China's Demography and the One Child Policy

I loathe China's One Child Policy because I think it is disastrous for China and the world's long-term growth. I believe China's future citizens will look back at the One Child Policy as one of the great mistakes of the government, and possibly one of the worst social policies of all time. The government will be begging Chinese parents to have more children, offering large financial incentives for babies, just like Singapore, Hong Kong, France, Sweden, and many other developed nations are. I'd like to use this thread to discuss China's demography and One Child Policy. I will start by cross-posting something J-XX mentioned on the 052C thread.

China over the long term has a huge advantage over the US in that Chinese population is 4 times bigger, meaning bigger middle class, more tax revenues, which means the government can spend big on military without going into big deficits....Countries with big populations have a MASSIVE advantage, that why the US was the big power since they were the bigger population compared with their rivals at the time. That's why Japan was never a threat to US power considering they have only 1/3 of the US population.

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J-XX is absolutely right that population is the key to power. Eventually all developed nations will achieve relatively equal per capita productivity, making the number of people key to total economic and military power. However, China is shooting itself in the head because of the One Child Policy. China's population will peak around 2030 then decline, and as it declines it will rapidly age, just like Japan. China's only hope is to reverse the One Child Policy and encourage large families, or welcome a wave of immigrants (not just guest workers, but immigrants who settle and become Chinese citizens).

By contrast, America's population is steadily increasing, and probably always will because it has a higher fertility rate than most developed nations and has a pro-immigrant culture. India will surpass China in population around 2030, and keep on going for a long time because they do not have leaders so cruel or short-sighted as to impose a One Child Policy on Indian families.

China's demographic structure will look like Japan's in a few decades. China's leaders and CCP members need to think long and hard about how to avoid Japan's (and Italy's, Spain's, Greece's, and Portugal's) demographic decline. A nation should strive to be forever young, to always have a population bulge in the 15-30 range, because this is when an economy and society is more dynamic, more innovative, more risk-taking, and more forward-thinking. Societies of elderly (65+) like we see in Japan and Southern Europe is less innovative, less dynamic, and more risk-averse. Young people require fewer social services than the elderly so the government budget can be spent on infrastructure and power projection rather than old-age welfare systems.

A common argument against population growth goes: But what about China's natural resources, aren't they already stressed enough? If China scrapped the One Child Policy and saw a baby boom, how could it feed all those new people?

Food production around the world has been rising non-stop since the beginning of human civilization. Food production in the last century has growth faster than population. Let me say that again: food production has increased faster than population around the world. It is no surprise then that per capita income around the world has also increased more or less non-stop for the last fifty years. The empirical record has directly refuted Thomas Malthus and the other neo-Malthusians like Paul Ehrlich who brainwashed the UN and many governments including India and China.

This was all achieved by improved technology and economic systems that more efficiently allocated resources. Huge increases in per-acre yield and per-capita yield have come from widespread use of fertilizers, modern irrigation systems, pesticides, tractors, crop rotation, and genetically-modified crops.

Where are the resources for future global population growth? Everywhere! World trade has enabled China and India to buy what they cannot produce locally. When you consider how inefficient agriculture is practiced in India, Africa, and Latin America, you realize how much room for growth there is in simply modernizing existing farms and ranches. If global warming opens up vast expanses of Canada and Russia to agriculture, that is another way to provide for population growth.

Where are the jobs going to come from? From a dynamic market economy! A market economy expands and contracts according supply and demand pressures. Labor is a commodity, and if there is a surplus of labor that will push down wages and increase of the number companies willing to hire. I can predict the neo-Malthusians' response: So population growth will depress global wages? In the medium and long-run, absolutely not. The empirical record is very clear that global wages and standards of living have increased around the world simultaneously with rapid population growth.

But what about the Earth running out of resources? This is the last card neo-Malthusians play. The fact is, commodity prices world wide have decreased with adjusted for inflation over the last fifty years. If there was an imminent shortage of commodities, then current prices would be driven sky high by speculators. But other than short spikes due to geopolitical risks, there is not long-term hoarding of commodities.

Let's suppose there is an imminent shortage of commodities. In that case, speculators would hoard commodities and drive the price up. When the price rises, it encourages conservation and exploration. Such was the case for oil in the 1970s. Oil prices rose when Arab producers embargoed oil. Americans responded by purchasing more fuel-efficient cars while oil companies got busy exploring for oil in the North Sea and other places. A commodity shortage would be rectified by market forces.

Please continue to discuss China's demography and One Child Policy!

Well, in last years census the population was actually lower than expectations. (it was 1.34 Billion, estimates are 1.38 -1.4 Billion)
People are just having less kids, regard less of policy. Are with most of the post-80s already qualify for second child, and many not going for it. People are urging the entire policy to scrapped since fertility ratio is heading below 1 in many locations and it seems there is no way for it to head north of 2 even if no restrictions are in place.

Also here is CCTV program I translated on population, keep goes pretty deep into the issue. Far deeper than any western reports I has read or programs I have watched. It's the first translation job I did, with a terrible software, so bear with it.
[video=youtube;iIqPRZpvIxc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIqPRZpvIxc[/video]
[video=youtube;PMtZkhmnQCw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMtZkhmnQCw&feature=relmfu[/video]

Part 2 of my translated CCTV program
[video=youtube;V5_f0Lj4PgY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5_f0Lj4PgY&feature=relmfu[/video]
[video=youtube;NX-iWuKRLtc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX-iWuKRLtc&feature=relmfu[/video]

I talked to some of my friends who live in China; they said the one child policy actually bound the rural people only. Urban people nowadays don't want to have children or can't afford to have a child. Marriages are too expensive for normal people in China, especially in cities. People just don't get married. They live with each other as partners or just register for marriage without a formal celebration.

SteelBird said:

I talked to some of my friends who live in China; they said the one child policy actually bound the rural people only. Urban people nowadays don't want to have children or can't afford to have a child. Marriages are too expensive for normal people in China, especially in cities. People just don't get married. They live with each other as partners or just register for marriage without a formal celebration.

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China should not go down the Japanese route. Its a ticking time bomb.

SteelBird said:

I talked to some of my friends who live in China; they said the one child policy actually bound the rural people only. Urban people nowadays don't want to have children or can't afford to have a child. Marriages are too expensive for normal people in China, especially in cities. People just don't get married. They live with each other as partners or just register for marriage without a formal celebration.

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To add to this:

China is going to have same scenario as developed nations. Cost of living higher - less incentive to have kids. Women more educated and more freedom - getting married at older age and less likely to have kids. More liberal society - less likely to have traditional view of family unit.

Besides, one child policy is not absolute. Minority group people are exempted. Couples from single child family are exempted too. People who can afford the not small fee to have 2nd child, can do so too. And these are usually the people you want to have more than 1 kid. Privileged rich people lol.

Good points, all of you. I am particularly worried about the extreme fall in fertility rates among urban residents because it indicates a decline in the family. The family (nuclear or extended) has always had an important social and economic function in society. The family imparts wisdom and guidance to the young. The family is the social safety net when someone got sick and couldn't work, and government aid wasn't available. The family is a mutual aid network that the government cannot match. The family is essential to building a better future by raising the next generation. The family is an exercise in benevolence and love.

It's ridiculous that people say it's too expensive to get married and have a child when their grandparents were a lot poorer than them and still had half a dozen kids. The poorest people in the Third World find the money to have kids, how can a middle class Chinese person not? And this is the same Chinese person who has an iPhone, iPad, maybe even a car. The idea that marriage and children are too expensive reveals a change in values that disturbs me. Urban residents increasingly a prefer career-oriented lifestyle at the expense of family. This change in values is a short-term economic payoff with long-term economic and social harms.

China is at the point now where it needs every baby it can get. The government and society should be heaping praise and money on anyone willing to have several children, not shaming and taxing them.

Demography is the one characteristic of society that is extremely difficult to change. If a country needs more roads, it can build them in a few years. If it needs democracy, it can hold elections and liberalize the media. But if it needs more young people, it's very difficult to encourage people to have babies. The Singaporean, Hong Kong, French, Swedish, and Japanese governments are trying hard with little success. China should heed their experiences and reverse its demographic decline before it has reached the stage of Japan.

Geographer said:

China is at the point now where it needs every baby it can get. The government and society should be heaping praise and money on anyone willing to have several children, not shaming and taxing them.

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Have you ever lived in China? Do you have any idea of the degree of competition that Chinese youths face in both school and in the job market?

If you had any actual knowledge of China, you would realize that the one-child policy is one of the best decisions made by the PRC.

One has to ask the question, if there are no problems with having an open faucet with population, why aren't people practicing it now? This is what I categorize as utopian meaning impossible. There are so many factors that would have to work perfectly and that's impossible. It's a fantasy. It would spell disaster trying to engineer it because so many things in a chain have to work all at once and if one link breaks the whole thing falls apart.

I wouldn't bring up India as if it were a shining example. Having a whole bunch of young people with no jobs ain't a plus. India has more young people than China right now. Are they ahead of China? So it shows that all those young people aren’t giving India an edge. Were they ever ahead of China in the modern age? That pretty much says it all. And India does the same as China when it comes to gender selection. Racing to have the biggest population isn't a crown to be desired except for those that value the superficial. So India is no counter of China of what to do. Just look at China since reform. Has India ever bested China? Yeah, maybe a hundred years ago while China was occupied by Western powers and in turmoil because of it. But no one can say that was because they had it right. So there is no track record that India has ever had it right. Anyone who brings up India as a positive example of what a country should do socially has to be questioned about their motivation especially in comparison to China since this automatically is an inflammatory topic just by the India vs China nature. Do we see Western countries following what India does if it's so great?

Now let's look at the major economic powers today. Did any of them ever have a billion people? Let's use simple logic as to believe younger is always better despite you have no more jobs for them compared to China. Which direction sounds the pragmatic path? Yeah China should drop the one-child policy but to promote essentially younger is better as paramount regardless how big the population is just as unethical as the one-child policy. That’s the same logic as in the city where I grew up. The poor expects the government to throw money at them and that will solve all their problems. Yeah throwing money at things like education will do nothing for your kids if you taught them not to value an education in the first place. So what’s throwing money at education going to do? If your kid is not learning, it’s because they don’t want to learn. That’s a basic fact. What do they need? Maybe they can’t learn without an iPad or a laptop computer. Maybe the government has to give them more money so they can buy their children the latest expensive fashion and an iPad. Just birthing a lot of young people to solve one problem isn’t the answer either. It’s much more complicated than that.

Singapore and Hong Kong are prosperous and look how they are without arable land? The same can be said of old vs. young population. No arable land is the same as not enough young people. And Singapore and Hong Kong worked it out on how they can be prosperous without arable land, right? I’ve seen old Chinese women carrying 50 pounds on their backs. There’s a reason why in the US migrants do the farm labor. It’s because Americans from young to old don’t want to do those jobs. It’s too labor intensive for them. I’ll bet an old person in China is more productive than their Western counterparts. Because of the size, China will probably never be at a comfortable level like in the West where they’ll need immigrants to do low-level labor because it’s become just too beneath them to do themselves. Some ethnicities joke that they don’t do labor. Others romanticized how productive they are as laborers. My sister told me a co-worker of hers, who was Mexican-American, was talking in the break room and China came up in the conversation. She made a comment that’s she’s afraid to go to China because she thinks Mexicans will be kidnapped to a factory or something because of how hard they work. The Asians in the room smartly told her poor Mexicans don’t go to China. Only the rich ones do. The Chinese have a history of doing the hard labor to this very day. The only difference is the Chinese don’t romanticize it.

Sorry to again bring this up but this is another Western concoction that inspires anger either way and that's how they like it because it's a reason to hate no matter what happens. They fear you because there are too many of you. Then on the flip side of the coin they can turn it into a human rights issue if you try to control it. Either way they vilify you. By that hypocrisy alone you don't take their advice. Look at how they complain how China wants to reign in adoptions of female babies by foreigners. Aren't they concerned about the gender imbalance they themselves say will cause social problems for China in the future? But apparently not at the expense of their need to adopt a trophy child. So who's the one thinking about themselves first and not what's best for China? And you really think you can trust their advice when their personal needs outweigh what's best? Why the contradictions all the time? Hypocrites contradict themselves as nature. Why does everyone hate a hypocrite when even hypocrites hate other hypocrites? Hypocrites know themselves that they are motivated by their selfishness and not concern for others.

As always the West looks at themselves to get an idea how things will work with people who are different from them. One of the main reasons why they say an older population is a negative is the burden on social security. China has no social security as charged. Even with no social security, China will have problems but not like how in the US where social security is a significant portion of the US budget. And it's not like in the West where austerity measures are sparking riots because they feel something they were used to having is being taken away from them. In China they're already living in a society with no social security so it's not like they're going to riot over something they never felt having in the first place. That's why in China they save because that's their social security. Who's going to have more turmoil? The people who saved for social security because they can’t count on the government or the people who gave their money to the government for social security and they end up with little or nothing because of mismanagement? And guess who wants China not to save and instead spend to buy their products? The very outsiders contradicting themselves about what they say is best for China.

What if I suggested that China do nothing about smoking? Why? Since a large portion of Chinese men are chain smokers, they’re more likely to die early from cancer. The more uneducated are less likely to heed warnings about health hazards. It’s nature balancing itself. It sounds horrible. Just like thinking birthing endless amounts of children to solve one problem that arrogant outsiders focus on as important is a good thing.