Change imminent for China's One Child Policy

[leibowitz]

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Insiders say Communist Party agreed changes at the third plenum this week and a formal announcement is expected in the coming days.

The controversial policy was introduced in 1979 as a way of alleviating China's social and economic problems after a population explosion in the 50s and 60s.

It allowed the country to achieve staggering economic growth, without a heavy drain on national resources.

One of China's leading demographers, Professor Wang Feng from Fudan University, says the policy is in its final days.

"The policy itself, when it was designed was planned to be phased out in a generation, in 25 to 30 years," he said.

"The anticipation for policy change, along with this party plenum, it's well within expectation so plans have been drawn up internally. So the expectation is that some plans will be seen very soon."

Currently the policy allows couples who are both only-children to have a second child.

Professor Wang believes the Government's first step will be to widen that to couples with one only-child.

He says all couples will then be allowed a second child while the government monitors the birth rate, before the policy is scrapped entirely.

 

[Geographer]

According to the

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, couples in which one partner is the only child will be allowed a second child. The current policy is to allow couples where both partners are the only child to have a second child.

I welcome the change but fear it is too little, too late. China's urban residents have an extremely low birthrate on par with Japan. China should dump the whole family planning agency and start encouraging couples to have more children. They need things like free daycare and kindergarten, cash grants, and maternity leave. Most importantly China needs to change its attitude on children. For the last thirty years, the government has told the country that children are a drag on the economy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Children are an investment in the future.

China needs to have a stable or growing workforce to maintain a healthy economy and high quality of life. That can come from natural population growth or immigration. It's China's choice.

 

[Skywatcher]

Good.

 

[ahho]

Like you guys said, it is a move forward, however it is small. IMO, I think at least they should allow everyone to have 2 children without any restrictions.

I've watched some scholars in China saying that one child policy "almost guarantee" producing quality children. I really hate idiots like this.

 

[Blitzo]

It's a move in the right direction.


But I don't think any of us can predict just how much it will rectify the problem (and how serious the problem is is also of controversy and debate in the first place)

 

[Geographer]

It allowed the country to achieve staggering economic growth, without a heavy drain on national resources.

It annoys me that the Australian Network News is repeating anti-natalist propaganda. People are always and everywhere a resource. Only in rare situations like refugees camps do people become net consumers instead of net producers. To limit population is like limiting construction of infrastructure. Like building a new road, the costs raising children are upfront but the rewards are distributed over the long-term. China's economy might have grown even faster for the last 20 years if people had been allowed to have many children.

 

[Player 0]

Why is natalism so important as the only viable source of population growth? What's wrong with immigration? SKorea had the same problems in the 80s and that was solved through immigration by allowing ethnic Koreans from abroad to settle and marry with SKorean citizens.

 

[stibyssip]

It annoys me that the Australian Network News is repeating anti-natalist propaganda. People are always and everywhere a resource. Only in rare situations like refugees camps do people become net consumers instead of net producers. To limit population is like limiting construction of infrastructure. Like building a new road, the costs raising children are upfront but the rewards are distributed over the long-term. China's economy might have grown even faster for the last 20 years if people had been allowed to have many children.

each of those additional children are not only assets but also liabilities because there would need to be jobs for them. a malthusian scenario is where the marginal net economic value produced by additional children is less than zero, which means that population reaches a point where people are so abundant that their labour does not generate enough economic value to feed themselves.

China may develop "faster" if it had even more people, (thus devaluing their labour even more) but there would be more to develop because all those additional people must be lifted from poverty. Also, infrastructure construction is good and all but only when it is needed. When there is a surplus, like in market bubbles, any commodity represents underemployment/waste because its market value becomes less than the cost of making/maintaining it.

 

[MwRYum]

It annoys me that the Australian Network News is repeating anti-natalist propaganda. People are always and everywhere a resource. Only in rare situations like refugees camps do people become net consumers instead of net producers. To limit population is like limiting construction of infrastructure. Like building a new road, the costs raising children are upfront but the rewards are distributed over the long-term. China's economy might have grown even faster for the last 20 years if people had been allowed to have many children.

And so the Chinese population explode, again, and balloon to become a burden? We've seen how population outstrip its potential in nations like India and the Philippines, the poor will naturally reproduce more and that's a disaster waiting to happen.

Despite all things, China's population is already 1.3 billion and in a few years will be 1.4 billion by current rate. Birth rate is low in urban regions is internationally common occurrence, such is the price of urbanization everywhere. China will be in better shape if its population is 0.3 billion less.

And in any case, even without birth control policy enforced there's a certainty that there'll be lesser birth because, by statistics, there're over 30 million Chinese male at martial age group will never be able to find a mate, the consequence of a patriarchal culture. With many young men, single and unbounded, the Chinese society face risk of turmoil and this age group will be the active participants. This is the more immediate problem.

This is about the few times that I'd defend China's domestic policy and against implementing the idealistic Western model. Without a strictly enforced birth control policy, China will crumple.

 

[plawolf]

And so the Chinese population explode, again, and balloon to become a burden? We've seen how population outstrip its potential in nations like India and the Philippines, the poor will naturally reproduce more and that's a disaster waiting to happen.

Despite all things, China's population is already 1.3 billion and in a few years will be 1.4 billion by current rate. Birth rate is low in urban regions is internationally common occurrence, such is the price of urbanization everywhere. China will be in better shape if its population is 0.3 billion less.

And in any case, even without birth control policy enforced there's a certainty that there'll be lesser birth because, by statistics, there're over 30 million Chinese male at martial age group will never be able to find a mate, the consequence of a patriarchal culture. With many young men, single and unbounded, the Chinese society face risk of turmoil and this age group will be the active participants. This is the more immediate problem.

This is about the few times that I'd defend China's domestic policy and against implementing the idealistic Western model. Without a strictly enforced birth control policy, China will crumple.

Exactly, India is a case a point that having boatloads of babies with no means to feed, never mind educate them properly, is a burden to the family and society. Young people with no marketable skills have very little to offer to society and have little chance of breaking out of the kind of crushing poverty they have been born into.

Their sheer number makes government programmes to uplift them prohibabtively expensive and fiendishly hard to plan and implement, and even if the funds could be found and the results were unpresidentedly good, that would only serve to create a whole new set of social and economic problems.

Despite the one child policy and China's unmatched economic growth in the past few decades, its still very hard for young Chinese university graduates to get a job. Most young Indians don't have anything like as much education nor is the Indian economy producing anywhere like as many new jobs as the Chinese economy. In that climate, the more children and young people you have, the more unemployed young people you end up having.

As for the social problems the one child policy has cause, well I think the 30m figure is way overblown because people with an agenda have an axe to grind.

People don't mate for life, and they don't only marry people of the same age either, so I don't think the problem is as bad as the numbers would suggest.