China is ending its 1 child policy

[hairbrushbedhair]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-34665539

[TheNewStatesman]

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-29/china-scrapping-one-child-rule-too-little-too-late-for-growth

China faces the challenge of getting old before it has really got rich (I know China is a middle income country, but it still has quite a lot of poverty esp. in rural regions). Other Asian countries like Thailand and Vietnam will soon start struggling with the same issues. Greying populations are a challenge to all countries, but much more so if the country is not particularly wealthy to start with.

[VestalVirgin]

The worst thing about the missing girls is not that the men aren't able to find partners, it is that they kidnap girls from other countries to rape and impregnate them. The reproduction rate of China might actually remain stable while those of poorer countries decrease.

Something should be done to prevent this. I don't know what ... build more monasteries, and advertise for becoming a monk, maybe? (Not at all communist, of course, but they could call it something different and have them study Marx instead of religious texts?)

[ShanghaiDiva]

Am not sure about gender selective abortions as it is not possible to find out the gender of your child before the birth. You would need to have very good connections at the hospital to circumvent this rule.

[VestalVirgin]

ShanghaiDiva, I don't know about China, but in India there's apparently an epidemic of doctors just not observing that law. If people don't get told their fetus's sex at one hospital, they will just go to the next.

Also, I am not sure that "no telling the fetus' sex" really makes things better as long as infanticide is so common.

[Poofus]

I don't think infanticide is at all common in China any more. The government's propaganda campaigns against this have been extremely successful.

[VestalVirgin]

Poofus Have they? Admittedly, the book I read some time ago, on the whole problem, had interviews that are now a couple of years old, so things might have changed. Though in that case I'd be extremely interested in why this happened, respectively, why the propaganda campaigns became more effective. Did they change the approach?

[Poofus]

I think most scholars agree that infanticide is very rare now. I don't think it's just that the propaganda campaigns have worked (although they have certainly had positive effects according to most research, though I believe that the recent "Care for Girls" campaign has had mixed results) but also that sex-selective abortion has become much more common, and that changing gender roles as a result of urbanisation and development has had an impact as well.

[Poofus]

(The hoarding says "having a boy or a girl is the same, girls can also carry on the family line". It's from a propaganda campaign in Henan)

[TheNewStatesman]

Don't know about China, but I know that in India it is pretty easy for technicians to get round the rules on not revealing the sex of the fetus... "What a pretty face, looks just like mummy" vs "Wow, looks like this baby is going to be a great football player!" etc. etc.

[suzannecaravaggio]

n 2009, I visited a central China bachelor village – a hamlet with no marriageable women. The female shortage had caused a huge rise in caili, the bride price typically offered from the groom to the woman’s family. During the Mao era of the 1970s, bride prices were typically modest – a set of clothes or perhaps a bicycle.

But starting from about 2001, the shortage of brides caused caili to rise sharply, to as much as a decade’s worth of farm income. This resulted in scams and the village I visited had just experienced a rash of runaway brides, a group of con-artists who ruthlessly met, married and made away with their bride prices, leaving the men broke, lonely and humiliated. One parent of a jilted bridegroom told me: “I wish I had daughters.”
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/01/china-one-child-policy

[suzannecaravaggio]

By the mid-2020s, China will be adding 10 million more elderly to its population each year but losing 7 million working adults. The shrinking workforce will have to shoulder the burden of ageing parents, grandparents and all the financial and emotional baggage that come with this – dementia, cancer, brittle bones, broken hips – all on China’s inadequate social safety net.

This transition towards more older people and fewer young workers is happening in almost every modern society. Every major industrialised nation now lives longer and has fewer children.

[suzannecaravaggio]

Even though polls show many couples could two children, many say in practice it’s unaffordable and too stressful to have more than one.

In that sense, ironically, the one-child policy should be judged a huge success, for it has thoroughly changed the mindset of people in China.

[SarahSavesTheDay]

In that sense, ironically, the one-child policy should be judged a huge success, for it has thoroughly changed the mindset of people in China.

I'm not sure its success is 'ironic' - hands up, who would like to have a population of 400 million more than we have now?

[ReallyTired]

Mainland china has a birth rate that is similar to many western european countries. (ie. 1.7)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_fertility_rate

Surprisingly Poland has lower birth rate than China

[lieselvontwat]

This has been coming for years. But they're closing the stable door after nearly all the horses have bolted. It's just something China as a society is now going to have to deal with.

[CarriesBucketOfBlood]

I don't really think that many families will choose to have a second child. There is more to it even than paying for education and healthcare - millions of apartments have been built with (barely) enough space for grandparents, parents and one child, let alone a second child.

Many of my Chinese friends have, however, said that they are pleased that the policy has been repealed as it will no longer be a sticking point in westerners' perceptions of China.

[ReallyTired]

"Many of my Chinese friends have, however, said that they are pleased that the policy has been repealed as it will no longer be a sticking point in westerners' perceptions of China."

The Chinese government still has an anal obcession with controlling women's reproduction. It's a two child policy and if you have your second child before March you are trouble.

[CarriesBucketOfBlood]

I am aware ReallyTired. However, what you personally feel about the fairness of Chinese government policy is pretty irrelevant. My friends (who still live in China and haven't moved abroad) have named the potential for a change in western perception as their favourite thing about the policy change.

[ReallyTired]

I dont live in China and you are right that Chinese laws don't affect me. I still have the perception that China has strict control of its citizens. I hope that in time the Chinese will enjoy a bit more freedom in all areas of life.

[CarriesBucketOfBlood]

It is absolutely true to say that the Chinese government strictly controls its citizens and from some political and cultural viewpoints that is indefensible.

I think that many Chinese people appreciate the stability that the strict regime has provided, as well as the rapid transformation of the economy for the better. Most people are getting richer.

I am not saying that everyone necessarily agrees with everything (or indeed anything) that the government decrees, but the majority definitely find it acceptable. Personally, I don't think it is unfair to describe the government as a relatively 'benevolent' dictatorship. Certainly not the world's best, but also not the worst.

I think it's really important, when you analyse China (and I imagine other countries, but I don't know enough to elaborate) from a western perspective, to remember that China advanced from what was effectively a feudal society to a rapidly modernised, technological society in about 90 years. I don't think that its human rights problems are too different to those that the West faced when it was modernising.

Rant over You may have caught me on a topic that my life basically revolves around!

[7Days]

I often wonder how the word's population would look now without that policy for the last 35 year plus policy

[7Days]

erm excuse the poor syntax

[ReallyTired]

The UK was not a true democracy until the 20th century when everyone could vote. Maybe freedom becomes more practical when you are rich.

The one child policy has prevented starvation. I just hope the Chinese will find a solution to looking after its aging population. I suppose that China could take in migrants if they were truely desperate for workers. I don't know who would choose to migrate to China and how friendly the Chinese would be to foreign workers. Maybe fillopeno maids would be better treated by the Chinese than by Arabs.

Prehaps it's wrong to judge China by English standards. If the Chinese are happy then who am I to judge.

[VestalVirgin]

@ReallyTired:
Much as I love democracy, I have to admit that a democratic government could not have reduced the population as quickly.
(Though Germany is pretty good at achieving the same "goal" with inadequate politics. Ruthless capitalism that puts the needs of the employers first is definitely pretty good at reducing birth rates)

There will be a lot of immigrants for China simply because rich Chinese men marry women from poorer countries.

I am a bit worried that those other countries might face a lack of working adults/ women eventually.

[SarahSavesTheDay]

I often wonder how the word's population would look now without that policy for the last 35 year plus policy

There would be another 400 million people.