Can China recover from its disastrous one-child policy? | Hacker News Reader

Can China recover from its disastrous one-child policy?

theguardian.com

27 pointslaphony31 comments

There seems to be a dogma that the population must grow, and any sign that it might stop growing at some point is bad. "Go Forth and Multiply" as it were.

Personally I believe that population growth can't go on forever in a finite world. But even if it could, I think we should prefer quality over quantity when it comes to human lives.

But if only one game-theory players does not follow your logic, and sticks to quantity- he will have many lottery tickets in the inevitable collapse and civil wars that result. Thus i declare my behaviour in this arms-race holy and sanctioned off by god. Thus religion wins at a infinite game, where only continuesly playing is the reward.

>There seems to be a dogma that the population must grow, and any sign that it might stop growing at some point is bad.

Well, when you have most nations in the world making Keynesian policies that assume future economic growth (China included), then yes it's a bad thing. In that case, you're left with an ageing population who previously planned for their retirement investments to carry them, but instead must rely on government services funded by a much smaller, younger working population.

r/unexpectedthanos Buddhism was in favour of anti natalism

Thing of note should be that the One-Child policy itself actually has many supporters in China with 76% of people approving of it in 2008 in a Pew Global Survey, they likely saw it as necessary as anybody in China can attest to the fact that cities in China are overpopulated even under One-Child Policy. The survey I've cited is below and the finding is in the Additional Findings section.

http://www.pewglobal.org/2008/07/22/the-chinese-celebrate-th...

It’s like they are also likely to genuinely support the Communist Party. Propaganda works.

Not just propaganda. Likely there's no one else serious to support, and supporting a fringe group is outright dangerous.

And yet China also has entire "ghost cities" which are underpopulated.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2019/02/17/c...

This is what it looks like to be on the defecting side of a prisoner's dilemma, the same as saying 'look how much it hurt the economy for those dummies who tried to fight climate change by not using coal!'

We had a huge push in the 1970s to cut down on overpopulation for the common good, China did more than its part, and now everyone else is like "Hey, if I encourage people to think having children is good, my economy will get bigger and I'll start winning the game!"

The economy can only get bigger with mote people if there is enough food, shelter, and jobs for those people.

China, especially when it was anti-capitalist in 1970s, had trouble with food, shelter, and gainful employment. They had to curb the population growth, or face famine and riots down the line.

After China has in fact embraced private property and market economy, the situation has improved drastically, food self-sufficiency has been achieved, economy kept growing like mad, etc.

After enough people have completed the transition from poor countryside, where you make mote children to have helping hands, to urban settings, the birth rates have naturally plummeted. So they were able to repeal the one-child policy.

The title is bogus for what's actually a good article.

People are having fewer kids where the economic future for their kids is poor. This factor applies to the US as well: e.g. fewer kids are born during recessions. The article even says so, and merely asserts the "problem" of the OCP.

Just look to countries that suffered devastating wars to see how this has been handled in the past: immigration or simply abandoning a segment of the population. Germany imported many Gastarbeiter from Turkey (neutral in WWII) in the 1950s. As for abandonment: look at the number of never-married women in Europe and the US among the cohort born between 1890-1910, or the fact that in the US poverty among the elderly became acutely visible, and addressed, in the 1960s due to the combo of the earlier never-married and those who'd lost children who could have supported them.

If china really comes to suffer from the demographic overhang of the elderly, as Japan does already, they can turn to automation and immigration. Automation looks like a boon compared to abandonment! Not to mention the huge unemployment problem in china which could be solved by the "shift to services" (i.e. elder care) which doesn't require as much specialized training.

A good saying is that once a country gets used to a low amount of children it usually stays that way. So no they can't

China is much better than western countries at getting shit like this done, because they have fewer scruples. For better and worse. But one consequence of that is that if they really want more children they will figure out a way to make it happen.

What about korea and japan which also have had this problem, aren't western, and still can't fix the problem. The West doesn't have this problem because the found the solution a long time ago. Immigration

(South) Korea and Japan are completely different from China. Like they aren't as brutal and they are not dictatorships.

You could maybe try to make a comparison with North Korea and some Arabic countries.

But those country whether it's qatar or the UAE with high GDP capita don't have replacement birthrates. As far as the dictator angle I think it's going to hard to toe that line. Because you push to hard to cause social unrest which is the one thing the CCP doesn't want.

The one-child policy saved China and the world. China might have hit 2 billions by now without it.

The issue is that is has been too effective, especially for the level of development of the country, so that China is hitting a "first world problem" before having first world resources.

Read the article. It includes a graph that show that fertility was already drastically dropping before one-child was introduced.

And, continues to drop:

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/16/629361870/despite-the-end-of-...

China is bad. Have I got the gospel right?

Now, the _facts_ are that the policy did have a real, significant impact. And that has benefited mankind as a whole.

But, OK, let's say it was useless... I cannot be said to have been disastrous, then, can it?

Hans Rosling did a lot of work on communicating birthrate in the developing world and how in general they trend towards the replacement rate ted talk where he goes over it:https://vimeo.com/79878808

"Saved" China and the world from what?

What problem could justify such an abhorrent intrusion into a person's life?

World population:

1980 - 4.4 billion

2019 - 7.7 billion

This has a massive impact on our environmental footprint and on climate change.

But, right, let's not intrude into a person's life, that would be abhorrent...

Should a government have the power to dictate how many children we have? That does not seem abhorrent to you?

Strange days when one is downvoted for criticizing China's immoral and brutal policy that violated the most basic of human rights.

The One-Child policy isn't a hard policy wherein you are punished physically or imprisoned for having more than one child, it's a fine, albeit quite heavy, hence why the average number of children in China in 2016 is 1.62 which exceeds 1 child per family because half of Chinese parents had around 2 children during the One-Child Policy.

The reason why you're being downvoted is because the One-Child policy is actually quite popular in China. A Pew Global survey in 2008 found 76% of Chinese approve of the One-Child Policy (Scroll to Additional Findings section in link cited).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy

http://www.pewglobal.org/2008/07/22/the-chinese-celebrate-th...

> The One-Child policy isn't a hard policy wherein you are punished physically or imprisoned for having more than one child, it's a fine, [...]

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy#Mandatory_con...

> As part of the policy, women were required to have a contraceptive intrauterine device (IUD) surgically installed after having a first child, and to be sterilized by tubal ligation after having a second child. From 1980 to 2014, 324 million Chinese women were fitted with IUDs in this way and 108 million were sterilized. Women who refused these procedures – which many resented – could lose their government employment and their children could lose access to education or health services. The IUDs installed in this way were modified such that they could not be removed manually, but only through surgery.

Thanks for the response.

It would certainly be sloppy logic to merge the statistical information with the poll data. Nevertheless, doing so reveals something not very surprising and illustrative of human nature: you can always find a majority in favor of imposing a draconian restriction on "everyone else." :)

Are doing ignoring what I wrote on purpose?

The issue is personal rights vs. general good.

In the end an individual's liberty ends when his actions are having a serious negative impact on the community.

The scariest part here is the acknowledgement that the Chinese government will, at some point, turn to coercive measures to increase the birth rate.

When it looks like Handmaiden's Tale and talks like Handmaiden's Tale...

Note to myself, do not buy chinese produced condoms. Quality is expected to fluctuate - as if a PID Controler was applied.

They could always turn to immigration. Large swaths of developing Asia and Africa would love those salaries. Immigrants are easy to track too since you get all their biometrics and can scare them with taking away visas if they do any counterrevolutionary activities.

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