China's family planning

[VCheng]

A recent editorial piece:

from: China's family planning: Illegal children will be confiscated | The Economist

China's family planning
Illegal children will be confiscated
The one-child policy is not just a human-rights abomination; it has also worsened a demographic problem

Jul 21st 2011 | from the print edition


“BEFORE 1997 they usually punished us by tearing down our houses for breaching the one-child policy…After 2000 they began to confiscate our children.” Thus Yuan Chaoren, a villager from Longhui county in Hunan province, describing in Caixin magazine the behaviour of family-planning bureaucrats. According to Caixin, local officials would take “illegal children” and pack them off to orphanages where they were put up for adoption. Foreign adoptive parents paid $3,000-5,000 per child. The bureaucrats collected a kickback.

Stealing children is not an official part of Beijing’s one-child policy, but it is a consequence of rules that are a fundamental affront to the human rights of parents and would-be parents. The policy damages families and upsets the balance between generations. It is so hated that even within China it is now coming under political attack. For the first time a whole province, Guangdong, with a population of over 100m, is demanding exemptions.

A thousand-mile journey begins with a single step

Chinese officials are fiercely attached to the one-child policy. They attribute to it almost every drop in fertility and every averted birth: some 400m more people, they claim, would have been born without it. This is patent nonsense. Chinese fertility was falling for decades before the one-child policy took effect in 1979. Fertility has gone down almost as far and as fast without coercion in neighbouring countries, including those with large Chinese populations. The spread of birth control and a desire for smaller families tend to accompany economic growth and development almost everywhere.

But the policy has almost certainly reduced fertility below the level to which it would have fallen anyway. As a result, China has one of the world’s lowest “dependency ratios”, with roughly three economically active adults for each dependent child or old person. It has therefore enjoyed a larger “demographic dividend” (extra growth as a result of the high ratio of workers to dependents) than its neighbours. But the dividend is near to being cashed out. Between 2000 and 2010, the share of the population under 14—future providers for their parents—slumped from 23% to 17%. China now has too few young people, not too many. It has around eight people of working age for every person over 65. By 2050 it will have only 2.2. Japan, the oldest country in the world now, has 2.6. China is getting old before it has got rich.

The policy’s distortions have also contributed to other horrific features of family life, notably the practice of aborting female fetuses to ensure that the lone child is a son. The one-child policy is not the sole cause, as India shows, but it has contributed to it. In 20 years’ time, there will not be enough native brides for about a fifth of today’s baby boys—a store of future trouble. And even had the one-child policy done nothing to reduce births, the endless reiteration of slogans like “one more baby means one more tomb” would have helped to make the sole child a social norm, pushing fertility below the level at which a population reproduces itself. China may find itself stuck with very low fertility for a long time.

Demography is like a supertanker; it takes decades to turn around. It will pose some of China’s biggest problems. The old leadership is wedded to the one-child policy, but the new leadership, which is due to take over next year, can think afresh. It should end this abomination as soon as it takes power.

 

[ephone]

Can that smart axx tell me what would have happened if Chinese did not do the family planing?

China would be better off today???

A recent editorial piece:

from: China's family planning: Illegal children will be confiscated | The Economist

China's family planning
Illegal children will be confiscated
The one-child policy is not just a human-rights abomination; it has also worsened a demographic problem

Jul 21st 2011 | from the print edition


“BEFORE 1997 they usually punished us by tearing down our houses for breaching the one-child policy…After 2000 they began to confiscate our children.” Thus Yuan Chaoren, a villager from Longhui county in Hunan province, describing in Caixin magazine the behaviour of family-planning bureaucrats. According to Caixin, local officials would take “illegal children” and pack them off to orphanages where they were put up for adoption. Foreign adoptive parents paid $3,000-5,000 per child. The bureaucrats collected a kickback.

Stealing children is not an official part of Beijing’s one-child policy, but it is a consequence of rules that are a fundamental affront to the human rights of parents and would-be parents. The policy damages families and upsets the balance between generations. It is so hated that even within China it is now coming under political attack. For the first time a whole province, Guangdong, with a population of over 100m, is demanding exemptions.

A thousand-mile journey begins with a single step

Chinese officials are fiercely attached to the one-child policy. They attribute to it almost every drop in fertility and every averted birth: some 400m more people, they claim, would have been born without it. This is patent nonsense. Chinese fertility was falling for decades before the one-child policy took effect in 1979. Fertility has gone down almost as far and as fast without coercion in neighbouring countries, including those with large Chinese populations. The spread of birth control and a desire for smaller families tend to accompany economic growth and development almost everywhere.

But the policy has almost certainly reduced fertility below the level to which it would have fallen anyway. As a result, China has one of the world’s lowest “dependency ratios”, with roughly three economically active adults for each dependent child or old person. It has therefore enjoyed a larger “demographic dividend” (extra growth as a result of the high ratio of workers to dependents) than its neighbours. But the dividend is near to being cashed out. Between 2000 and 2010, the share of the population under 14—future providers for their parents—slumped from 23% to 17%. China now has too few young people, not too many. It has around eight people of working age for every person over 65. By 2050 it will have only 2.2. Japan, the oldest country in the world now, has 2.6. China is getting old before it has got rich.

The policy’s distortions have also contributed to other horrific features of family life, notably the practice of aborting female fetuses to ensure that the lone child is a son. The one-child policy is not the sole cause, as India shows, but it has contributed to it. In 20 years’ time, there will not be enough native brides for about a fifth of today’s baby boys—a store of future trouble. And even had the one-child policy done nothing to reduce births, the endless reiteration of slogans like “one more baby means one more tomb” would have helped to make the sole child a social norm, pushing fertility below the level at which a population reproduces itself. China may find itself stuck with very low fertility for a long time.

Demography is like a supertanker; it takes decades to turn around. It will pose some of China’s biggest problems. The old leadership is wedded to the one-child policy, but the new leadership, which is due to take over next year, can think afresh. It should end this abomination as soon as it takes power.

 

[VCheng]

Not having a one-child policy would make for a different set of trade-offs, with tougher economic conditions but better long-term demographic stability.

 

[houshanghai]

I think that china should be a 2-child policy now.not a-child policy ,

 

[VCheng]

I think it is now up to the 2-child policy in china.

Any official reference to that effect please?

 

[Paan Singh]

I think we should let the couples to have as many children.
i will love to have 10+ ..
yeah..a gr8 team...

 

[houshanghai]

chinese only - child couple can have 2 children in china now.

 

[VCheng]

More detail on the editorial above, for purposed of discussion of course:


from: China's population: Only and lonely | The Economist

China's population
Only and lonely
China’s most populous province launches a public criticism of the one-child policy

Jul 21st 2011 | BEIJING | from the print edition

CONTROVERSIAL when it began a generation ago, China’s one-child policy is stirring yet more contention. Until recently most discussion in China has been confined to academic demographers. Many of them argue that the policy did little good when it began and is increasingly damaging now that the fertility rate is below the replacement level and China’s population structure—the balance between young, middle-aged and old—is becoming so skewed.

This month the debate became political. A provincial official went public with a request to let Guangdong—China’s most populous province, with 104m people—loosen the rules. Speaking to newspapers, Zhang Feng, director of Guangdong’s Population and Family Planning Commission, said he had applied for “approval to be the leader in the country in the relaxation of the family-planning policy”.

China’s one-child policy is a bit of a misnomer. In most cities couples are allowed only one child, but there are exceptions. Couples in which both partners are single children may be allowed two. Some parents are allowed a second child if their first is a girl or if they suffer “hardship”, a criterion determined by local officials. Minorities (such as Tibetans or Uighurs) are permitted a second—and sometimes a third—child, whatever the sex of the first-born (see map).


View attachment 8782

For all the attention that his appeal has secured, Mr Zhang’s proposal is in fact rather modest. Under the relaxation he seeks, couples would be allowed an extra child if only one parent were a singleton, not both. In practice, this would apply to a relatively small number of people. Most young urbanites in Guangdong are likely to be singletons anyway, so the exemption would be mainly for “mixed” couples, that is those involving a marriage between a local and a migrant worker from a rural area.

Because requests to the central government are seldom aired in public, some people suspect Mr Zhang of opportunism. “He smelled the air and is making a move,” says one demographer. According to another, Mr Zhang reckons he will be seen as a hero no matter what. If his demand is accepted, he will have brought about reform; if it is rejected, at least he will have tried.

Whatever lies behind it, Mr Zhang’s demand is significant both because it is an implied public criticism of the one-child policy and because Guangdong was always likely to be in the forefront of any campaign for change. The province suffers many of the worst problems attributable to China’s population control, notably a grossly skewed gender imbalance among newborns. The combination of a strong cultural preference for boys and prenatal ultrasound imaging has led to couples identifying and aborting female fetuses so that their sole permitted child is male. This is a nationwide problem, but Guangdong has consistently had some of the worst sex ratios. Normally, 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. In 2010, Guangdong had 119 male babies for every 100 girls. Ten years earlier, the ratio was a shocking 130.

The province also has big worries about the balance between its working-age population and their dependants in the decades to come. Guangdong’s boom has sucked in huge numbers of young migrants from elsewhere (children and elderly migrants are deterred from moving by the household-registration system, or hukou). But as economic growth spreads to new areas, potential migrants may opt to stay at home, leaving Guangdong’s labour-intensive export industries vulnerable to labour shortages. This is a microcosm of China’s broader worries about ageing and the coming rise in the number of dependants for each working-age adult.

Zheng Zizhen, a demographer at the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences (GASS), says even a modest change would help. “Every couple, in Guangdong and all over China, should be able to have two children. But before we take a second step or a third step in that direction, we need to at least take a first step like this one.”

Most demographers think the one-child policy has imposed huge costs on the country. The 2010 census showed that population growth was even slower than expected, rising just 0.57% a year over the past decade. The policy has caused conflicts with ordinary people and been a target of intense foreign criticism, worries Peng Peng of GASS (who nevertheless worries about relaxing it too fast). The costs were highlighted recently by revelations of a long-running scandal in Hunan province, where officials are accused of brutalising parents who violate the policy by confiscating “illegal” babies and putting them up for sale in the adoption market.

Few expect significant reforms soon. The family-planning bureaucracy is a vast and entrenched interest group defending the status quo at all levels of government. Senior officials fear that any change would unleash a population boom, despite predictions to the contrary by most experts. With only a year to go until China’s first leadership change in a decade, no high-level figure in the central government is likely to back significant changes now. “If the government has political reasons for not being able to change the policy, then there is nothing I can do,” says Zheng Zizhen. “I can only say that from a scientific point of view, it is clear the policy needs to change.” Guangdong thinks so, too.

 

[forcetrip]

How about we take a look at countries who have no government intervention and how their children are faring.

UN set to airlift food to African famine zone « Maoni Yangu

Taking care of a billion people is not an easy feat and making some hard and uncomfortable decisions becomes the governments responsibility.

 

[VCheng]

Not having a one-child policy would make for a different set of trade-offs, with tougher economic conditions but better long-term demographic stability.

How about we take a look at countries who have no government intervention and how their children are faring.

UN set to airlift food to African famine zone « Maoni Yangu

Taking care of a billion people is not an easy feat and making some hard and uncomfortable decisions becomes the governments responsibility.

Correct, which is why I posted the comment re-quoted above.

Further, the problems of famine in Africa presently are not due to a high birth rate but a widespread failure of governance coupled by environmental hardships.

 

[forcetrip]

Correct, which is why I posted the comment re-quoted above.

Further, the problems of famine in Africa presently are not due to a high birth rate but a widespread failure of governance coupled by environmental hardships.

Then I say tell them they are saving lives and giving the children that are born a better future.

 

[VCheng]

Then I say tell them they are saving lives and giving the children that are born a better future.

To a limited extent, you are correct, but there are distinct trade-offs to this policy too, specially long-term demographic changes.

 

[IndoCarib]

This makes interesting reading :

The problem for China is that it is rapidly approaching the point after which it will no longer be the relatively young country we see today. In 2015, China’s working population below the age of 65 will begin to shrink. Meanwhile, the number of people over 65 will be rising to 300 million by 2050, a threefold increase. Richard Jackson, the director of the Global Aging Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, notes that China will be older than the United States within a generation, making it the first big national population to age before it joins the ranks of developed countries. One of China’s biggest fears, expressed repeatedly in public pronouncements, is that it will grow old before it grows rich.

As Populations Age, a Chance for Younger Nations - NYTimes.com

 

[IndoCarib]

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[forcetrip]

The one child policy was introduced in 1980. It was enforced in urban areas with high population. 36% of Chinas population fell under that particular ban. They can change these laws according to their requirements. Its not like its written in stone. They have a bunch of smart people doing the math behind it and all their children are really good at math while our children are "God's gift".