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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

World is mostly looking at China after its one-child-policy as the greatest example.

China's one-child policy was a success. They were able to put on the brakes during the period between health care getting good and standard of living going up, which is when population goes way up. India didn't do that, and their population shot up beyond the country's water supply. France is just leveling off. Japan is in actual decline.

China: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/population

India: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/population

France: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/FRA/france/population

Japan: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/population

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> China's one-child policy was a success.

None of Korea, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan or Hong Kong had forced abortions and they also have declining, aging populations after long periods of rapidly rising living standards. China got to very much the same place they would have anyway but with much more human suffering and barbarity.

>the same place

Not even remotely. One Child Policy prevented 300M births. There are still 600M in PRC trapped in lower-middle income who would have traditionally hedged via more children without family planning. Industrialization + reforms + global demand was not enough to drag everyone in PRC out of middle income - simply too many people. The difference is managing state of 1.4B people with 600M poor as result of family planning vs state of 1.7B with 900M poor without family planning in a geography/economy that relies heavily on imports. Family planning didn't crack down hard enough. A lot of current RC strategic burdens are result of still having too much people.

India is still at 59% agricultural employment. China is at 25% and dropping. The US is below 2%. Attempts to commoditize agriculture in India have caused riots by poor farmers.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Indian_farme...

These are all much further developed nations than China 40 years ago. Sure China's birth rate would probably be about the same as it is today without the one child policy, but they would also probably have hundreds of millions more mouths to feed.

Let's wait to see which country, between China and India, can fare better over the next 60 years of economic development. India might not have enough water now but the raw material for solving any problem is found in problem solvers, not the ground.

The way things stand now, there's like zero evidence that India is doing or may ever do better than China in any regard.

India has more working-age people and is facing less of a population cliff than most countries. Whatever problems can be solved by workers, they will be in a better position to solve than anyone else. The US has immigration, India accomplishes the same thing but in one country instead of two continents.

China and India already had large populations compared to the western world, two centuries ago, and yet they were not doing better from an economic or military standpoint.

> the raw material for solving any problem is found in problem solvers, not the ground.

This implies that the quantity of "problen solvers" is more important than quality.

That really depends on if India is able to successfully educate and/or provide useful skills training, health care, nutrition, and safety i.e. polish its "demographic diamonds". As well as maintain a healthy, competitive economy, rule of law, and respect for property rights - all of which creates an environment in which they can work hard and prosper.

There are countries with large young populations that struggle to make a decent living due to a lack of investment or opportunities.[1][2]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Egypt#Age_dist...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India

Since India already has nuclear technology, they can use it to desalinate large amounts of ocean water. Nuclear energy is relatively easy to scale.

Producing good doctors, teachers, police officers, judges is much harder to scale. At the very least, India us known to nurture good engineers and doctors in serious numbers.

The effect of the one child policy was muted, since birthrates had already fallen in the years preceding the policy being enacted. And since the policy was relaxed, birthrates have not increased.

I'm not sure India is a proof China would have faced similar outcomes.

Given China is facing a demographics decline, not introducing that policy probably wouldn't have made much difference.

It was just immoral and one more reason for unnecessary female infanticide, which is responsible for the tremendous gender unbalance the country has.

> China's one-child policy was a success.

China's one-child policy was unnecessary. Fertility rates were already dropping for at least a decade before it went into effect:

> China’s controversial one-child policy continues to generate controversy and misinforma- tion. This essay challenges several common myths: that Mao Zedong consistently opposed efforts to limit China’s population growth; that consequently China’s population continued to grow rapidly until after his death; that the launching of the one-child policy in 1980 led to a dramatic decline in China’s fertility rate; and that the imposition of the policy prevented 400 million births. Evidence is presented contradicting each of these claims. Mao Zedong at times forcefully advocated strict limits on births and presided over a major switch to coer- cive birth planning after 1970; as much as three-quarters of the decline in fertility since 1970 occurred before the launching of the one-child policy; fertility levels fluctuated in China after the policy was launched; and most of the further decline in fertility since 1980 can be attributed to economic development, not coercive enforcement of birth limits.

* https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31431804/

* PDF: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/martinwhyte/files/challeng...

> There are two leading candidates for explaining the pre-1980 drop in fertility. First, family planning existed before the one-child policy became a part of it. Pressure was placed on Chinese men and women about the “appropriate” age at which to marry, about the number of children to have and about how rapidly. A 1994 paper by researchers Judith Banister and Christina Wu Harbaugh argued that these measures alone were effective enough to explain the pre-1980 decline, before the one-child limit.[1]

> Second, China was growing during the 1970s. It is therefore possible that it experienced the same declining trend in fertility caused by growth that all currently developed countries experienced at some point. This is typically referred to as the “demographic” transition.

* https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/october/china...

> China's one-child policy was a success.

Tell that to lots of unmarried men with no prospects.

India has the same problem too although that is because people voluntarily kill baby girls because they prefer boys.

This is analogous to saying a car that crashed into a tree has successfully stopped.

At the time it was enacted, the one-child’s policy’s goal was to conserve resources. It was also intended to prevent pollution and the spread of disease.

It was a direct response to overpopulation concerns (Club of Rome, Limits of Growth, etc).

Not only did it horribly failed, it did the exact opposite.

By encouraging industrialization, it resulted in more resource consumption, more pollution, and more disease.

It created an immense amount of wealth, and increased standards of living. But those weren’t the goals.

It was intended to avoid an apocalypse, not create a utopia.

If a time traveler went back in time and told Chinese leaders the effects of the their policy, they might very well outlaw contraception.

Edit: earlier family planning policies were focused on maternal health.

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