Or so says this reporter, who contends that it’s just around the corner.
The one-child policy in China is coming to an end.
It has a few years left to run yet in most of the country, but Shanghai’s city government announced in mid-April that divorced people who remarry can have a child together even if they each have a child from a previous marriage.
It’s just the first crack in the dam, but more will follow.
“The one-child policy was never intended to last forever,” explained sociology professor Guo Zhigang of Beijing University, predicting that Beijing would follow Shanghai’s example within three years and that other provinces would follow.
The world’s largest experiment in social engineering by government fiat is going to be shut down – and seeing what is happening elsewhere, you wonder how necessary it all was.
She sees this as a profoundly good thing because a.) the ensuing drop in femal infanticide will help correct China’s unwieldy gender imbalance, and b.) it will also help eliminate the “population bulge” of Chinese who are now in middle age, ensuring there’ll be enough people working to support them when they retire.
I don’t have enough command of the birth statistics to offer informed comment. What I do know — and it was a big surprise to me — is that most if not all the Chinese people I discussed this with were strongly, even fervently in favor of the one-child policy.
They all said, in almost the same words, that China’s overpopulation problem threatened to crush the country in a sea of bodies, and that mandatory birth control and enforced abortion, as unattractive as they are, were absolutely necessary to deal with the huge threat of way too many mouths to feed.
When you consider that between 1949 and 2000 the population in China grew by more than 750 million people, I can understand where they’re coming from. Is it a time to end the controversial one-child policy? I just don’t know.
Related post: It’s raining men in China
1
By boo
It might be instructive to look at Japan, which is more crowded than China, has less arable land per capita, was arguably poorer than China in the mid-40s, and yet has managed very well, to the point where one of the largest problems in the country is negative population growth. All done without setting up a police state with neighborhood spy networks.
The only effective tool for population growth control is to increase the wealth of the population. Then the financial incentive to have male children disappears and people are less enthusiastic about reproduction. You’d be in a better position than me to judge how well China is doing in terms of making people rich enough not to want children.
Also worth considering is the question of whether China is anywhere near any sort of crisis point in absolute population numbers. I’d say probably not: it’s perhaps a sad commentary on life today that most modern famines are generated by politics, not real food shortages.
Finally, I wonder how much Chinese enthusiasm there really is for the policy considering the draconian methods required to enforce it, and considering that there is lots of pressure not to speak out against this policy.
Just a few random thoughts thrown out on a muggy afternoon…
May 13, 2004 @ 2:19 pm | Comment
2
By dodo
from the surface, one-child policy seems to be a perfect solution to solve the over population problem. i never gave it much of a thought until i read boo’s comment. that’s interesting. i know nothing about the psychology behind wanting children so i guess boo’s got a point. this is a very surprise to me. i never thought it’d go away until the population starts to decrease. but maybe it is for the good.
May 13, 2004 @ 4:21 pm | Comment
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By richard
I had always been against the one-child policy, as forcing women to have abortions doesn’t really sit well with me. After talking about the issue in China, however, I shifted toward an attitude of, “Well, drastic problems sometimes call for drastic measures, and it seems that the Chinese people want this.” Of course, all my conversations were with Chinese people in Shanghai and Beijing, so it was hardly a representational sample. Aside from curbing population growth, it seems the net effect of this policy — infanticide and huge gender imbalance — is pretty dreadful.
May 13, 2004 @ 4:36 pm | Comment
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By chriswaugh_bj
From what I’ve heard, the more extreme aspects of the one-child policy are not so much official policy as over-zealous enforcement. It’s still disgusting, though.
One small note: I’ve met plenty of people born after the implementation of the policy who have brothers or sisters.
Ok, fine, Japan is a good example of an alternative, but China’s history post-WW2 is rather different from Japan’s. When the policy began in the late ’70s, China was still very poor with, as Richard pointed out, a very rapidly growing population. China’s wealth has been rapidly increasing since then, but it is not very evenly distributed. Also, China is reaching a crisis point, but not simply with over-population.
Japan has a higher population density than China largely because vast areas of China’s western regions are uninhabitable.
Huge amounts of China’s farmland are disappearing beneath cities. Don’t forget: most of China’s arable land, people, and economic development are all concentrated in the east and south of the country.
China has one of the world’s lower levels of water resources per capita, and those water resources are becoming more and more scarce. Even Shanghai, at the mouth of the Yangtse, has a water shortage.
China’s economic miracle is just beginning now, and there are many, many challenges to be faced before it can achieve the kind of living standards, equally distributed, that would bring about a naturally low birth rate, a la Japan or Western Europe.
I’m no great fan of the policy, especially with the extremes of it’s implementation, but it may well be necessary.
May 13, 2004 @ 7:38 pm | Comment
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By chriswaugh_bj
I forgot to add: Articles like this, suggesting the impending demise, or at least watering down of the one-child policy have been appearing for some time. It seems to be something that is being very seriously considered, perhaps because China is the only developing country to have an officially aging population (they officially passed whatever international standard there is to decide what constitutes an aging population sometime last year).
Perhaps China doesn’t have the resources of places like Japan or the EU to simply let nature take it’s course.
May 13, 2004 @ 7:46 pm | Comment
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By Hui Mao
The reporter seems to be implying the development in Shanghai is the end to the one-child policy in that city when in fact it is only a slight modification, adding another entry to a large list of exceptions that allow couples to have more than one child. IIRC, rural families (which is the vast majority of the country’s population) are allowed to have a second child if the first is a girl, and exceptions are also made for various ethnic minorities. What’s commonly called the “one-child” policy in the west is really a family planning program with many different rules and guidelines that vary by region and has been constantly changing over time. I don’t think this recent development in Shanghai is a sign of any imminent dramatic reversal of policy, though it does fit in the general trend of relaxation of the family planning program.
Also, I think the gender imbalance problem is being exaggerated. Sure, it’ll cause some problems, but human beings are not animals driven by raw instinct and hormones. I bet there is a much higher percentage of single males in most developed western countries than in China. In China, it’s rare to find 30 year old single guys, but they’re pretty common place in the US. If anything, I’d say that having 400 million unemployed young people (of both genders) who have no access to education, health care, and any possibility of improving their lot in life is a lot more problematic than having some young men unable to find a date.
May 13, 2004 @ 9:46 pm | Comment
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By Marley Perkins
Traditional childhood education in China currently faces both internal and external challenges changing family structures and increased influence of foreign ideas and values.
August 2, 2005 @ 8:29 pm | Comment
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By Overpopulation the greatest scam ever.
Even though China currently has over 1 billion people, there are 100% self sustaining in terms of food production. The reason why China is beginning to undo the harmful One Child Policy is simple economics. Economies flourish with population growth. That’s why China and India will become the two greatest economies surpassing even the US. Strange –considering the litany of environmentalism told us they would all die out due to war, famine and strain on resources.
June 27, 2006 @ 2:50 am | Comment
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By Overpopulation the greatest scam ever.
Even though China currently has over 1 billion people, there are 100% self sustaining in terms of food production. The reason why China is beginning to undo the harmful One Child Policy is simple economics. Economies flourish with population growth. That’s why China and India will become the two greatest economies surpassing even the US. Strange –considering the litany of environmentalism told us they would all die out due to war, famine and strain on resources.
June 27, 2006 @ 2:51 am | Comment