China's Demography and the One Child Policy

I think people often take an ideological and sentimental view towards procreation that has little grounding in reality. People most opposed to the one child policy are opposed because that policy clashes with some of their beliefs, be it freedom or choice or pro-life or fear of a big brother government.

In this world, quantity is not all that matters, quality matters far far more.

The western media often report gleefully about China's greying problem, but that is more an extension of the imminent collapse of China these same people have been preaching for decades in one guise or another.

Yes, a greying population presents problems and challenges, but then so does an abundance of young and talentless youths.

Take India for example. Indian fanboys and their cheerleaders in the western press often cite their 'healthier' demographics as a reason for why India will overtake China someday, somehow. Yet they pay no heed to the appalling illiteracy, and infant mortality rates amongst India's young. Just what bright future could the 25.96% Indians who could not even read dream of?

Even China, with it's one child policy has a huge challenge in creating enough jobs for it's young. The same problem exists in India, but is many times worse, yet the world turns a blind eye because dogma states that because India is a democracy, somehow all of it's problems will solve themselves of their own accord, much like the defunct 'free market' myths that are at the heart of the current financial crisis.

For all of the problems and troubles facing China now, things would have been far worse had China's leaders allowed unchecked rampant population growth.

Yet, one of the biggest benefits of the one-child policy that the west will never acknowledge is that the quality of children has improved massively. I am not speaking of some eugenics conspiracy by the evil red commies before anyone gets too exited, I am talking of the effort and attention Chinese parents put into educating their child to make sure they get the best possible start in life.

Granted, this has led to coddling and some kids being spoilt, but in the vast majority of causes, it has meant that Chinese children have been pushed harder to fulfil their potential. I think that is one of the biggest, unspoken and unacknowledged factors behind China's rise today.

A nation is only as strong as it's people, and despite what might be assumed, Chinese schools are not that great at teaching. It is the hard work and diligence of ordinary parents that make the biggest difference, and it is not hard to understand how parents of single child families might have more time and energy to devote to each child than families with several kids of a similar age.

China's one child policy has it's massive faults, and an entire generation of Chinese will never know the joy and comfort of having siblings, and that is a tragedy beyond measure. However, the one child policy is not without it's merits, and those need to also be acknowledged if one is ever to come to a balanced and fair assessment of it's impact and legacy.

getready said:

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.

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Well that sounds appalling on the face of it, but I think it carries far more truth than what many in the west would care to acknowledge.

I often think that western society, especially those with strong social safety nets, are quietly but steadily building up towards a social economic disaster.

All you have to do is have a look at demographics and social economic indicators in the west. The media often obsess about people placing career over family which results in fewer kids per household or even no kids at all as fertility rates drop off a cliff at the age the modern professional couple start to think about having kids, but that is only half the story.

The far graver problem lies at the bottom of the social economic ladder, with teenage moms who are still kids themselves having litters of kids they are plainly unprepared and unequipped to raise in a manner that would allow them to advance beyond the life they have been born into.

For such people, having kids is either the result of stupidity in not knowing about basic birth control methods, or it is seen as a cash cow, since mothers without a means to support themselves and their kids get an allowance from the state for each kid they have. The more kids they have, the more $$$ they get, and even though many of these child mothers have questionable numeracy skills, even they can figure out the basic arithmetic of this equation.

For the children unfortunate enough to be born into such families, chances are they will do exactly as their parents have, since that is one of the few things of worth such parents could teach them, and the whole cycle continues.

So, at one end, the high fliers with the highest intelligence, best education and all the tools, skills and resources to raise children to given them the very best possible start in life are having fewer kids or no kids. On the other, the people with the lowest IQs, least education and no understanding of the responsibilities and obligations of raising children are having kids like their lives depended on it (and actually, for a lot of them, it probably did).

It's pretty much evolution backwards, survival of the unfittest. How could anyone not see a massive problem in how this works?

Say what you will about the one-child policy, but at least nothing like this will ever happen under it.

People like to bring up the examples of Hongkong and Singapore as two countries doing fine despite not having arable land and for that China should not be worried about greater population. Those two countries' combined population are less 13 million, 1% of China's. When you have that small a population, you can still rely on imported food but with 100x that population to feed, supply of imported food becomes more rigid and far less stable. Drought and diseases can reduce the supply of food and prices and rocket up the food chain. Having a huge population reduces your ability to reply on other countries.

The reason why they say the West is having a slow recovery is because they don't have a monopoly over the world economy anymore. Because of China and other emerging economies, they have to compete in the traditional capitalist way, over world resources they before just took for granted. So what's Singapore and Hong Kong going to do when they have to compete with others for the things they can't produce themselves? Look at Hong Kong. They're already getting a taste of it. A lot of these recent protests are because of how Hong Kong business is catering to Mainland Chinese and not the people of Hong Kong. In the capitalist spirit that's called going where the money is. This is in parallel with what's being discussed and the prosperous people of Hong Kong have a problem with it.

All you have to do is read about how some believe the world already has an abundant amount of food. There was a story recently that said Americans waste something like 40% of the food that the US produces. The poor around the world aren't going hungry because enough food can't be produced. It's because of the problems of distribution. Why is the US wasting 40% of the food they produce? Can't Americans send that food somewhere that needs it? If anyone can they should be able to do it more than anyone else. Whatever reason it is shows that thinking having people create litters of babies at a time means the world will rally together and distribute it properly so everyone gets fed is pure utopian fantasy. It also smacks of socialism and welfare. Try getting Americans to pay for another country because they're having too many babies born and they need to be taken care of until they're an adult.

What a lot of Westerners can't seem to grasp is that the one-child policy can be relaxed as easily as it was implemented. In fact, the relaxing has already come, in the form of rural families allowed a second try for a son, and urban families, where the couple are both the only children of their families, are allowed to have 2 kids.

Certainly, China will be seeing challenges from a graying population. However, we are seeing the same challenge in Canada and the US, as the baby-boomer generation go into retirement. These are challenges, not catastrophes.

plawolf describes a scenario that the movie "Idiocracy" is based on. Thomas Malthus had the same fear. There is some truth in this scenario: Poor, less educated women have higher fertility rates than richer, more educated women. This is seen within countries, between countries, and over time. The UNDP has said "Development is the best contraceptive." However, the children of the poor are surprisingly upwardly mobile in developing countries. In places like China and Vietnam, the children of farmers, truck drivers, and construction workers are increasingly going to college and entering the professional workforce. If the scenario in "Idiocracy" were true, and Thomas Malthus was right, then we should never have had progress over the last two centuries. But all parts of the world have seen progress, and the children of the poor working classes are not condemned to a life of poverty.

What a lot of Westerners can't seem to grasp is that the one-child policy can be relaxed as easily as it was implemented. In fact, the relaxing has already come, in the form of rural families allowed a second try for a son, and urban families, where the couple are both the only children of their families, are allowed to have 2 kids.

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It depends on when China relaxes the One Child Policy. If China eliminated the One Child Policy tomorrow, there would be a small baby boom but nothing like a return to the 1960s with couples have 5-10 children. But China is fast approaching the point at which the One Child Policy is redundant because of significant cultural and economic changes that discourage children. If China removes the One Child Policy in 2022, I think it will be too late to significant raise the fertility rate.

Using rapidly developing countries as an illustration that upwards social mobility happens does not make sense when trying to look at what is happening in the developed world.

For one thing, all those children of farmers, truck drivers and construction workers become upward mobile because of;
a) The rapidly growing nature of a developing economy that has managed double digit growth for decades and created hundreds of millions of brand new white collar jobs in the same period.
b) The extraordinary sacrifices and extremely high proportion of total household incomes that Chinese parents put into educating their child. It is this heavy investment in the education of their children that allow poor kids to overcome the disadvantage of their birth in China, and usually, it is a struggle for such families to earn and save enough to put one child through university. If such families had more children, the chances are that either the others would be forced to stay at home and work the fields to help provide for their sibling's education, or that none of the children will go to university because their parents would not be able to save enough money to pay for even one child with the added financial and physical burden or extra children. Neither of those options are particularly appealing and could easily lead to other, far worse social economic time bombs for China. If you think caring for the old is going to be a challenge, wait until a shrinking working population have to look after the old and a similar number of unskilled, untrained and unemployable young.
c) Perhaps most importantly, there is genuine hope and expectation that hard work will lead to a better life beyond what one was born into, and thus far, for hundreds of millions of Chinese, those hopes have turned into reality, and their success inspires others and future generations to follow in their footsteps, and thereby creating a positive cycle.

Now, when you examine the root factors that help to allow poor children to be upwards mobile in China, it becomes even more apparent that without the one-child policy, the challenges would have been much greater against achieving upwards mobility in China, and far fewer poor kids would have been able to do so.

With families having more than one child, the already extremely competitive education and jobs markets in China would have been even worse. With families having more kinds, the extra financial burden could easily mean many of the best minds behind China's economic miracle never left the field or construction site (upwards mobility is as beneficial to the economy and country as a whole as it is to the individual not only because it lifts the benefits burden and increases the tax base, but also because there are more minds trained to a higher level, and thus the chances of really gifted individuals never getting a chance to meet their potential because of a lack of education and opportunity is massively reduced).

All that would have meant that far more people would have been left empty handed after giving their all and witnessing all the hard work and sacrifice their parents put into them wasted. That can do terrible damage to the individual's psychology and mental health, and such people may well be less incline or able to put their own children through all the education needed to give them a fighting chance to upwards mobility on the micro level. On the macro level, if such things happen too often, it might destroy the sense of hope and optimism that has been so important in China's growth thus far. If lots and lots of poor families give up trying to advance beyond their station, then you will see a form of new underclass developing and have something similar to the kind of 'having kids for dole' families I have observed far too often in the western world, and that will create a vicious self-sustaining cycle that will be difficult and painful to break.

Geographer said:

It depends on when China relaxes the One Child Policy. If China eliminated the One Child Policy tomorrow, there would be a small baby boom but nothing like a return to the 1960s with couples have 5-10 children. But China is fast approaching the point at which the One Child Policy is redundant because of significant cultural and economic changes that discourage children. If China removes the One Child Policy in 2022, I think it will be too late to significant raise the fertility rate.

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Again, false. In China, it is actually the rich people who have more than one child, as they can afford to pay the fine. You are simply not grasping the Chinese mentality. There is a saying: 不孝有三，无后为大。The majority of Chinese couples would be more than happy to have lots of kids, no matter their economic station.

Again, false. In China, it is actually the rich people who have more than one child, as they can afford to pay the fine. You are simply not grasping the Chinese mentality. There is a saying: 不孝有三，无后为大。The majority of Chinese couples would be more than happy to have lots of kids, no matter their economic station.

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I hope you're right, but the evidence from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore says otherwise. The fertility rates in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore are the lowest in the world according to the CIA World Factbook at 1.16, 1.09, 0.92, and 0.72. Those are modern Chinese territories that have all but abandoned family values and the desire to have children.

Geographer said:

I hope you're right, but the evidence from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore says otherwise. The fertility rates in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore are the lowest in the world according to the CIA World Factbook at 1.16, 1.09, 0.92, and 0.72. Those are modern Chinese territories that have all but abandoned family values and the desire to have children.

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Except that in Mainland China, the rural population is nearly 50% of the total population. Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore are not comparable to China as a country. They are only comparable to the large cities and small wealthy provinces of China.