China may scrap One-Child Policy!

[Kim Sung]

China may scrap one-child policy, official says

BEIJING (Reuters) - China, worried about an ageing population, is studying scrapping its controversial one-child policy but will not do away with family-planning policies altogether, a senior official said on Thursday.

With the world's biggest population straining scarce land, water and energy resources, China has enforced rules to restrict family size since the 1970s. Rules vary but usually limit families to one child, or two in the countryside.

"We want incrementally to have this change," Vice Minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission Zhao Baige told reporters in Beijing.

"I cannot answer at what time or how, but this has become a big issue among decision makers," Zhao added. "The attitude is to do the studies, to consider it responsibly and to set it up systematically."

The average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime has decreased to 1.8 in China today, from 5.8 in the 1970s, and below the replacement rate of 2.1.

China says its policies have prevented several hundred million births and boosted prosperity, but experts have warned of a looming social time-bomb from an ageing population and widening gender disparity stemming from a traditional preference for boys.

Still, the government has previously expressed concern that too many people are flouting the rules.

State media said in December that China's population would grow to 1.5 billion people by 2033, with birth rates set to soar over the next five years.

Officials have also cautioned that population controls are being unravelled by the increased mobility of China's 150 million-odd migrant workers, who travel from poor rural areas to work in more affluent eastern cities.

China has vowed to slap heavier fines on wealthy citizens who flout family planning laws in response to the emergence of an upper class willing to pay standard fines to have more children.

What a big news! This might bring revolutionary changes to the world economy and environment...

If they hadn't started One-Child Policy (计划生育) in 1980, China's population would have exceeded 2,000,000,000 people now! Possibly around 2050, there might exist only two racial categories in the world: The Chinese and the Non-Chinese...

Anyway, I have to brush up with my Chinese much harder instead of English to prepare for the advent of Pax Sinica.

[Paddy Keating]

The real problem there is that with people living longer because of better medical care, single children are having to shoulder the burden not just of two elderly parents but often of several grandparents as well. This has led to an increase in depression-related disorders amongst younger adults and a sharp rise in suicide. Unfortunately, the rise is insufficient to make much of an effect on overall population figures and the suicidal ones do not snuff out the extended family before they top themselves, which is, frankly, rather selfish.

Conversely, throughout the Third World, the lower classes continue to breed large families, which is a hangover from times when you produced fifteen children in the hope that three or four might survive into adulthood and care for you in your old age. We have given modern medicine to the Third World and reduced infant and child mortality rates, which is very good for white middle class liberal guilt and all that jazz, but we have not taught these people to have fewer children, and nor have their governments, proving that they are not up to the task of managing their countries and that the European empires should never have been broken up at the behest of American bankers and businessmen after WW2. If we were still running these places, the world would be a more stable place and these countries would have sustainable populations.

Radical action is required to address the population explosion in these places. Meanwhile, whites are producing fewer children because of the perceived cost of living in economies fuelled by capitalism run amok. However, there will probably be no Chinese domination of the world because China may implode and break-up as Chinese workers see our goodies on televisions broadcasting Western programmes and start to agitate for better wages, leading to the sort of chaos seen between the wars. China is only powerful in export terms because labour is so cheap there.

There may well be a need for a biological or chemical solution to their population growth problem - which is really our problem because these people seem incapable of assuming responsibility for themselves -and the solution may have to be implemented by the rest of the world. Finding a way of bombarding these countries with contraceptive powder or drugs that cause the male population to orgasm spontaneously until they keel over from sheer exhaustion could be an interesting challenge for our military scientists. That would have been a better use for the six trillion dollars the Iraq nonsense has cost us all so far.

PK