China demographics thread.

[Kaeshmiri]

If China's demograph problem really is that bad and need to be fixed urgently，then why the authority still refuse to abolish the “X number of children is allowed” policy completely？

I always hear people saying that even the government now allow familys to have 3 children，very few people want to have children at all. While that is true，but the question is：why does the authority still feels that there need to be a cap？what's the point of this policy as of today？Is there any political reason which makes the authority feel uncomfortable to remove this policy at once ？

If i had to take a guess its maybe because if they don't keep a cap then rural population will explode & Govt wont be able to provide for them in an effective manner due to infrastructural constraints (those kids then will be living in poverty and basically becoming a burden on society). They want an optimum balance between Urban & Rural Population growth

 

[tonyget]

If i had to take a guess its maybe because if they don't keep a cap then rural population will explode & Govt wont be able to provide for them in an effective manner due to infrastructural constraints (those kids then will be living in poverty and basically becoming a burden on society). They want an optimum balance between Urban & Rural Population growth

Have you been to rural China？Nowadays there is no young people left in rural，it's all old people.

And there is no such thing as poor people having more children is a problem. The way birth rate calculated is based on national average，not on a per family base.

For instance：if there are 10 families，9 of them don't have any child，one of them have 10 children. Then the statistics shows 1 child per family on average. But if there is a 3 children cap to be imposed，those 9 families are not affected since they don't want child anyway，the one family that wants to have children can now only have 3. As a result，statistics shows 0.3 child per family on average.

You see the logic now？As a nation，you cannot force those who don't want to have children to have children，you have to rely on those who want children to have as many children as possible. So the overall birthrate won't look to bad.

 

[tonyget]

My guess is they don't want to admit that the one child policy and population control in general was a mistake in the first place. If they remove population control abruptly, it can be seen as an admission of this mistake. I hope I'm wrong and the CCP has some secret plan but I think they're just stubborn at this point.

I second that. There is a lot of policies that is either obsolete or need to be modified nowadays，but there is always inertia in policy makings. That is a problem worldwide，challenge policies that are already in place for many years could jeopardize one's political career，so politicans would rather not to touch it.

 

[LawLeadsToPeace]

My guess is they don't want to admit that the one child policy and population control in general was a mistake in the first place. If they remove population control abruptly, it can be seen as an admission of this mistake. I hope I'm wrong and the CCP has some secret plan but I think they're just stubborn at this point.

Not really. Before the one child policy was implemented, Chinese people were having kids like rabbits. Due to wide spread poverty and the limited amount of resources, the Chinese government had to curb the population growth to prevent rapid depletion of resources. The one child policy wasn't a mistake, but a necessary evil that had to be done. The major "mistake" the government "made" was that they were unable to stomp out the gender bias that was prevalent in China, particularly rural China. Without this policy, China would have an extremely impoverished populace that even a strong central government can't support (aka India). In my opinion, the cap is still there out of fear that the rapid population growth will come back and bite them in the butt; such a fear, imo, is irrational.

 

[Bob Smith]

Not really. Before the one child policy was implemented, Chinese people were having kids like rabbits. Due to wide spread poverty and the limited amount of resources, the Chinese government had to curb the population growth to prevent depletion of resources. The one child policy wasn't a mistake, but a necessary evil that had to be done. Otherwise, a situation like that of India will occur. In my opinion, the cap is still there out of fear that the rapid population growth will come back and bite them in the butt; such a fear, imo, is irrational.

Their TFR is less than 1.2 in 2021. There is no way removing the cap will trigger a "rapid population growth". It will however, signal more strongly that they're pro-fertility even if it won't amount to much. Even if you think there would be a large unsustainable jump in fertility, the government can just curb it again with another one child policy.

 

[LawLeadsToPeace]

Their TFR is less than 1.2 in 2021. There is no way removing the cap will trigger a "rapid population growth". It will however, signal more strongly that they're pro-fertility even if it won't amount to much. Even if you think there would be a large unsustainable jump in fertility, the government can just curb it again with another one child policy.

Like I said, it's irrational. The removal of the cap will not do anything. If the Chinese youth won't have one or even three kids, letting them have as many as they want will definitely not work. The CPC is always fearful of any miniscule chance of destabilization (and this isn't a f**k the Commies insult; it's just an observation of how they run and yes the West has the same mentality as well).

 

[Broccoli]

Most developing countries are becoming older, only countries in Africa & South-America are doing better than well, eventually it's like Children of Men where there are a lot less young people and tons of old people with euthanasia pills on their drawers ready to be used when life becomes too boring or hard.

 

[Vichysoy]

if the birth rate isn't increase , everything will be ruin with China , nothing can help them . The China 2050 , China Standard 2035 , the China Dream will be End FOREVER and China will be dominated by Anglo . They can't do anything to change that . This is the last Year China's Population increase , because death year is 10million people .

 

[Vichysoy]

If CCP want to execute their plans . Increasing the birth rate is the firstly . They have no choice !

 

[Skywatcher]

I find all the reasoning about culture and spending habits in this thread to be lazy thinking. If it were as simple as banning some things, then every country would have done it already.

You are having trouble reasoning why higher average income countries have a lower fertility rate than lower average income countries. A simple reason for this is that the income expectations for a child scales with the parent's income. That is to say the higher income country has higher expectations for a child than the lower income country.

GDP per Capita (because average income data is inconsistent/poor/non-existent for some of the countries):
Vietnam: 2,785 USD
Malaysia: 10,401 USD
Indonesia: 3,869 USD
Philippines: 3,298 USD

China: 10,500 USD
Shanghai: 22,560 USD
Beijing: 23,908 USD
Guangdong: 20,887 USD (126,012,510 people)

Let's suppose that income is correlated to GDP per Capita. That is to say the average child born in Guangdong province right now is expected to produce on average 7 times more than the average child born in Vietnam. Even if Vietnam's GDP per Capita doubled to ~5,600 USD and so did income, then it would still be just a bit over a quarter of Guangdong province's GDP per Capita. To increase a child's future productivity more resources/money needs to be invested in the child (aka increasing the cost of raising a child). That is to say increasing living standards also increases the cost of raising a child. So raising a child in a low income country is no longer totally comparable to raising a child in a high income country.

A naive solution is to just consume more resources/money per child (aka have the government or parents spend more money on children). But one quickly realizes that there are physical resources limits such as limited farmland, limited natural resources, excessive pollution due to industrialization, climate change, limited school slots, limited jobs, etc. Of course such limits are not absolute and technology can help increase these limits. For example, the Green Revolution (great increase in production of food grains in developing countries) in the 1950s and 1960s corresponded with a massive baby boom. But there is also no guarantees that a society can sustainably increase resource limits to match an increased population and improved living standards.

Having said all that is demographic decline permanant? Nope. The most famous is example of this is France. In 1907 France's population peaked at 40,400,000 and dropped to a low of 38,500,000 in 1920. It was not until ~20 years later in 1929 that the population returned to 40,500,000. Today France's population is 65,200,000 and this was in large part due to the 1950s and 1960s. So the lessons from this scenario are:
(1) Demographic trends take decades to change. There are no quick and easy solutions and scapegoats to demographics like some people in this thread want.
(2) Nobody in 1907 France could/would have predicated the 1950s and 1960s baby boom. Sometimes the future changes to demographics are outside the control of the government and simply unpredictable.

Generally, any demographic projection more than two generations (50 years) out is a thought exercise at most. Especially with all sorts of possible future technologies.