not a necessity, but rather a luxury.
Too Much, Too Far: To quote you:
Do you mean like the Catholic families of 8 to 10 children? And they are not allowed to use birth control measures.
OK, a catholica may have invented the birth contro pill but that doesnt mean we all have to use it.
Some of us would like creating a family.
AND maybe that catholic that invented the pill didnt invent it for us but for some dumb american out there whom just makes babies nd doesnt take care of them and dumps them on the streets. we actually make families with love.
Most americans, just get drunk one night and they get pregnant.
Excuse me, Paul MS? "Most Americans, just get drunk one night and they get pregnant." As an American, I'm going to have to disagree with you and your ridiculous statement. Not only is it a gross generalization, it's inaccurate. In fact, according to the Guttmacher Institute, the percentages of unintended pregnancies are actually decreasing in the US.
Guttmacher Institute
Maybe you should do a little fact checking before spouting off.
Paul MS:
To quote you:
Speak for yourself!!!! Because most Americans do not plan such an important event by getting drunk, which I'm sure includes the Catholics as well. Also, the Catholics are still not allowed to (although, I'm sure some do) use any form of contraceptives to include the pill. But then, I guess that may depend on how strict the Catholic family may be. However, when you use the word "most", that means the vast majority of the group you are referring to, which in this case, are the "American people". Then to say the majority of American people get drunk resulting in accidental pregnancies is even more invalid as-well-as not contradictory. A small percentage of people as compared with the rest of our population may dump a child into the streets, unfortunately. But that certainly is not most Americans. I'm sure that some areas of poverty may sometimes feel they are pushed into this for economic reasons, which they are unable to handle. This is especially true in this deep Recession with limited work, and low paying wages offered that simply cannot survive with the basic high cost of living expenses for food, gas, insurances, and shelter in the U.S. We are not exactly a cheap country for living with those types of poor wages, even if the person were to have more than one job. So until you have walked in their shoes, do not be so quick to jump to false conclusions, esp. with numbers or words like, "most" until you have done some factual research before reporting publicly with accurate percentages.
My bad!!!
The above comment written by me said:
The word, "not" should have been left out.
In 1969 3.75 billion today over 6.75 billion people on earth! . In 20 years over 9! in 40 years almost 20! Do you see the problem? Just the facts.
We need to keep the replacement value growing so we can continue to have record unemployment, housing problems, genetically engineered food so we can feed more people with less land use. We need to use our natural resources at a faster scale. We need more children going to school so their educational value is less than the prior generation. We need more people so that governments have more pockets to tax and more criminals to fight. And how can we keep our corporations growing if we don't keep our populations rising? Zero world population growth now. If not we are talking wars and famine like never seen before.
In response to previous comments- I'm an American also. I'm pregnant with my 4th and that will be it for us.(All my kids are from same father and none were concieved while drunk-I don't drink-I'm also not catholic. We have no debt and live in an apartment without the aid of any government assistance; aside from medical coupons to my kids. I'm just one more American who doesn't fit into the generalist catagories used by some.)
I'm glad I have a sibling and glad my kids have this privilage as well:) Everyone should atleast be given this option for their family!
God started the population-no need to worry about some unborn person taking up all your percieved goodies on earth. We'll all be here as long as he tarries and as long as your willing to give..."it shall be given unto you". Yes, mathimatically speaking, things are getting crowded and messy(as God said they would and they'll continue to, until his return.) But, you can have your needs met and more IF you acknowldege there is a giver of life(and he is also the taker of it.) JOHN3:16"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that wheosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
People who want to "play God" and call the shots on who can be born should remember that they same policy might be applied(be their government) to them when their older, or sick and no longer deemed helpful to their society. If you don't want somebody to pull the plug on you, don't say it should be done to others before thier even born. The population and the world are a mess because most people won't read the bible, believe it and accept God's help. Nobody can "make themself", SO; once we've been granted life how do we then have the right to decide others should not? How hypocritical-Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
1 and 1/2 billion people are enough.
Tell that to India, the world's biggest slum, full of Slum-dogs.
India is forecast to overtake China as the world's biggest population. They are only 1/4 of China's GDP, yet their population is almost as big as China. There are much more poor malnourished, starving people, as a percentage of the population as well as in absolute numbers.
Tell INDIA to limit their population explosion, that will cause a Human Tsunami to sweep the world.
I agree with romilio... for example, the woman who recently committed suicide and killed 3 of her 4 kids. She was only 25. Why would one have so many kids by the age of 25??? Massive drain on society ... everyone suffers. We need the government to intervene sometimes, people cannot always be expected to make the right choices. Perhaps China should increase the limit to 2 kids, but that's about it.
Just elect me president and I will make the right decisions for you. I will decide for you where you live, what your job is, and what mode of transportation you will use, which phone you can get, who you can call, what books you read, which movie you will see, what TV programs you can watch, what TV programs you must watch, which books you must read (and memorize, like Poiuy is Greatest), which books you can't read, what radio program you must listen to, what you must have for supper (and I have your health in mind), what time you sleep, who you sleep with, who you wife, daughter, sister sleep with, etc. etc. etc.
I actually think this country is headed in that direction or ought to be; maybe not as strict as China but similar. Chidori is beyond correct, a woman at 25 shouldn't have three kids. She should maybe have 1. For that matter, a 21 year old should have NO kids and actually spend the time to be 21. I see so much deterioration where the nation once strived. Girls are reproducing so young and that's okay? No one says anything? Then we wonder why the pattern continues with each generation? Because it is NOT okay and teenage pregnancy was actually one frowned upon. I do not mean to sound so...cruel, but not every 16 year old is meant to be a mother and most are meant to be teenagers that need time to grow up. Society today is wrong in allowing that to be okay.
I think chidori was quite specific in stating that the government needs to intervene SOMETIMES. Poiuy's exaggerated case is pointless and foolish. If people are not smart enough to control their own procreation rate to the point where we can't provide basic human services for everyone, then they do need to show leadership and step in and do something to control it.
Luckily, Captain Original, the age at which women are reproducing is going up, not down. Here's a link to the CDC. In 1970, the average age a woman had her first child was 21; now it's 25. You are worried about something with no basis in reality. So you need not fear, and we need not become China. You realize, incidentally, that one way China enforces their one-child policy is through forced abortions, right? I don't EVER want to see that in the US.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db21.pdf
In the 70s, women were having babies much earlier because they got married soon after high school and were mostly stay-at-home moms. Now, they're still having babies early, but instead of being married with a husband who works full time and supports the family, they are on welfare. I have no doubts that a lot of young people have babies just so they can move out of their home and get welfare money.
Heather: Where did you get your sociology degree from? The average age of first time mothers in the US in 1970 was 21. The average now is 26 and that's across all ethnicities. Education is a key factor. In Switzerland average age of first time mothers is 29. So if you want population under control without dictatorial interference from government, support education, particularly for women.
On your other point: that's inaccurate as well. More than 75% of women on welfare stay on welfare less than 2 years--therefore it would not be possible for them to just decide to raise children and "get welfare money" despite the stereotypes.
In addtion you also have to consider that China has diminishing resources and land. If the population is still growing with that many people, if you increase the growth rate more then you run out of resources that much sooner. We really have to work on decreasing population, especially in Asia and Africa. This will mean a generation where the old will be a significant portion of the population, but it has to be done if we want enough land and resources left over for our grandchildren.
You should put the political system in consideration. China is a dictatorship not giving its people the freedom of movement. Overpopulation in China will not lead to overpopulation in other parts of the world. They just can't get out like in Pakistan. Overpopulation will cause shortage of food and other resources in China. China will have to import all of these, for a price. And they will need the foreign exchange to pay for it. If they have the money, the rest of the world will get the money to produce more. If there is a global shortage, the price will rise and China will have to pay more, and this money can recycle back into our producing capacity. If China do not have the money, we won't be selling any thing to them, and there will not be any shortage in the rest of the world. Chinese people may have to starve, but that's the government, and the lives they chose.
I think strategically, the rest of the world should just let Chinese breed. The more the merrier, and more money for the rest of the world.
poiuy, over population anywhere is over population everywhere when there are limited resources. The rising cost of food and energy worldwide is the result of population growth and the increased demand for resources. It doesn't matter how much you conserve, there will be shortages of food, water and energy even with no population growth. Why would you want to speed up the process? Of course the resulting wars over resources will ultimately reduce the global population, possibly to zero!
I agree that the Chinese government is warped and full of jerks. Let the Chinese breed? By their own communist philosophy, the hoarde will eventually overthrow the derelict government when resources run low. And then? A huge population with nothing to eat or drink? Looking at the rest of the world that has resources and realizing those that have not outnumber those that have. Either more war or more starvation.
I mean no offense, but I'd WISH birth and children were regulated with half of the population in America at least. May seem cruel. but some of these people suck at being parents. Some don't even keep the kids; they just birth them. It continually gets worse.
The number of children given up for adoption in this country has declined from 9% in 1973 to 1% around 2002.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db12.htm
The number of children in foster care has also decreased, from 552,000 in 2000 to 423,773 in 2009. (That's out of a total number of US kids that's around 74 million, by the way. So less than one percent of US kids are in foster care).
http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/factsheets/foster.pdf#page=3
As of 2006, the rates of child abuse were down, although I believe they have gone back up somewhat due to the ecomony.
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/abuse_neglect/natl_incid/nis4_report_congress_full_pdf_jan2010.pdf
So what is the half of the population you want to regulate, Captain? Seems to me that most people do an OK job with their kids and don't really need the government regulating their childbirthing, and that in fact, if anything, more people are taking care of their kids than used to.
POUIY You are forgetting a HUGE part of this. And The rest of you pay attention. If China has to pay more for imported resources, WE will have to pay more. When demand goes up for imports to China, the US corporations will raise the prices for all. Supply and demand is a constant. If demand overseas increases, supply here will drop, which in turn raises prices, PERIOD. Don't beleive me? OK. How much do you pay for gas? 4.30 a gallon? WHY? Because of demand. Look, it is very simple, China and India have been growing exponentially for the past ten years. The first thing these people do with their new found wealth is buy a car. There were 400,000,000 cars in the world in 2000. A mere ten years later there are now 750,000,000. Thats almost double. Now they all run on gas. So now there is double the consumption. Get it? Same for everything else in this country. A roll of 12 guage electrical wire was 28.00 3 years ago, today it's 85.00, why? Because the greedy US corporations get a better price for our raw materials from China than they do here, so they export it which shrinks supply and raises the prices domestically. That is the way it is and you can say no, no ,no, but it is the facts.
Pouiy and all - China already IS a net food importer - so Ken-108... is dead-on for describing the refocused efforts of our corporations to maximize their profit by pushing the goods to China (at an increased price for us here at home). US greed (at a individual and corporate level) is what has trashed this country - and until that changes, it will only get worse.
We need to carefully re-examine the food production policies in this country to get away from the mono-culture that currently pervades it. The others citing increasing demand for oil and water in China and India are correct - and things will become, um - "unpleasant" once they begin to run in very short supply (defined as well beyond what average people can afford to pay for it).
The one child per family law is a good law, and it shouldn't be removed. You have to give up some freedoms in order to maintain order. This should be logically explained to people, and if they fail to understand, it's because they are retarded. Therefore, their opinion is irrelevant.
It is a terrible law, that leads to forced abortions and a growing gender imbalance.
Spoken like a good little totalitarian subject. Are you a Chinese citizen?
limitless2 is 100% right about China should keep this law, for at least another 50 to a hundred years. It will make all the government officials extremely rich (from the penalties of over breeding rich, right now at RMB$220,000 for the 2nd child) that they will all migrate to the US and beef up the US real estate market since investing in real estates is the only investment these people know how to make.
Having children is a privilege not a right. The western world has been keeping its birth rate low for years now while third world countries especially muslim countries have 5 to 6 kids each in tiny countries. You can only slice a pie so many times. Each country should have population controls based on size of country and resources to feed and clothe them and adjust accordingly.
According to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 16, the right to "found a family" is a fundamental human right, not a "privilege".
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml
Who gives a crap about about the U.N!! Can they not be wrong? Can not founding a family be 2 to 3 children? You don,t see nature overpopulating for very long something always comes along to take care of it. Do you put 100 goldfish in a tank just to see them die from lack of food and room just cause you can cram them all in. I like big open space I dont want to have a 100 people living on each block. Is the U.N going to explain to the earth that we can have as much children as we want till every square inch of the world is covered in humans, No it will wipe us out with disease and natural disasters till there is balance again no U.N mandate is going to change that.
ryan is right. Who cares about the UN. China help DPRK to invade ROK to start a war with UN, that's what UN means to China. So no rights for Chinese to breed. They do not deserve such rights.
By that time, USA women will want to go to China to marry a Chinese man.
Are you speaking for yourself and your daughter ?
We should require a license to have kids. To get the license you must have a certain amount of education and wealth and maybe even be above a certain age. Failure to get the license, means you get taxed a one time tax of 10k or so per kid. We need to get rid of child tax credits too. Why are we rewarding people for having kids?
Global warming, pollution, deforestation, the extinction of other species, famines, etc all have a root cause: overpopulation.
Interesting logic. I kind of agree, except the licensing process ought to be WAY more rigorous than the one to get a driver's license. There need to be age requirements, in the very least. I feel like I am one of 5 girls across this nation actually waiting to have a child at the 'right time' whatever that may be.
Captain Original, I'm #2 out of 5.
I don't mind the license to have children point. No because it reduces the population size, but for better quality children.
US population is shrinking, not growing. US need to encourage more babies, to reduce the need to import people. Rewarding people for having kids is one way to do it. But more importantly, improve child care facilities and accessibility of these facilities, especially to low income family will help a lot. And more funding for public education so that the schools are not bankrupt. There are more actions needed in education, but it is off topic here.
Again "Reverse Social Darwinism" rears its head!!! Nations like China... which have attempted to slow the world's growth curve are the very nations we need in the future. India with its small land mass and lack of resources should be reigning in its growth...not China...but due to the chaotic "parlimentary system" India inherited from Britain there is little chance that India and other bankrupt pieces of the British Empire will be able to help the world's population to stabilize...and sadly that includes the U.S. where short-sighted immigration policies and social engineering have lead to the creation of the world's largest welfare state!!! The West should be shrinking...not growing....but the twin addictions of Imperialism and Wal-Mart economics dictate expansion ..regardless of the cost to the planet...or the quality of life in the Western World...which in-order to accomadate the false god of multi-culturalism is slowly turning us into a police state...where every Muslim is suspect and every non-Muslim's rights are violated daily to protect us from "terrorists'....no multi-culturalism in China...try raising a Tibetan flag in Red Square!!!!
Um, Red Square is in Russia. I believe you're referring to Tiananmen Square.
China should maintain it's one-child policy. The world is already massively overpopulated and at 1.3 billion people, China is the biggest contributor to this problem.
I read an article recently that stated if everybody in the world limited themselves to one child per family, world population numbers would get back to the levels they were towards the end of 19th century. Just think about how many less problems there would be regarding food shortages, lack of work, disease, pollution etc. Most every social problem that exists in the world would be reduced significantly.
I'm not saying that any such limitation be imposed. What I am saying however is that China reducing it's population can only be a good thing. Primarily for them as a nation.
Yeah, until they look up one day and realize they have a nation of spoiled male only children with no women for them to marry.
I would love to see this policy adopted in the USA. It would solve alot of problems.
And create even more.
I don't quite agree with you.
You are leaving India, Pakistan. Indonisia and Africa out of the equasion. Although Africa is not that much of a problem like India because them idiots keep bumping themselves off and AIDS is doing a pretty good job.
Fortunately i'm off that age that it is not my problem. It all was predictable many years ago and the vast majority is to stupid and refuses to admit to the difficult road ahead.
But go ahead it doesn't matter to me, by the time all hell breaks loose I'll be 6 feet under.
I bet you won't like the world where every family has only 1 child. Get some training in demographics.
Take out the count for all the hispanics crossing over the borders illegally in order to have children in the U.S. and you would see our numbers decrease.
I think what needs to be highlighted is the fact that the world is overpopulated and China's 1-child policy is actually a pretty decent way of combating this problem. There is not enough food, water, or land for our population to keep increasing. Yes, there are technological advances that now allows us to grow food at places otherwise unsuitable for agriculture, etc but that's not what needs to happen--we need to decrease the population as a whole. It would be nice if every country did something similar (not the exact same thing) but there should be incentives to not have kids--this is good for the world as a whole. Yes, for a country, having a greater percentage of a population that's older is economically a bad thing but let's face it, the earth is more important.
It's too bad in a democratic society such as the US that any laws that would reward people for not having kids or limiting the number of kids people have would never pass. Why are we giving people with kids tax breaks, it should be the people who don't have kids that get tax breaks. If you have more kids, you should be taxed more since you're using up more of the tax payer's money. People also shouldn't be allowed to have a lot of kids if they can't take care of them--that is incredibly wrong for the child. If you're on welfare, why do you have 5 kids? You obviously don't have the money to take care of them, stop having them. We need to pass tests to do everything in this country--drive a car, get a certain job, etc. why is it that people should be able to have kids without some kind of regulation as well?
Without a social security net and decent public healthcare, I'd frankly be surprised if the crude birth rate increased much even if they removed the one child policy. Look at Russia. I'm not sure it matters whether they have a birth control law anymore.
The literacy rate in China is now something like 95%,with much of that 5% concentrated in older people above the child-bearing age. With that many people educated to at least a basic level, they will find it difficult to convince people to reproduce more even if they were to encourage it.
It has proven very difficult for any country to turn around a declining internal (non-immigration) populaton growth rate after it falls below a 0.7% threshhold or so. The US is at 0.98% and well above that threshhold level, but China is only 0.56%.
So let me get this straight. All of you people who are probably screaming about a woman's right to reproductive 'Choice' in having an abortion are in the next breath supporting the Chinese 1-child law? And support expansion of it to other countries? Sure, I see no logical disconnect there.
How do you know all these people are pro-choice? Are you psychic?
I assumed that many of them are pro-life and opposed to China's promotion of abortion. Personally, I think China should abandon One Child but I also suspect that doing so won't make much of a difference to their birth rate. It might help balance off the gender gap a bit though.
It might, but India's gender imbalance is currently 914 girls aged six and under for every 1,000 boys, and they don't have a one child policy, so I am not holding my breath really. My objection to the one child policy is the means they take to enforce it -- fines, forced abortions, forced sterilizations and infanticide.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1615936,00.html
If China really wants to deal with an overpopulation problem, educating its women and making sure they have equal opportunities is the best way to do it. Failing that, take the money they spend enforcing their stupid policy and use it instead for cash payments for girl babies for awhile, till the gender imbalance evens out at least.
I'm one of those people who supports China's 1-child law and at the same time am pro-choice. The two situations are completely different but in fact support the same outcome - less unwanted/unsupportable child-birth.
You're probably looking at it from a moral perspective. I'm looking at it from an outcome point-of-view.
The reason I support the 1-child law is that China is the last place that needs more people. Overpopulation of this planet may be the single largest problem this world faces.
I support pro-choice because if someone doesn't wish to be a mother or is not ready to be one (financially, emotionally etc), then what purpose does it serve to bring that child into the world. It's unfair for the child, will make life more difficult for the mother, increases an already over-sized population and depending on the situation, puts more strain on welfare systems.
I think pro-choice and the 1-child law go hand-in-hand.
I can't agree. The whole point of being pro-choice is that a woman's body is hers, and she gets the say on what to do with it. How do forced abortions fit in with that picture?
Maybe I should clarify. I agree with the 1-child law in China because something had to be done about their massive over-population.
As I said in my first post (#11), I'm not advocating that such a law should be enacted everywhere. China is a relatively unique situation along with maybe India and Brazil in that massive overpopulation has occurred. Population reduction needs to occur.
Rarely is the pro-choice/pro-life argument about forced abortions. Forced abortion is not something that is ever likely to be seen in the United States or most if not all of the developed world. The pro-choice/pro-life argument usually centers around a woman's right to have an abortion.
well we should have pro-choice, 1- child law and forced abortion (in specific instances), keep all options on the table. Earth's population is #1 and less is more.
Such a law (one child) shouldn't be enacted anywhere. Women in China should have rights over their own reproduction as well. This kind of policy produces many more problems than it solves.
I am pro-choice, the choice of the fetus, or baby. "We are going to bump you off. Would you like that done ?" "Oh, yes, please..."
As ugly as enforcement of the one-child policy has been at times, it's nothing compared to how ugly life is going to get on an overheated planet with 10.1 billion people (latest UN estimate for the year 2100) fighting over water, food and energy resources. I'm sorry to see China considering lifting this policy. They are the one society on earth that has not been in blithe denial about the mortal threat posed by human overpopulation, all the more serious as people across the globe take up an industrialized lifestyle.
I don't think they are. The PM (presumably expressing the view of the State Council) said no.
It'll be debated in their parliament (NPC), but there isn't nearly enough support to get rid of One Child to table a resolution, much less advance and pass a bill. FYI, China debates all sorts of curious legislative proposals.. some presented by the same groups of people like clockwork, once a year.
Every year, the same group of Chinese parliamentarians present proposals to get rid of the death penalty.. and every year another group proposes to legalize gay marriage at the national level. I think the gay marriage proposal has been up 8 years in a row now... each year it gets a little more support, but it still hasn't come close to being enacted, much less signed into law by the State Council (the oligarchy at the top of China's complex system of government). Neither have come close to succeeding and, remember, the State Council can squash any legislation they don't like (the joys of being a non-democracy, I guess...).
The same thing will start happening to One Child, but this doesn't mean it's going to go away anytime soon. My guess is, China will have gay marriage AND death penalty abolition, before it gets an end to One Child altogether. Frankly, more powerful people support gay marriage and abolition in China than do getting rid of the highly successful One Child policy. One Child might be relaxed, but it'll stay around in some form for many years to come.
There is another obstacle to any attempt to reduce our birth rates and that's our economic model. All our economies are based on growth. All of them. For a company to be successful, it needs to expand its customer base and market share. For that you need an expanding population to buy more houses, more cars, more electronics, more clothing, more and more and more products. This is how the global economy works.
Anyone not see the writing on the wall? We need a new, sustainable way of doing business, one that doesn't rely on generating an increasing customer base to be viable.
That is absolutely right! Why is it that people don't see that this world is overpopulated. Even at a 0% growth rate we are still overpopulated.
Yes, but at the household level it works the other way too. In the period of time One Child has been in effect, a billion people have been lifted out of absolute poverty into relative affluence. China has turned from a starving rural society into a largely urban and well-fed one. In the minds of most of their citizens, the birth control policies are inextricably linked to their new prosperity. Yes, there are people on the fringes who want to get rid of it, but I think that most people believe, rightly or wrongly, that getting rid of One Child will risk bringing back the grinding poverty they've left behind.
Current global population: around 7 billion.
All I know is that if only half of China's population (around 1.2 billion) got married (that makes 300 million couples), they could go from 1.2 billion people to 1.5 billion people in 9 months. Let's see a small future projection if they decide to have more kids beyond that:
9 months: 1.5 billion
18 months: 1.8 billion
27 months: 2.1 billion
36 months: 2.4 billion
That's right. In just three years, China could double its population just by HALF of its population having kids. Now, just for a reality check:
7 billion now + 1.2 billion in 3 years = 8.2 billion worldwide.
And that's not even counting all the other countries in the world (like India, for instance).
How many people can this entire planet effectively feed? And where are we going to put them all, assuming that every country got together under one world government and started trying to spread out the global population so that no one country would be burdened beyond its resources? We have to run out of land, sooner or later.
Where are you going to put them all? Unless we get space travel and extra-planetary colonization REALLY FAST, we are going to end up with people fighting and dying over resources and living space. And that's assuming that China keeps its one-child-per-family law intact.
Actually, I think that logic is a bit flawed. Clearly,most Chinese do get married, but it's an open question how many will have children. Right now, China's population growth rate is approaching steady-state (replacement level). You have to do the math using geometric chaining. In 20 years, it likely will have only slightly more people than it does now (1.35 billion). If it had the US's natural rate of population growth rate, it would have 1.6 billion.. or over 200 million more than it otherwise would have. If it had India's natural rate of growth, it would have 1.8 billion. If it had Ireland's current natural rate of growth, it would have 2.0 billion.
By the way, the UN recently pubished 2100 projections, when they say the world may have 10.1 billion people: 540 million in the US (NOT counting ANY immigration), 1.9 billion in India, 900 million in China.
We are going to end up with people fighting and dying over resources and living space anyway. Even if we had space travel and viable planets to go to tomorrow, how many people do you think will fit in a spaceship? A few hundred? A thousand? Even if we could transport millions, it would barely dent Earth's population. There's no escape into space.
well.. then we'd better hope that 2 billion Indians don't start coveting our land... 'cause there'll be more of them than 2 Chinas plus 1 Brazil put together. I suppose if you're right, there's a case to be made for increasing one's growth rate: the more to fight others with. I'm being facetious, by the way...
Do you realize that the 1.3 billion Chinese includes 70 year old ladies, and 3 year old girls. I can see with the medical advancement they have in China that the 70 year old ladies can have children, but the 3 year old girl ? Medicine in China must be extremely advanced. Even with the value added milk they are feeding their babies, getting 3 year old girls to have babies may be at least a year out. And not just that. the 70 year old lady will have to have kids every 9 months. That's super productive.
The only conclusion I can draw is The_Answer_is_simple is a simple minded rabbit.
hehe.. if you apply the UN's methodology to include US immigration, our population will be roughly the same as that of China's in 2100.. China just north of 900 million and the US just south.
But if teenagers stop having so many babies we won't have such outstanding television shows such as Teen Mom on MTV!
We need to think of the important things people!
Population explosion, over-crowding, loss of resources.....Boring!
We need to see who the next pregnant 16 year old hick is gonna slap in the face.
That program is disgusting. MTV should be sanctioned for it. Romanticizing teen pregnancy is criminal as far as I'm concerned.
Time to bring in the fourth horseman.
Let the wars, and famines and plagues and wildfires and floods continue.
60 000 people a day die in China, just because they should, part of the 300 000 who need to die daily to maintain the statistics. This is the number we need to increase, not decrease. Natural selection needs to be brought to bear, eliminating the unfit, the aged and infirm. Mess with the natural order, fighting against what should be with "technology" and the "natural order" will fail, taking humans with it.
No great loss.
We have seen no visits to this planet from intelligent life, because it is intelligent, and wants no part of humanity.
^ ^
speaking of natural selection and unintelligent life...I think I hear you being called.....
Why can China just divide into 20 or more countries?
Because the Chinese Communist Party wants to own them all.
What we really need to be talking about is the Global Footprint different countries have on the ecosystem. We are already beyond the capacity of the earth's ability to support humanity(overshot). Somehow every nation on earth needs to reach ZPG or their will an apocalyptic end to civilization.
The Chinese government is managing her stock of potential laborers as a good U.S. farmer would his stock of cows and hogs. Probably a good idea in a country of at best, a speculative population of 1.3 to 2.1 billion. No matter how well off they may become, that many people could soon eat themselves out of sustenance.
Oh boy. Here it comes. Children are gonna go on the menu now... They eat everything else...
Does that mean that the USA is engaging in HUMAN TRAFFICKING?