[HN Gopher] China allows couples to have three children
___________________________________________________________________
China allows couples to have three children
Author : jgilias
Score : 198 points
Date : 2021-05-31 09:48 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I wonder when they will have an infinity child mandate.
|
| Surely that will solve their demographic problems.
| TOSSAWAY_1 wrote:
| Big of them
| throw0101a wrote:
| There is some question on whether the one-child policy was even
| needed. If you look at a graph of "children per mother" chart
| before and after the original policy went into effect, it's quite
| evident that rates were dropping for more than a decade
| beforehand:
|
| * https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/october/china...
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Birth_rate_in_China.svg
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy
|
| Industrialization, urbanization, reduction in child mortality,
| and the education of women accomplished a reduction in the rate
| in China just like it did/does just about everywhere else.
|
| The ghastly human rights violations that led from the policy were
| completely unnecessary.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Was what we know now available information for the CCP to make
| rational decisions. This policy occurred in the shadow of the
| Cultural Revolution which crippled this nation. I doubt the
| leadership made rational decisions even if the data was
| available.
| gadf wrote:
| Thank you, thank you. At least we, in the unimpressive rest of
| the world, can have some way to hate China, for each and every
| achievement or progress they make. Keep up the good work! You
| are truly bringing humanity forward with this backwards looking
| biased hatred!
| stefan_ wrote:
| There is another graph here:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China#/media/F...
|
| Which shows a massive male surplus particularly in the young
| demographics, way larger than you would biologically expect.
| How can we claim this policy has no effect if clearly people
| are still killing female infants?
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Wasn't their some policy saying that rural mothers could have
| a second child if their first was a girl? If they each had
| the maximum number of children, it would lead to an average
| of about 1 boy and 0.75 girls per rural mother.
| jan_Inkepa wrote:
| If everyone in the planet gets to toss a coin, and if it
| comes up heads you get to toss it again, that doesn't mean
| that there are any more tails than heads, each coin toss is
| just a coin toss, independent from any other.
| [deleted]
| csa wrote:
| > Wasn't their some policy saying that rural mothers could
| have a second child if their first was a girl?
|
| Yes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-Child_Policy
|
| "Peasants" (their term, not mine) and minorities* could
| have more than one. It was very, very common. Apparently
| half of the country was effectively under a two-child
| policy.
|
| * There are 55 recognized minority groups in China (https:/
| /en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_minorities_in_China).
| lozenge wrote:
| Yes, the article saying the one child policy remained
| untill2016 is an oversimplification. There were already
| exceptions introduced including when both parents had never
| had any siblings.
| areyousure wrote:
| 50% B + 25% GB + 25% GG = 0.75 B + 0.75 G.
|
| Can you think of a law ("stopping rule") that could even
| get the expected number of boys higher than the expected
| number of girls?
| dmichulke wrote:
| For gambling it would would work if you do a "double or
| nothing" type of bet.
|
| Unfortunately, you'll be quickly rate limited by birth
| capacity, even if you somehow manage to double the amount
| of children per birth.
|
| Also, asymptotically, you'll still be around a 50% split.
| waterhouse wrote:
| Assuming no selective-abortion shenanigans, every child
| you have is expected 50% male, 50% female (barring e.g.
| unusual men who only produce sperm of one gender--I think
| that exists but is extremely rare), so there's no
| possible strategy that leads to an uneven gender split,
| probability-wise.
|
| But I think there _were_ selective-abortion shenanigans,
| and that the policy was effectively in response to them.
| If we assume each family wants, as its first objective,
| to maximize the number of sons, and, as its second
| objective, to maximize the number of daughters, then each
| selective-aborting family would have exactly one daughter
| followed by one son under such a policy.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Parent was talking about having indentical multiples: 1
| girl, 2 girls, 4 boys, stop.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| You're totally right. I guess what I wrote above doesn't
| hold water. And an intuitive way to think about it is
| that each child does not know the sex of the child before
| it--if you had a line of children and each mother simply
| took the next child in the line, you would expect a 50-50
| sex distribution even if mothers followed the rules given
| above.
| mlyle wrote:
| It's actually even worse for the assertion than this,
| because the genders of babies from the same parents are
| not independent statistical events.
|
| So, if you have 1 B, you stop.
|
| If you have 1G, you may have another child, which is
| somewhat more likely to be a girl than a boy. So you'd
| expect this policy (in isolation) to produce a surplus of
| girls.
| dandellion wrote:
| Is that correct? The left side adds to 1 and the right to
| 1.5.
| areyousure wrote:
| 50% * 1 + 25% * 2 + 25% * 2 = 1.5.
| dandellion wrote:
| Ahh, got it.
| function_seven wrote:
| Rewrite it as .50(B) + .25(G+B) +
| .25(G+G) = .75(B) + .75(G)
|
| and it balances.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Those were local family planning board decisions and never
| really applied in the cities. In fact, family planning was
| applied so unevenly across China that some people got in
| trouble for having one kid at all (because of corruption),
| or on their second kid had to give up their government jobs
| even though they technically had rural hukou.
| infinity0 wrote:
| You should always compare the data against other countries
| before jumping to hasty conclusions based on your own
| prejudices and confirmation biases.
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:China_single_age_populat
| i...
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA2020dec1.png
|
| The proportional male surplus in China is just over double
| that of the US. Of course there is something different
| happening in China, but asserting that this is mostly due to
| people "killing female infants" is ludicrous. By your logic,
| there "only" about 2/5 (portionally) of female infants
| getting killed in the United States as well.
| kec wrote:
| The natural ratio between male and female births averages
| around 51:49, the US is almost bang on this number. China
| is currently closer to 55:45... clearly there is some
| unnatural pressure going on.
| toxik wrote:
| The question was if it was NEEDED, not if it had any effect.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _How can we claim this policy has no effect if clearly
| people are still killing female infants?_
|
| No effect [?] no need.
|
| The intended purpose was to reduce birth rates for population
| control. This was being accomplished before the the policy
| even came into effect.
| himlion wrote:
| Killed, or just unreported? Probably both, but I guess more
| unreported.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Can you raise a unreported child in china? How would that
| work? With no papers at all and the communist buerocrats
| also really likes paper about everything. ?
| mcculley wrote:
| I am amused at the phrase "communist buerocrats [sic]". I
| live in the United States, where a particular bastard
| hybrid of socialism and crony capitalism requires that
| every birth be well documented by bureaucrats.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Are you railing against registering births? Which country
| doesn't do that? Somalia?
| mcculley wrote:
| I am not against it at all. I am amused that anyone would
| think that only "communists" have bureaucracy.
| yardie wrote:
| It has less to do with socialism and cronyism and
| everything to do with your rights. Your birth certificate
| is your primary evidence of citizenship. Literally every
| right you enjoy springs from that one document.
| mcculley wrote:
| I get that. I am amused that anyone would think that only
| "communists" have bureaucracy.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Maybe I don't actually think that and just refered to
| their special kind of buerocrats?
|
| I sort of hate buerocracy in all its shapes, but given
| the choice between a western style buerocrat and a
| marxist buerocrat, I choose the former.
| mcculley wrote:
| I am not capable of reading thoughts. I was reading the
| words you wrote.
|
| Now I am more amused at the notion that modern China is
| Marxist.
| Amezarak wrote:
| You don't have to have a birth certificate in the US, but
| the average life will be very difficult without it.
|
| https://gazette.com/news/born-in-the-usa-without-a-shred-
| of-...
| mcculley wrote:
| Indeed. This is why I wondered why the comment was
| singling out communist bureaucrats.
| newdude116 wrote:
| Yes you can. Money goes a long way there.
|
| Buddy of mine had two, one was illegal. When they make a
| law that you can have two, he made a third. I guess he
| will make a 4th now to send a clear message to the
| government :-)
| hutzlibu wrote:
| But the children still have papers, so are not
| unreported, right?
|
| There just was bribery or fine, but they still are
| registeredin the system? Or are they fake papers they
| have?
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| https://thediplomat.com/2015/03/chinas-hidden-children/
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/11
| /30...
|
| It's also China, where they put toxic stuff in watered
| down milk to make it look as foamy as protein-rich good
| milk:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal ,
| i.e. a place with a lot of corruption and where gaps are
| possible.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Are you suggesting that China is somehow unusual in
| poisoning the populace? Are you aware of Superfund?
| Nestle, who convinced mother's to starve and poison their
| babies with formula and dirty water that replaced and
| then blocked lactation?
| whoevercares wrote:
| It's just matter of couple hundreds RMB "pay the toll"
| MandieD wrote:
| Up until Covid stopped business travel, my Chinese
| colleagues brought home as much infant formula or follow
| up milk powder for toddlers as they thought they could
| get away with when visiting HQ in Germany, and always
| asked us to bring some with us when we went there. Lots
| of stores here had limits on how much you could buy at
| once because of that.
| TimPC wrote:
| Misread graph. Removed comment.
| robjan wrote:
| There is still a male surplus and culturally people still
| prefer to have boys because they carry their family name.
| Girls are married out of the family and if your one child
| is a girl there will be nobody to look after you in your
| old age.
| thefounder wrote:
| >> there will be nobody to look after you in your old
| age.
|
| What a sick, selfish society. If you can't take care of
| yourself maybe it's time to go?
| jacquesm wrote:
| What a sick little comment. The world is a lot larger
| than the rich West and historically children were what we
| have - in some wealthy places - a social security system
| for. But in many places where the state is barely
| functional and family ties are strong children tend to
| take care of their elders, because that's how it's been
| traditionally. The best way to reduce that factor in how
| many children people have is to up the standard of
| living, which more or less automatically reduces the
| number of children people will have because they no
| longer need to worry that much about their old age.
|
| On another note: those societies have - of necessity -
| much stronger family ties than that same rich West, so
| something valuable is lost along with the social needs.
| thefounder wrote:
| It looks like in China it's even a law[1] that old people
| use to take advantage of their children.
|
| Just because it's a "tradition" doesn't make it good.
| It's been a "tradition" to beat your wife and children as
| well in many parts of the world or even worse.
|
| If you are miserable why would you like to make your
| children's life miserable as well?
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7422934/
| drdec wrote:
| In the USA we have a similar law that allows older people
| to use the resources of younger people to survive. We
| call it social security.
|
| My point is just that sometimes things seem very
| different in other cultures but are not so different when
| you drill down. In both cultures we recognize that the
| elderly deserve to be taken care of. We just get to that
| goal in different ways. Neither one is prima facie better
| than the other and each had advantages and disadvantages.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| You should know they have this in Pennsylvania too
| topkai22 wrote:
| Some states in the US have variations on this type of
| law:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_responsibility_law
| s
| jacquesm wrote:
| When you're in a hole: stop digging. Really, this has
| absolutely no bearing on the discussion. Bringing spousal
| and child abuse into this is ridiculous.
|
| And even in the affluent West it isn't all that rare to
| find children caring for their elders: it's perfectly ok,
| even if there is a tendency to stick old people in old
| folks homes and to try to forget about them even though
| they are still alive that definitely isn't something
| everybody subscribes to. Those that came before us
| deserve some respect and care in their old age, they are
| still family.
|
| The COVID-19 epidemic has brought out one thing quite
| clearly: that there are people who wouldn't care one bit
| whether older people die off en masse. I wonder what the
| overlap is between those egoists and the ones that want
| to live forever.
| thefounder wrote:
| "Tradition" is often used to justify all kind of
| behaviours(many times abusive behaviours) so I don't
| think my remark is that misplaced. I'm not a fan of
| gerontocracy "traditions"/laws regardless if they
| originate in China, Italy or the U.S either.
|
| I would not ask someone to take care of myself if I'm
| unable to do so. I think it's fairer to make sure the
| world you leave behind is prosperous and equitable enough
| instead to rely on close relatives or invisible powers to
| take care of you when you innevitable become old.
|
| Make sure you get paid well enough during your youth so
| that you can live off your own savings/pension when you
| become a zombie.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| > How can we claim this policy has no effect if _clearly_
| people are still killing female infants?
|
| Strong statement. Evidence please.
| kube-system wrote:
| Not exactly "killing infants" but abortion.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2016/02/01/465124337/how-chinas-one-
| chil...
|
| https://www.bmj.com/content/338/bmj.b1211
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It was both killing newborn infant girls, especially
| where there was no ultrasound, and intentional
| miscarriages of girls when the ultrasound was used (which
| is why ultrasound is illegal in some parts of China).
|
| Both are well documented and account for the 30M extra
| males than females (Can't hide this cultural bias).
| faitswulff wrote:
| Abortion is not the same thing as killing infants. The
| racism that's tolerated on this site is very telling.
| mahkeiro wrote:
| For some people killing a foetus is the same as killing
| an infant. Please respect different opinion on a subject
| that has no definitive answer. Calling people racist as
| soon as you disagree is indeed very telling.
| faitswulff wrote:
| The anti-Chinese racism on this site is fairly evident on
| anything having to do with China. dang even had to tell
| people to tone down the rhetoric recently. This is just
| another case in point. Just because you're not aware of
| it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
| mlyle wrote:
| In this case, we have evidence of a whole lot of abortion
| of female fetuses.. and less, but still a notable amount,
| of infanticide: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/po
| litics/1985/01/08/c...
|
| Note that there was a big shift in the gender ratio
| _before_ sex determination by ultrasound was widely
| available in rural China.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| While I agree that abortion isn't killing infants, I
| don't get the racist part about this.
| faitswulff wrote:
| The racist part is the simple unchallenged assertion that
| Chinese people are so inhuman as to kill their infant
| children en masse.
| kbelder wrote:
| They indisputably did, though. No fact can be racist.
|
| Not because they're inhuman, of course; that sort of
| behavior has happened all throughout human history. It's
| just that, with China in the 20th century, the scale was
| huge.
| faitswulff wrote:
| Source on mass infanticide - not abortion - please.
| faitswulff wrote:
| Interesting how the assertion that Chinese people kill infant
| girls en masse goes completely unchallenged without nuance on
| this site.
| HDMI_Cable wrote:
| Are there any other explanations for the massive male
| surplus?
| faitswulff wrote:
| Is adoption murder? Abortion?
|
| Why is it easier to imagine that Chinese people murder
| infants than it is to imagine literally any other
| scenario?
|
| Why is it easier to assume that a _massive_ sex imbalance
| is the result members of a particular group of people
| being psychopaths rather than the result of some systemic
| cause? Hmm.
| prepend wrote:
| Infanticide doesn't mean psychopaths. It's been
| practiced, and I think super bad, by many cultures. I
| don't think that means the culture is full of
| psychopaths.
|
| Also, I assumed the reason there was no evidence posted
| for the Chinese infanticide claim is that it's extremely
| common and has been known for a long time. I just assumed
| everyone was aware.
|
| It doesn't mean people killing literal babies, but does
| mean stuff like more abortions of female embryos. [0]
|
| Wikipedia [1] has a more general article with more links
| to sources.
|
| [0] https://www.npr.org/2016/02/01/465124337/how-chinas-
| one-chil... [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide_in_China
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| True story: when we got pregnant in Beijing, our first
| ultrasound that could tell the sex of the baby, the
| technician was hinting at it (look there!), but she
| wasn't allowed to say it out loud.
| faitswulff wrote:
| This is the only reply worth reading. Even then, abortion
| is not infanticide.
| prepend wrote:
| That's an important distinction. And why I called out
| that much of the ratio imbalance is due to abortion and
| not literally people killing their baby after birth,
| although this does occur nonzero and is really horrifying
| to me.
|
| Ancient cultures practiced it much more frequently and I
| think shows how different cultures have different values
| for life.
| eloisius wrote:
| I think the systemic cause was clearly pointed out: the
| one child policy.
| faitswulff wrote:
| And the killing of children follows, naturally
| kbelder wrote:
| Naturally.
| [deleted]
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Yes, abortion is murder and a new human being is formed
| at conception. It's just convenient to call it something
| else not to appear monsters.
|
| If a girl were adopted in China she would still show up
| in this dataset. I haven't heard about foreign adoption
| being popular in China (like it would be in eg. Africa),
| so the unbalance is likely to be the result of
| aborting/killing baby girls.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Foreign adoptions from China were popular a decade or two
| ago, now they pretty much don't exist. Still, those flows
| should have had some effect on today's numbers.
| faitswulff wrote:
| Moving the goalposts. It certainly is not "killing female
| infants."
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| One child policy is one of the major things that led China's
| historic revolution out of poverty.
|
| It's a very controversial policy, but you're free to prove me
| wrong.
|
| People could be employed longer without an abundance of young
| people taking their jobs.
| pelorat wrote:
| I'm more inclined to think it was industrial espionage on an
| industrial scale.
| imtringued wrote:
| It started with a British colony that made it easy to do
| business, then China stole the good parts of the British
| colony and created special economic zones.
|
| Industrial espionage isn't even wrong. There is this absurd
| idea that a country should isolate itself from its
| neighbours and do everything on its own. How are you
| supposed to catch up or even overtake developed nations if
| all you do is reinvent things that have been available for
| decades? You can't.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| One of the major things does not exclude other things...
| baybal2 wrote:
| > There is some question on whether the one-child policy was
| even needed.
|
| > The ghastly human rights violations that led from the policy
| were completely unnecessary.
|
| No, this was entirely intentional. That was the whole point.
|
| This is "the big lie theory" taken to its extreme. It was done
| to keep people, and party cadres preoccupied. If you were to
| speak to an adult Chinese at around late eighties, the 1 child
| policy would've been the number 1 thing on people's tongues,
| _as if there were no other problems._
|
| It was an entirely artificial crisis made to distract people
| from the total economic ruin, and destitution as a result of
| cultural revolution.
|
| I'm reading the progression of this thread, and can't believe
| my eyes. You HNers, supposedly intellectual elites, got
| completely hooked by the same cheap diversion.
|
| The point is not whether it was a legit, or not policy. _The
| point is the entire conversation being completely pointless_.
|
| The real rationale was to not to let people talk about
| something _having a point_ -- the real problems in a starving,
| falling apart nation in a deepest crisis, which China was at
| the time.
| beaunative wrote:
| How is the crisis artificial? The amount of agricultural land
| China needed to sustain its population is totally calculable.
| the Chinese population grow threefold from 1912 to when the
| policy was introduced, had it been growing like that, today
| China would have HALF of the world's population. it's
| understandable to think it might an ecologically
| unsustainable growth.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > The amount of agricultural land China needed to sustain
| its population is totally calculable.
|
| And it was more than enough to feed China even back then.
|
| It's a poor insinuation claiming that top statesmen didn't
| know that. They knew it very well, and they also knew how
| catastrophically they mismanaged the agriculture.
| babayega2 wrote:
| I totally understand you. Peoples come in here and just go
| on criticize policies because they don't know the reality
| of living in an overpopulated country with limited
| ressources.
|
| In Africa, Burundi, my country of 28km2, we have more than
| 90% of the litigations in the courts about land and
| properties. Siblings kill each other for land! We have 5.4
| children/woman. One of the biggest natality rate in Africa.
| Only surpassed by Niger! We have American evangelical
| coming in scaring peoples to do abortions and
| contraception! We can't even talk about sterilization! With
| population density of more than 450 peoples by the km2.
|
| Primary School is free and children get free healthcare
| till 5 years of age. It means that those 5.4 children per
| woman are likely to live and multiply!
|
| What do you think we need to do?
|
| I can only imagine how Chinese peoples did projections and
| saw that by the end of the century they would be half the
| world population without half the ressources and took
| drastic measures!
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _What do you think we need to do?_
|
| Generally speaking: reduce child mortality (better health
| care), urbanize/industrialize, educate women.
|
| Every country that has done with over the last ~200 years
| has seen a drop in fertility rates.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > What do you think we need to do?
|
| Work.
|
| What is the difference in between 10 people making less
| than 1 ton on an acre and starving, and 10000 people
| making less than 1000 tons on 1000 acres, and starving?
|
| The difference is just the number of starving people.
|
| And add to that that all land was, and still is
| nationalised in China.
|
| > I can only imagine how Chinese peoples did projections
| and saw that by the end of the century they would be half
| the world population
|
| And communists knew it being 100% bullshit for masses.
| Just like Mao very well know how "4 pests," and other
| mass actions been complete bonkers.
|
| They were not stupid to the point of drinking their own
| coolaid.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I did not consider this could be the case for China since I
| am frankly pretty ignorant of Chinese politics, but I have
| suspected for a while that the US government heavily invests
| in such distractions from the real issues.
| justicezyx wrote:
| Right.
|
| And you known who proposed and architected the "one-child
| policy": Yinchu Ma.
|
| His theory is influenced by Malthus [2]. And you know what,
| Mr. Ma's theory were not recognized until Mr. Deng come into
| power. And Mr. Deng realized there are so many people but no
| way the economy machine is going to find jobs for so many
| people.
|
| Although in the end Mr. Ma and Malthus were all wrong. They
| never experienced the prosperity's effect on people's
| behavior in making baby. Like any mass production.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Yinchu#:~:text=Ma's%20th
| eor....
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism
| officialjunk wrote:
| does this look like a sustainable world population growth
| curve? our resources are not increasing exponentially. and
| china's contribution towards this exponential growth has been
| decreased significantly as result of their policies.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population?country=CHN~OW...
| roenxi wrote:
| China (and India) are dealing with population numbers never
| before seen, at a scale that is inconceivable without special
| training or focus (whats the difference between a million and a
| billion? about a billion). It is a mathematical possibility
| that growth rates overshoot and settle into patterns of boom
| and bust - and a bust in human populations can get really ugly.
|
| "It hasn't happened in the last 2 centuries" isn't an argument
| against Malthusian collapses either. China has a long memory.
|
| I have a lot of sympathy for the argument that the One-child
| Policy was a mistake. In my view, it was. But I also have a lot
| of sympathy for the people who implemented it. As ideas go it
| isn't an obvious mis-step in the class as, say, Communist
| economic policies.
| baybal2 wrote:
| They deserve no sympathy, it was sheer madness, and it is.
|
| > As ideas go it isn't an obvious mis-step in the class as,
| say, Communist economic policies.
|
| No, it's an exemplary case of completely bonker policies in
| rank with "4 pests" campaign.
|
| Sadly, stuff like that is very much intentional, and are
| signature of Maoesque political thought:
|
| You intentionally make populace outraged over something very
| obvious, and then keep obsessing over it for no reason making
| people think it's a big thing, when it isn't.
|
| When people people have something more close, personal, and
| painful to be outraged about, it shifts people's attention
| from an even more obvious fact of complete governance
| failure, and communist occupation of the country.
| dirtyid wrote:
| One Child Policy prevented ~300M births. Currently PRC with
| 1.4B has 150-200M surplus / idle workers, 600M trapped in
| low(er)-middle income. PRC has too many people to elevate to
| upper-middle or high income status within reasonable time and
| simply not enough resources. Any policy to reduce population
| was "beneficial". 1.4B is already too much. PRC with population
| of 1.7B people would fall apart. Crassly, a more severe Great
| Leap Forward that suppressed current population to "only" 1B
| would alleviate a lot of strategic stressors. Family planning
| was completely necessary but came too late and arguably
| enforced too softly.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _One Child Policy prevented ~300M births._
|
| This is a questionable ascertain. The birth rate had already
| dropped, and had been dropping for over a decade, before the
| policy kicked in.
| dirtyid wrote:
| >The birth rate had already dropped, and had been dropping
| for over a decade, before the policy kicked in.
|
| That was due to the original 2-child policy from the 70s.
| To rephrase accurately: "family planning" prevented ~300M
| births, adjusted downward from 400M since 100M+ previously
| unregistered birth was logged since reversion to two child
| policy again. There's no credible analysis that suggest PRC
| family planning policies did not directly and dramatically
| reduce population. 300M IUDs and 100M sterilizations aren't
| placebos.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _That was due to the original 2-child policy from the
| 70s._
|
| [citation needed]
|
| Where is there more information on this? I do not see it
| mentioned for China:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-child_policy
|
| The birth rate also started falling in the 1960s:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Birth_rate_in_China.
| svg
|
| * https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINCHN
|
| > _There 's no credible analysis that suggest PRC family
| planning policies did not directly and dramatically
| reduce population. 300M IUDs and 100M sterilizations
| aren't placebos._
|
| Of course the policies reduced fertility rates and
| population growth. The question is whether _they were
| needed_ in the first place, or whether general
| development would have _achieved the same result anyway_.
| dirtyid wrote:
| >[citation needed]
|
| I'm surprised this isn't covered on wiki, or at least PRC
| family planning article.
|
| https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/martinwhyte/files/chall
| eng...
|
| Pg 149.
|
| >Was China's Birth Control Program Voluntary in the
| 1970s?
|
| >With these ambitious goals a national campaign of
| mandatory birth planning was put into full motion. The
| slogan that summarized the three demographic components
| of the campaign was "later, longer, and fewer" (wan, xi,
| shao Wan , Xi , Shao ). "Later" referred to the effort to
| enforce late marriage--at least after age 25 for brides
| and 27 or 28 for grooms in the city, and after 23 for
| brides and 25 for grooms in the countryside. "Longer"
| referred to requiring greater intervals between permitted
| births--at least four years. "Fewer" meant limits on the
| number of births allowed--no more than two children for
| urban families and three for rural families, with
| penalties for those who did not comply
|
| >falling in the 1960s
|
| With respect to graph, plot some 101 PRC history. Early
| 60s... residual of Great Leap Forward famines. Mid 60s
| onwards... Cultural Revolution. Until mid 70s.. when Two
| Child Policy went into effect, then One Child. These were
| not periods of general development. This was a period
| when PRC was still incredibly impoverished, and the
| default strategy for poverty generally is to have many
| children because you can not ensure all their survival
| and to maximize chance of being taken care of.
|
| >would have achieved the same result
|
| There are several averted birth studies for PRC family
| planning ranging from 100s of million to 1 billion by mid
| century accounting for descendants. The consensus is
| family planning is responsible for maintaining low
| births. I suppose we'll have to see how India manages,
| they started with 70% of PRC population in 1950s and is
| set to surpass PRC by a 300M @ 1.7B by 2050s. If argument
| is development, PRC didn't pass India in per capita GDP
| until early 90s. That said PRC under communism was more
| egalitarian for women, but education didn't pick up /
| restart until after the famine and revolutions either.
|
| E: But most information shows PRC without family planning
| would have pushed ~1.7B-2B people, maybe they would have
| hit carrying capacity before, but 500 extra million
| mouths to feed and alleviate poverty is no joke. IMO,
| it's a sufficiently massively structural demographic
| problem that would have caused the country to implode.
| pepperonipizza wrote:
| This will not change the fertility rate, there was a bump for one
| or two years after China allowed 2 children, and the fertility
| rate went down again, and the tfr is at its lowest since it has
| been calculated.
|
| Only ectogenesis could reverse this trend. China and the world
| better start investing more in ectogenesis research.
| MichaelRazum wrote:
| Just curious are such policies considered a human right
| violation. For example could US or let's say France implement
| such law as well? Let's say the government just want's to prevent
| families having more than 5+ children for whatever reason.
| iammisc wrote:
| The short answer is yes, it's a human rights violation, and it
| doesn't matter what others 'consider' it. But no one will say
| anything because it's the Chinese Communist Party.
| oreally wrote:
| Years ago there was a US president who questioned the birth
| control = violation of human rights thing to Deng Xiaoping, to
| which Deng answered: "Are you going to support the excess
| population then?" or something like shipping them off to the
| US. That shut his US counterpart up pretty quickly.
|
| Let countries be free to do birth control of their own
| violation - you do not want more births whose lives they cannot
| support properly which in turn threatens the social fabric of
| their societies. To push this as a human rights violation in
| support of the west's rhetoric is pretty hypocritical since
| they don't have to support the excess births.
| Traster wrote:
| Western countries attempt to manage this through taxation and
| benefits. There are plenty of countries that encourage having
| children with tax benefits. The UK controversially introduced a
| limit to how much you'll get in state support if you have more
| than 3 children- https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claiming-benefits-
| for-2-or-more-...
| barsonme wrote:
| Taxation and benefits is not even in the same universe as
| forced sterilization and abortions.
| unnamed76ri wrote:
| Gotta love HN comment section on a story such as this. People
| here solving math problems more than questioning the power of a
| government to tell people how many children they are ALLOWED to
| have.
| oreally wrote:
| Ok, seems like you'd like no birth controls. Would you be
| willing to support the excess births in China with your own
| money then? As a US citizen? Because the excess births are
| going to put a burden on China's infrastructure and you're
| pushing for no birth controls.
| sk5t wrote:
| The state (just about anywhere) can use its powers to take your
| property, lock you in a cage, or send you or your children off
| to fight and die thousands of miles from home. What's the
| difference?
| Markoff wrote:
| yeah, I found it amazing when my wife had to ask in China
| whether we can have our child, which will be foreign citizen
| after birth FFS
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| Understandable. But I will say that the government in question
| is well known for doing whatever it pleases.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I wonder if you also question the power of a government to
| forcibly take money from the people with no or few children and
| give the money to those with many children.
|
| This (allocation per child) is a policy very frequently
| encountered in a large number of countries.
|
| It is also frequent in those countries to raise the level of
| the allocation per child immediately before elections, which
| leads to quite an inflated level after many election cycles.
|
| Unlike with China's population control policy, I have not seen
| any questioning of these allocation per child policies from
| other countries, even if in that case the state also intrudes
| in the individual rights by extracting money from them.
|
| That policy also results in some kind of reverse eugenics,
| because the more responsible people delay having more children
| until having the financial means to raise them, but because
| they are forced to pay higher taxes they must delay even more,
| while some of the least responsible people choose to have as
| many children as possible, with the hope of sustaining the
| family only or mainly from the state aid.
|
| In my opinion all kinds of potential abuse from a government
| must be questioned, not only those for which there exists a
| tradition to be criticized.
| konart wrote:
| >the power of a government
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence
|
| >Robert Hinrichs Bates argues that the state itself has no
| violent power; rather, the people hold all the power of
| coercion to ensure that order and other equilibriums hold up.
|
| Should we be discussing this?
| Rompect wrote:
| According to that argument, the capitol riot was justified.
| potatoman22 wrote:
| How so?
| bluescrn wrote:
| But perhaps it would have been the right thing to do for
| governments to limit population growth and not let us breed our
| way to destruction so fast, unsustainably stripping the earth
| of its resources and accelerating climate change.
|
| Personally, a one-child limit a few decades ago would have been
| much more tolerable than face being told in the near future
| that we can no longer eat meat, drive a car, or travel
| internationally, amongst other things.
| qwytw wrote:
| Or maybe, perhaps there are other ways to decrease birth
| rates to a more sustainable level besides forced abortions
| and infanticide? There is not a single in country in the EU
| with a fertility rate above 2 (the average in 2019 was 1.54)
| it's higher in the US but this is mostly a result of external
| immigration (either directly or immigrants having more
| children). At least in Europe this is going to cause huge
| issues in the upcoming decades due to huge increases in
| social and healthcare expenditures coupled with a shrinking
| workforce.
|
| *https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/tps00199/defa
| ...
| justnotworthit wrote:
| Just wait a few hours before reading the comments and (as you
| see in this comment page) the ideology discussion will go above
| the computation.
| spinny wrote:
| Three ?? So noble of them
| stanrivers wrote:
| A lot of people are asking why a policy is even still needed -
| why not go for no limit at all?
|
| 1) There is an entire family planning bureaucracy within the CCP
| setup to manage this; would do you do with all those people if
| they are not needed anymore?
|
| 2) China is more strict on population planning for certain
| minorities - not officially, but in the background; think Muslims
| in western China or Tibet or Mongolians, or ethnic Koreans in
| northeastern China... If you had no population planning for all
| the Han chinese, you might have a brighter light cast on this
| small in number but impactful population control actions.
|
| 3) Once someone has power, why let go of it? The CCP survives by
| creating a fairly good life for the majority in China - and it
| has done that extremely well - in exchange for control. It is
| easier to go from 3 back to 2, than it is to go from unlimited
| back to 2, for example.
| justicezyx wrote:
| > China is more strict on population planning for certain
| minorities - not officially, but in the background; think
| Muslims in western China or Tibet or Mongolians, or ethnic
| Koreans in northeastern China... If you had no population
| planning for all the Han chinese, you might have a brighter
| light cast on this small in number but impactful population
| control actions.
|
| LAMO
|
| My mother was almost forced to sterilze, which would make me
| disappear in 1984, she is Han Chinese. That was because local
| beauracrats' stupid idea of birth planning.
|
| Can you stop making CCP looking better by saying it's
| discrinating against minorities...
|
| Edit: I was the 2nd child.
| stanrivers wrote:
| Very curious - why was she selected for this?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It was a broad policy that affected millions of women.
| stanrivers wrote:
| Understood - but I think he was saying that before she
| even had one child, they were trying to force sterilize
| his mother, who was Han Chinese.
|
| That is a new concept to me, unless maybe it was wealth /
| income / genetic disease related?
| justicezyx wrote:
| She was a poor rural village woman.
|
| Of course, forced sterilization is not going to work in the
| cities. Because people with some form of certain degree of
| intellect understand the use of contraception and can just
| forgo their job or certain possession to pay the fine.
|
| Forced sterilization was never an explicit policy. Everyone
| with decent intellect knows that's ridiculous.
|
| It was practiced, of course, out of middle and low level
| bureaucracy's sense of "meeting the goal".
|
| Of course CCP has not enough resources to enforce a
| ridiculous policy anyway.
| stanrivers wrote:
| Well I am glad that she was able to avoid it for your
| sake. Unfortunately, I am sure many women were not able
| to do so. It is very much a terrible thing.
| kamfc wrote:
| I've always wondered about the timing when population control
| was first implemented, and their intent.
|
| 1. Did population control allow Han Chinese/CCP to maintain
| their dominance in size over the growing minorities who were
| largely still living the agrarian lifestyle? 2. Minorities'
| would have their growth exponentially reduced over a hundred
| year. 3. And by increasing it now, Han Chinese can now
| exponentially grow again with momentum over minorities.
|
| So in the background, it seems there's more than meet the eye
| to maintain Han Chinese power over other minorities in the
| country.Similar to Japanese
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people) and other "race";
| same strategy and intent, different tactic.
| ikerdanzel wrote:
| They already failed at 2 as very few Han Chinese bother to have
| more than 1 kid. Now they double down to 3. Good luck realizing
| it is not working and they will have to either go for 19th
| century expansionist policy, or cloning. There is the force
| mandate they can try, hard to see people doing it and then
| sustain to full term and birth with the threat lingering.
| Chinese are herd mentality sheep. If just a few decide no go
| than 1, entire billion people will do so. They will have to
| start executing people for failing to have 3 by 40yrs old,
| dystopian imagination which I don't see getting implemented in
| modern times.
| refenestrator wrote:
| Historically, minorities were allowed to have _more_ children
| than Han Chinese, FYI. Han only reached the same child
| allowance recently.
| crakenzak wrote:
| source?
| chillee wrote:
| https://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/gia/article/what-did-
| china's-one-c...
|
| > When the policy was implemented, 26 [out of 31] Chinese
| provinces allowed ethnic minorities to have an additional
| child.
|
| There were other exemptions too - for example, rural
| farmers could often also be exempted, particularly if their
| first child was a daughter.
| [deleted]
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Actually rural area as well. Done of my chinese have a
| brother or sister ... surprise me a lot.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| I wouldn't call at least 1 million uighurs interned and
| reportedly forcibly sterilized or put on other types of birth
| control a small number. Though given the huge size of China out
| of 1.3bb it's a rounding error.
| chitowneats wrote:
| "The ASPI report said birth rates in counties with a 90 percent
| or greater indigenous population declined by an average of 56.5
| percent from 2017 to 2018, far more than other regions in
| Xinjiang and China during the same period."
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-uses-coercive-poli...
|
| 56.5% decline in birth rates _in one year_ when the right
| sample is taken. Beyond shocking. Doing such a thing with your
| left hand while allowing more births for Han Chinese with your
| right hand must be seen for what it is: genocide.
| beaunative wrote:
| the problem with that report is that I can't find anywhere
| the exact number, it only states decline by 56.5% without
| showing any specific numbers. I'm mildly suspicious that they
| originally had a much higher birth rate than Han Chinese
| since the same policy allowed one kid for Han Chinese allowed
| two to four kids for minorities
| beaunative wrote:
| update, in a related voa newspiece, it reads 'For example,
| in Hotan prefecture, where the Uyghurs make up about 97% of
| the population, the birthrate was 8.58 per 1,000 people in
| 2018. Before 2017, it was more than 20 births per 1,000
| people' at the same time the national average was around 11
| chitowneats wrote:
| That's one specific example, yes.
|
| You can find the 36 page report here:
|
| https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/ad-
| aspi/2021-05/Fami...
|
| Edit: via this summary from ASPI (in case the AWS link
| above breaks in the future)
|
| https://www.aspi.org.au/report/family-deplanning-
| birthrates-...
| beaunative wrote:
| Thank you so much. The full report is much more genuine
| than the abstract from the press. For example, it writes
| 'in Kashgar prefecture in 2014, the birth-rate soared to
| nearly 68 children per thousand people' at the same time
| the national average was around 12, perhaps because
| people in those regions are allowed more kids and the
| policy are rarely enforced compare to other region.
|
| so if the birth rate in that region simply fall to
| national average, it will went down 80%. I think it's an
| perfect example of how numbers lie, but most people don't
| have any vested interest to find out.
| chitowneats wrote:
| I'm glad you had time to digest that report thoroughly in
| the 11 minutes between my comment and yours. Of course,
| everyone here should be aware that you are cherry
| picking. The conclusion of the report is that _on
| average_ , there was a steep drop in birth rate in
| minority counties.
|
| The report is named: "Family De-planning: The Coercive
| Campaign to Drive Down Indigenous Birth-rates in
| Xinjiang". This is not a case of media misrepresentation
| no matter how badly you want it to be.
|
| The conclusion is typically found at the end of a report.
| Why don't you go back and try again.
| beaunative wrote:
| I don't mind to examine the full dataset if they are
| available. And the report is kind of only 20ish pages,
| excluding the references and covers.
|
| After rereading as you suggested, it also said 'Urumqi is
| also a Han-majority city .... In 2018, the city's birth-
| rate grew by about 25 percent compared to the pre-2017
| baseline, from 8.5 births per thousand people to 12 per
| thousand.' So at the same time Han in Urumqi were having
| 8.5 per 1000 birth, Minorities in Kashgar were having 68
| per 1000 birthrate. If that's anything, I'd say the CCP
| is genociding Han Chinese for selectively enforcing the
| policy.
|
| I think the act to list only percentages without listing
| exact number is dubious, and I am confident the pattern
| would be similar.
| chitowneats wrote:
| Now you're comparing apples to oranges, in addition to
| cherry picking.
|
| You're comparing birth rates of a major city full of
| unmarried Han who have been lured to the area by
| government incentives and other work arrangements, to a
| predominantly rural area. Those birth rates will always
| be divergent; anywhere in China, and most of the rest of
| the world. The part about Han being purposely
| incentivized to move to Xinjiang is explained in section
| 5 of the report.
|
| The report does not dispute that Uyghur birth rates were
| higher relative to Han Chinese in the past. It makes a
| convincing case that Uyghurs _are_ being targeted now, at
| the same time birth control policies are being loosened
| in Han Chinese parts of the country. That policy
| discrepancy is intentional, and we should expect it to
| continue unless we speak out against it.
|
| Finally, we can agree that the Chinese government is also
| evil for controlling the births of Han Chinese and
| ruining life for generations of their own people who had
| to contend with the CCP's signature and unique natal
| authoritarianism.
| beaunative wrote:
| You have a love for fruit, don't you? But that's not
| apples and oranges, nor are they cherries. That's the
| most specific data you can find in that report on the
| actual birth rate. You're more than welcome to share more
| data and maybe we can examine.
| chitowneats wrote:
| The actual data is public record. Official from the
| Chinese government.
|
| It's linked in the Methodology appendix on page 28 of the
| report. I copied it here for you since it seems you
| haven't made it that far yet:
|
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dH-
| GMlRZ8Kc1Lp5or5vS...
|
| Understandable considering you were confused about the
| report only being "20ish pages".
|
| As for the fruit: Yes, what a wonderful bounty you've
| brought for us on this fine Memorial Day.
| beaunative wrote:
| It's really wonderful for you to link the dataset here. I
| think neither of us would have the time to compile the
| dataset manually. Admittedly and regrettably I didn't
| check the appendix.
|
| So the conclusion was from Xinjiang's 2017 and 2018
| birthrate, which respectively as included was 15.88 and
| 10.69, so that's where the 50% drop came from. However,
| the same index for China overall was 12.43 and 10.94,
| where we see around 20% drop. I don't think it can be
| categorically concluded it's some racially-motivated
| policy. (whether it's a good policy or bad is a whole
| different matter.)
| chitowneats wrote:
| So to summarize our discussion:
|
| Me: Here's an article about this report.
|
| You: The press is misrepresenting the abstract.
|
| Me: Nope. Here's the full report.
|
| You: The report draws the wrong conclusions. Besides,
| they don't even share the dataset.
|
| Me: Nope. Here's the dataset linked in the report.
|
| You: The data show that Xinjiang birth rates declined 30%
| more than they did in the rest of China. As you can see I
| was right all along.
|
| I'm curious how you managed to make this journey. It
| doesn't seem like you've been participating in this
| discussion in good faith, frankly. I could be wrong
| though. In that case, I would recommend you actually read
| what people are trying to show you before attempting to
| criticize it. You are clearly working backwards from your
| priors.
| beaunative wrote:
| Well, I guess you know how to spin a story. My point the
| whole time has been that percentages can be misleading
| without the actual number presented, still you seemed to
| be only cares about the percentages.
|
| It's quite easy to see that birth rate in Xinjiang falls
| around the national average in 2018. Stil, I'm glad you
| found the actual dataset in the appendix.
| thinktankie wrote:
| Correct [1].
|
| In addition, ASPI is notorious for being sponsored by the
| US, UK and Australian weapons industry who have a vested
| interest in drumming up this kind of thing. I would take
| anything they have to say with a massive grain of salt [2].
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/drStuartGilmour/status/139383427169
| 39632...
|
| [2] https://www.aspi.org.au/sponsors
| [deleted]
| chitowneats wrote:
| Incorrect [1].
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/Nrg8000/status/1394089300199821313
| chitowneats wrote:
| In case any potential down voters are not educated on the
| matter, the U.N. convention on genocide specifically
| prohibits targeting ethnic or religious minorities for forced
| sterilization/birth control:
|
| https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml
| elefanten wrote:
| You're absolutely right and this comment has no business
| being grayed.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Uncomfortable truths
| chitowneats wrote:
| Indeed, this seems to have touched a nerve. Interesting
| that no one has tried to refute my point directly.
|
| There are others in the thread who seem to be suggesting
| that because Han Chinese have also been subject to
| population control measures, that my point is somehow
| invalid.
|
| No one has yet explained why we see such steep birth rate
| declines, specifically in Uyghur regions, relative to the
| rest of China, only in the last half decade or so.
|
| You know, right around the time they started rounding up
| millions of people in that same ethnic group and putting
| them in camps. The Chinese government has many euphemisms
| and rationalizations for these camps, but they don't
| dispute their existence. In any case we have satellite
| imagery.
|
| What can one conclude about these coinciding actions by the
| Chinese state if not genocide? If it's not that, what is
| it?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Globally, population growth is the single biggest problem, IMHO,
| and it won't be possible to meet both environmental and
| development targets with current and medium term population
| numbers.
|
| Sooner than later we will have to adapt to at best constant
| population, which will mean a large proportion of elderly.
|
| Trying to boost births (as everyone is doing) is just kicking the
| ball down the road at the expense of the environment.
|
| Now, in China specifically I think lifting restrictions won't
| have much impact. A child is very expensive and virtually all
| women work. They would need to look at a welfare system to help
| families for people to consider having more children. There is
| also the issue of migrant workers: many people from poorer areas
| work in richer cities and leave children with grand parents for
| years on hand. They are not going to have more children just
| because it is allowed.
| gregwebs wrote:
| What's missing in this article is a proper discussion of the
| level of government for each child. This ends up being the
| limiting factor for most who are not wealthy.
| hyko wrote:
| Won't be long before three children are mandatory.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I think you were joking, but totalitarian regimes have done
| this before (Romania's orphan crisis was the result of similar
| policies, iirc).
|
| The poverty/immigration dance - if you reduce poverty, women
| have less children. Eventually you reach the point where you
| need to allow immigration to provide enough workers to keep
| your aging population from starving. Immigration is an
| existential threat if your country is based on a single ethnic
| identity (e.g. Han). Immigrants are poorer and therefore have
| more babies, and at some point will become the ethnic majority,
| or at least a sizable minority, large enough to cause problems
| (and economically vital so you can't just round them up and
| deport them).
|
| Getting middle-class people to have more babies is difficult.
|
| Edit: of course, this isn't a problem if you don't base your
| country's identity on an ethnic identity.
| adamors wrote:
| Romania's orphan crisis was the result of restricting
| abortions to a select few categories of women.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| thanks for the clarification :)
|
| From the wikipedia page: > aimed at the creation of a new
| and large Romanian population by restricting abortion and
| contraception.
|
| Same idea, different mechanics
| Clewza313 wrote:
| China internally makes a big deal about their 56 ethnic
| groups, living happily in harmony:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_minorities_in_China
|
| And woe betide anyone who dares be less than harmonious about
| being ruled by their Han big brother.
| infinity0 wrote:
| You seem to have a bit of sour grapes that a non-Western
| country dares to talk positively about their own policies.
|
| You should understand that translations often lose some
| cultural context, so when you have a prejudice against the
| English word "harmonious", understand that the Chinese
| equivalent is used much more freely in everyday speech.
| "Solidarity" might have been a better translation.
|
| --
|
| Reply to the comment below:
|
| > I recall that, in the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony,
| China celebrated its ethnic minorities by having Han
| children dress up as them [..]
|
| In a big place like China or the US, there are always going
| to incidents like this. Furthermore, most news stories will
| exaggerate the headlines or twist the details, so I am not
| even sure if this particular incident is as you described.
| What matters is what the policies are doing for the larger
| scale of individuals. You can't judge anything about this
| larger scale by looking at a few incidents, especially when
| Western media have a vested interest in showing you these
| news items and ignoring the vast majority of what is going
| on. (To be fair, the vast majority is quite boring.)
|
| "Ask the people themselves" is used typically in these
| discussions as a weasel phrase, as if Western liberal
| democracies are truly "asking the people themselves". You
| have mass media bombarding the general population all the
| time with pre-ordained narratives. Nobody votes in
| elections with an independent analysis. So sure, it depends
| on what you mean by "ask the people themselves". There's
| lots of content on social media including from ethnic
| minorities, people are generally happy with their lives and
| the amount of freedom they have. Are you going to pick
| holes in that? Why not pick holes in what's happening with
| mass media de-jure "independent" de-facto manipulative
| elections in the West?
| elefanten wrote:
| You seem to have some sour grapes about criticism of
| China and some kind of twisted, paranoid presumption
| about Western attitudes toward non-Western policymaking.
|
| The point was not to make fun of the word choice
| "harmonious", but rather to point out that CCP-led China
| is functionally an ethnostate that bluntly prefers and
| privileges one identity over the others.
| infinity0 wrote:
| > paranoid presumption
|
| There is no "paranoid presumption", that's literally what
| the comment I'm replying to was doing.
|
| So, look at reality instead of sitting on your high
| horse, believing that all defenses of China are
| "paranoid".
|
| > The point was not to make fun of the word choice
| "harmonious", but rather to point out [..]
|
| Again, read the comment. You are denying reality. They
| literally said nothing concrete, only imply negative
| connotations about the word "harmonious".
| elefanten wrote:
| There was no indication whether that poster was Western
| or not. Only you read that aspect into the comment. The
| poster was ripping on China specifically. And then you
| magnified it into higher stakes: that the presumably
| Western poster must be skeptical of or hostile to _all
| non-Western policymaking._ That says more about your
| presumptions about Westerners than it does about the
| comment.
|
| And yes, the poster ribbed on the word harmonious, but
| again, that wasn't the point. The meat of the post was
| about being ruled by big brother Han. Interestingly, you
| didn't object to that bit at all!
| jcranmer wrote:
| I recall that, in the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony,
| China celebrated its ethnic minorities by having Han
| children dress up as them instead of letting any ethnic
| minorities represent themselves.
|
| I don't think "harmonious" or "solidarity" or whatever
| other positive word you come up with would be an accurate
| representation of the relations of ethnic minorities.
| Especially if you were to ask the ethnic minorities
| _themselves_ to come up with a word.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| I've been to Tibet, and the endless barrage of slogans
| and posters celebrating He Xie and Xi Cang Ge Zu Ren Min
| De Xing Fu Sheng Huo are there for a reason.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Ya but is that any different than Beijing? The Chinese
| government has to keep the propaganda and slogans up
| everywhere, it's really the only tool they know of to
| communicate broadly their apparent successes to the
| people.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| It actually was, both in sheer intensity and in style.
| For example, in Beijing (at least when I last visited) it
| was kind of hard to find posters of Xi Jinping, while in
| Lhasa you had a lot of this kind of thing:
| https://imgur.com/a/GRN9VZz
|
| Which to me seemed _remarkably_ tone deaf (nothing like
| reminding Tibetans to celebrate their "liberation" and
| its mastermind Mao), but presumably worrying about how
| the message would land was not among the KPIs of the
| cadre responsible.
| infinity0 wrote:
| China is not a totalitarian regime - you shouldn't believe
| all the propaganda out there, you should actually go there
| yourself and you'll find that you can live your life quite
| normally and happily.
|
| China's identity isn't based on a single ethnic identity -
| the various restrictions (such as the now-3-child-policy, and
| permanent immigration between cities) apply to everyone. In
| fact ethnic minorities generally get preferential treatment -
| e.g. looser restrictions, affirmative action in various
| places such as state examinations - because it's recognised
| that a majority ethnic groups have disproportionate power.
|
| ---
|
| Reply to the comment below:
|
| > As long as you don't stick out, or criticize the government
| positively quite frequently.
|
| The ways in which this statement is both true and false in
| its details, is not particularly different from the West.
|
| In China, there are local protests quite regularly, and local
| governments respond.
|
| In Hong Kong the protests were incredibly violent and
| disruptive. You cite the crackdowns by the government, but
| you don't cite the actions by the protestors and opposition
| legislators, that also attack innocents and filibuster the
| legislature for years, much more disruptively and
| disrespectfully than anything that's happened in the West,
| including shouting "Fuck China" during legislative oath-
| taking.
|
| In China, mass organised protest against the national
| government is not tolerated, but nobody cares if you write
| some stuff on social media. In the West, in the rare case
| that actual mass protests ever get too rowdy they are
| shutdown quite brutally by the police. In China the
| government stops the situation before it gets to that point.
| In the West, anyone that sticks out enough to really be a
| bother, like Julian Assange, gets shut down very brutally
| too.
|
| In both cases, these types of mass protests don't generally
| change anything in the political system. And in both cases,
| most ordinary people actually really just don't care to do
| these things, because the situation is fine in both China and
| the West - certainly not like the levels of the revolutions
| in the 1800s or the wars in the early 1900s. So when you
| criticise China for not allowing these things, this comes
| from a position of privilege, you have forgotten what it's
| like to be hungry. Not being hungry matters more, and China
| has found an efficient way to do that, so I am happy for them
| (and "us" as far as I can claim that). Maybe later things
| will become more relaxed, but it's not a particularly big
| priority.
|
| > brutal suppression they do in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong,
| or Inner Mongolia A-OK?
|
| Most of the "evidence" regarding Xinjiang is fabricated, the
| Hong Kong stories are exaggerated and one-sided. I'd be
| against any actual specific cases of brutal suppression
| that's going on. But that still wouldn't make me "anti-China"
| in the same way you're not "anti-US" or "anti-West"
| presumably (I am not either). But that's what Western media
| portrayals seem to be trying to do - saying that, oh China is
| doing some bad things, they are evil, they need to be
| stopped. China is not evil, the world is a complex place.
|
| > we all know it was would be like Putin and Medvedev, with
| Xi still controlling,
|
| Nobody really knows the details of these things high up, it's
| all conjecture. It's sure convenient that Democrat and
| Republican policies, compared to the rest of the world, are
| very similar. How do you know they're not essentially in
| cahoots and just putting up a show of being "opposites" for
| the rest of the world?
| imiric wrote:
| > In China, mass organised protest against the national
| government is not tolerated, but nobody cares if you write
| some stuff on social media.
|
| Is there a typo somewhere or are you really saying there is
| no consequence for posting on social media in China?
| Because that's certainly not the case[1,2,3], unless all of
| Western media is misleading about this.
|
| [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-23990674
|
| [2]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-is-now-sending-
| twitter-us...
|
| [3]: http://www.internetfreedom.org/Background.html#Firewal
| l_of_S...
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I spent years travelling around SE Asia, and met plenty of
| Chinese, enough to decide I did not want to go there. All
| of them were openly racist (mind you, all of SE Asia is
| openly racist, so this is nothing unusual). I accept that
| there are minority ethnic identities within China, but I
| have been told over and again (by Chinese people) that
| China is Han.
|
| I have Chinese friends here in Berlin who still won't talk
| about Chinese politics within hearing range of their
| phones. If this isn't a totalitarian regime, what is?
|
| My direct experience contradicts your statements. What are
| you basing them on?
| infinity0 wrote:
| My direct experience contradicts your direct experience.
| I'm Chinese, grew up in China until I was 5, and visit it
| every now and again.
|
| > I have been told over and again (by Chinese people)
| that China is Han.
|
| You are either selectively reporting, or selectively
| misremembering things based on your own existing
| prejudices. I have certainly talked to more Chinese
| people than you, and nobody has ever said this.
|
| I lived in Berlin for 3.5 years, I found plenty of racism
| there as well; also in the UK and US where it's more
| subtle.
|
| I'd assume your Chinese friends are a non-representative
| sample of Chinese people - likely, you are friends with
| them _because_ they ran into issues with the government,
| and hence had similar interests and were attracted to the
| same events and locations. China has 1.4 billion people,
| this is bound to happen.
|
| ---
|
| Reply to the comments below:
|
| > little point in discussing anything China-related in
| Western internet forums.
|
| Thanks for the advice, I am indeed trying to take it in
| moderation. I think it's important to try to maintain
| some level of healthy discourse though, the anti-China
| propaganda is taking the world down a dark path.
|
| > Curious on what you think of what China is doing to the
| Uyghur people. Do you believe that this is fabricated by
| all these media outlets?
|
| Yes, they are all citing the same fake reports written by
| a few people working non-independently, driven ultimately
| by geopolitical strategy and taking advantage of liberal
| media's existing prejudices to portray China as "evil".
| See https://www.qiaocollective.com/en/education/xinjiang
| - a collection of a large number of sources from many
| different people, working independently.
| em500 wrote:
| These days, I find that there is little point in
| discussing anything China-related in Western internet
| forums. There's an overwhelming amount of ignorance,
| misinformation, prejudice and propaganda about China from
| tons of different parties. People largely post to get
| their standpoints confirmed, and nothing you post will
| change anything.
|
| As a fellow Chinese raised in the West, I know it's hard
| to resist getting drawn into such thread. I try to avoid
| posting/reacting as much as I can, and sincerely advise
| the same to you. You're probably not going to change
| anybody's mind and just wasting your own time.
| oreally wrote:
| A culture of ostracizing what's perceived as 'the dumb
| and uninformed' is what got the US Trump. Putting up a
| wall against them didn't get the US to a better place.
| Like it or not, there's a substantial amount of
| misinformed and misguided people and if you do not at
| least interact/counter-argue there's a real chance that
| more people get misinformed to the point something goes
| horribly wrong, they're in support of it and you can't do
| anything against them.
|
| As chinese there's a sense that we should keep our head
| down in favor of the harmony. But I've come to realize
| this isn't enough we should let the truth speak louder.
| Keep fighting the good fight.
| jackling wrote:
| I think this is equivalent to someone not arguing back
| because theres no real evidence to support their bias.
| Saying that all these media outlets are spreading
| misinformation for some reason is really not supported by
| fact. Is there fake news, sure. But that's different from
| saying that everything critical of a country is
| propaganda.
|
| What are people ignorant about here? There's been several
| countries/states that deny China and confirms what
| everyone believes (Taiwan, Hong Kong).
| GordonS wrote:
| As a Brit (though I have travelled and worked a bit in
| China), I'm constantly dismayed by the thinly-veiled (and
| sometimes overt) racism, biases, prejudice and ignorance
| that are on display in just about any HN thread about
| China - the comments for this article are particularly
| shocking.
|
| Yes, the Chinese government has done some bad things in
| it's time, but plainly not everything they do has bad
| intentions. And bejesus, people in glass houses and all
| that.
|
| It seems very much like the USA's anti-China propaganda
| machine is working well - particularly telling since I
| would have assumed that the average US HN reader was
| educated.
| jackling wrote:
| Curious on what you think of what China is doing to the
| Uyghur people.
|
| Do you believe that this is fabricated by all these media
| outlets? I would think that genocide of a particular
| ethnicity would count as totalitarian and racist.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I'm sorry you experienced racism. As an Australian and
| Brit, I apologise for our countries not living up to our
| ideals on these things. I can't speak for Germany - I'm a
| guest here too - but I know that most Germans are working
| towards eliminating racism from their culture.
|
| That's not my experience of the Chinese, however. China
| is not working to eliminate racism. It doesn't have these
| ideals. As a white person I will never be accepted as a
| Chinese person by the Chinese, because in Chinese
| people's eyes, Chinese == Han (from my experience). This
| isn't unusual in Asia - Cambodians only recognise Khmer
| people, Japan only recognises ethnic Japanese people, and
| so on. I have white friends who have lived in Cambodia
| for decades, speak the language perfectly, have Cambodian
| families, but who can never become citizens and will
| never be accepted as "Cambodian" because of their race.
|
| This isn't true of Australians (for example). Australia
| doesn't equate Australian = caucasian [0]. You can
| emigrate to Australia, and become a citizen, and the vast
| majority of Australians will accept you as an Australian
| because of that. Being Australian is not about race, but
| more about culture and commitment. Australia's sense of
| identity is not linked to its ethnic identity in the same
| way that SE Asian countries are.
|
| [0] There are always some racist dickheads who will
| disagree with this. Sorry for that.
| cromwellian wrote:
| I lived in China, in Shanghai, near the French Concession,
| speak Mandarin, read Yi Zi ,(not fluently, but HSK5-6), and
| have been to pretty much every province in China. About as
| privileged as you can be as an ex-pat, and I can still say,
| IMHO, it's pretty totalitarian.
|
| Totalitarian: "relating to a system of government that is
| centralized and dictatorial and requires complete
| subservience to the state."
|
| Is China centralized? Yes, it has a top down system, top-
| down industrial policy, top-down internet policy, state
| owned enterprises (30% of economy), state-owned media, etc.
|
| Is China dictatorial? You can talk all you want about the
| Politburo Standing Committee sharing power, but Xi Jinping
| essentially holds total power (now for life with no term
| expiration), and even if Li Keqiang took power, we all know
| it was would be like Putin and Medvedev, with Xi still
| controlling, otherwise there would have been no reason for
| removing term limits for Xi. Xi controls the PLA loyalty,
| and he could arrest Li Keqiang or people from his faction
| if he wanted.
|
| "you can live your life quite normally and happily."
|
| As long as you don't stick out, or criticize the
| government. Ask the Hong Kongnese. Or if you prefer, ask
| Feng Ti Mo, who was invited for a cup of Tea with the
| gestapo because she sang the Chinese National Anthem in a
| way that displeased the government, and is now forced to
| carry Communist Youth League content on her streaming
| channels. Or ask Jack Ma, who offered a milquetoast
| criticism of out-of-date financial regulatory framework in
| China and found himself with a Tea date with the gestapo.
| (The analogy here would be Colin Kalpernick being held by
| the CIA, and then forced to make pro-Trump speeches at
| football openings, or Elon Musk criticizing the SEC, and
| being told the SpaceX IPO is cancelled)
|
| In other words, sit down, shut up, keep your head down, and
| you'll be ok.
|
| Oh, and woe unto you if you want to access internet outside
| of China, and waste time everyday trying to find which VPN
| server you can connect to that isn't blocked. The sum total
| knowledge of mankind is now available to most people on the
| planet, but foolishly blocked in the Mainland.
|
| "In fact ethnic minorities generally get preferential
| treatment - e.g. looser restrictions, affirmative action in
| various places such as state examinations". Yes, and I hear
| and see Han complaining all the time about Uighurs,
| Tibetans, and Miao, etc getting preferential treatment on
| the Gaokao, which is very much like whites and asians in
| the US complaining about affirmative action.
|
| But does that make up for the abuse? Does the US government
| setting up Affirmative Action programs make up for a
| terrible criminal justice system biased against African
| Americans, or police brutality against African Americans?
| So the Chinese government has affirmative action for ethnic
| minorities, that makes any other brutal suppression they do
| in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, or Inner Mongolia A-OK?
|
| Is repression over anyone criticizing the central
| government publicly (and being loud enough to be noticed)
| made up for by marvelous infrastructure projects? Is this
| the price of high speed rail? Is it not possible to have
| freedom to compare Xi Jinping with Winnie the Pooh, and
| also have High Speed Rail and Shiny new airports?
|
| Look, I don't hate China, otherwise I wouldn't have
| traveled all over it, learned Mandarin, and lived there.
| But I criticize US government policy HARSHLY, especially
| foreign policy, and I believe people have a right to
| criticize their government, and that China would be a much
| better agent for positive change in the world if it could
| shed the legacy of Mao, and move on to become a more open
| society, even going back to Deng-era policies would be
| better than the neo-fascist/nationalism that Xi is
| promoting these days.
|
| The last 4 years saw rising nationalism in the US, and it
| has also been rising in Europe and in China. This is not
| good. We're trying to tame out nationalist Trump-wing here,
| and IMHO, Xi's pursuit of stroking nationalist sentiment is
| creating additional danger.
|
| It all needs to stop.
| 1996 wrote:
| Rare to see such high quality content here. I share your
| analysis. But I believe Xi came at a time the mainland
| needed to be strengthened, to avoid being trumped over
| again (opium war like)
|
| He is still needed? Maybe, because you said:
|
| > The last 4 years saw rising nationalism in the US, and
| it has also been rising in Europe and in China. This is
| not good.
|
| It is not good. Eventually the future for the mainland is
| bright, with good material condition and freedom. The
| situation is not ready yet. You can not "impose"
| democracy, the population must be ready.
|
| But I believe all is done right and set for the
| generation being born now ("3 children per family") to be
| the happiest in the world.
| cromwellian wrote:
| Look, I understand the sentiment and context. China saw
| what happened in the USSR, and what's happening in India,
| and they are rightly fearful that a mob of 1 billion
| people who have not risen to the level of the 300-400
| million middle class Chinese, pose an existential threat
| to the stability of the country if a power vacuum were
| left. They need to bring up the rest of the country to,
| ironically, prevent a communist revolution to the current
| "state capitalist" system they have.
|
| The US came frighteningly close to instability during the
| Great Depression until FDR launched massive
| infrastructure projects, created social security, built
| 40,000 schools, created the GI Bill, etc.
|
| But there is a such thing as overdoing it. I don't
| believe the current censorship is actually creating
| stability. Most educated Chinese know what's going on,
| can use VPNs, and the creativity of using anti-censorship
| terms on Weibo, shows people still want to criticize the
| government. (for example, mentioning Chloe Zhao was
| banned, so Chinese netizens started using her pinyin
| initials or English initials like CZ to refer to her, and
| the algorithms didn't pick it up)
|
| Scarily enough, Xi has created such an atmosphere of
| nationalism, that "cancel culture" on behalf of
| "patriots" these days is enough to ruin someone, you
| don't even need the government to censor. If you
| criticize the government or China online these days,
| netizens will crush you.
|
| See here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-xi-jinpings-
| china-nationalis...
| 74B5 wrote:
| Thank you for writing this epos. Your points are valid
| and even thou many chinese would disagree (I think), the
| parallels you draw between western and chinese phenomena
| are striking.
|
| From afar (I have never been to china), I have to admit
| with a cold shiver, that the chinese control over the
| media might be working as intended. Usually, wealth and
| security encourage laicistic world views but like you
| said, nationalistic tendencies are on the rise everywhere
| and very useful for totalitarian regimes.
|
| Maybe, the CCP even manages, with stronger measures, to
| rule away the demographic crisis, they are heading for
| and western governments will be even more jelly. It's
| very concerning.
| baybal2 wrote:
| I see very naive young people from then West coming to
| China with weird expectations.
|
| Such people shout "There is no Democracy in America!,"
| and then decide to run to China for god knows what
| reason.
|
| Coming to China for purpose other than to make quick
| cash, and run will leave you very disappointed.
|
| China is really what it is.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| Ceaucescu tried that in Romania, and it went about as well as
| you'd expect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770
| hyko wrote:
| I don't really see this as a controversial statement. All
| countries are likely to face the issue of shrinking population
| this century, and they're going to have to try all sorts of
| schemes to keep the wagon on the road.
|
| When China faced a population explosion, it didn't create a
| complex mix of incentives and marketing to nudge people into
| having smaller families: it outlawed larger families. It seems
| reasonable to suggest that is a policy lever they will reach
| for again in the face of another demographic crisis. What am I
| missing?
| jokoon wrote:
| What? Has this ever occured in history?
|
| Not sure you can really force people to have kids. I doubt that
| chinese women would accept this.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| The problem with China right now is the 4-2-1 problem.
|
| Because of their one child policy, you have a family generation
| consisting of 4 people (grandparents), followed by 2 people
| (parents), followed by 1 person.
|
| So now they are way on their way to an demographic crisis, where
| most people will be old.
| woutr_be wrote:
| Another result of this, is that males outnumber females, so
| there's a lot of single males unable to find a partner. This is
| because parents generally preferred boys as their only child.
| nobody0 wrote:
| Yeah, however, the young generation is putting off their
| marriage year by year as in developed world. I can see the
| trend where people choose not to marry someone and/or not to
| have kids is picking up though may not be the mainstream any
| time soon.
|
| Partly because costs have been high, but also people find
| their interests elsewhere other than the traditional path.
| jasiek wrote:
| Who will want to have more kids, now that everyone was born a
| single child and has two parents to take care of?
| alialghamdi wrote:
| When changing it to 2 children didn't help, why would 3 help?
| necovek wrote:
| One of the most common things I see these demographic analysis
| miss is the changing average age of mothers: as they focus on
| careers, they might postpone giving birth to later in life
| (30-40yo), compared to the traditional (20-30yo). With this move
| happening over a couple of decades, it is only natural to have a
| diminished birth rate as motherhood catches up with the 10 year
| shift (since it's a cultural thing, it would be happening over a
| time span of, say, 20 years).
|
| I don't know if it's true in China, but if looked at carefully,
| it might not be the time to sound the alarms. The same happened
| in the West, just by 20-50 years prior.
| ginko wrote:
| It feels strange to me why they're not just getting rid of the
| limit at this point. Especially since they already seem to have
| trouble getting couples to have two children.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| Not sure it's that simple. You might end up having couples with
| 10 kids, and many others with 1 kid.
|
| As a very broad generalisation, it's usually less educated
| couples that go for the far higher numbers.
| simion314 wrote:
| I have no idea , just a random idea , maybe they want to
| prevent people from the "wrong" group having 10+ children.
| trasz wrote:
| Funny you mention it, given that certain minorities were
| exempt from the "one child" policy, and are likely exempt
| from this one too.
| simion314 wrote:
| If this is true I am happy for the clarification.
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| I agree. From what I understand from Chinese friends, this is
| sort of an irrelevant move. Chinese culture demands fully
| supporting your children financially throughout their adult
| lives, including fully financing education, purchasing homes
| for them, and purchasing vehicles for them. As you might
| expect, this is extremely expensive and difficult to scale up
| to 3 kids.
| oreally wrote:
| Seems like you some rich chinese friends. It's a bit of a
| stretch though to say the culture is to purchase homes and
| vehicles for each child though. It's more likely they'll be
| sharing sharing 1 ancestral house and 1 family vehicle.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| I imagine there's entire departments of people dedicated to
| managing this program. Probably dedicated party members. I
| don't think they could take their titles away and reorganize
| them without starting a lot of infighting.
| hackingthenews wrote:
| It could also be that they see no scenario ahead where they
| want the average number of children per woman to be above 3.
| I don't think China wants back to exponential growth ever.
| They probably want to find their equilibrium.
|
| Consider if something unlikely happens that completely
| changes the dynamic of families, e.g. a cultural shift where
| women stay more at home and have more babies. If the average
| family started having more than 3 children, they would
| consider bringing back this system, which could cause big
| social problems, as it costs more social capital to bring
| back an unpopular system than to simply maintain it.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| China may not be as concerned about uncontrolled population
| growth anymore due to their broader strategy of exporting
| their workforce:
|
| https://qz.com/africa/1963566/how-many-chinese-workers-
| are-t...
| riffraff wrote:
| that is not really "exporting". If you export bananas,
| the bananas do not come back to you, while these workers
| are only temporarily abroad, they're not (for the most
| part) emigrants who moved there to stay.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I don't think China wants back to exponential growth
| ever.
|
| Any policy defined in terms of "X children per couple" or
| "X children per woman" is, by definition, exponential
| growth.
|
| When X is 3, it's very rapid exponential growth.
| alva wrote:
| X = 1 is not exponential growth
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Yes, it is. Since the population is shrinking over time,
| it is more often called "exponential decay", but
| mathematically there's no difference. It just means the
| value of the exponent is negative.
| beowulfey wrote:
| Some people pick the strangest hills to die on.
|
| Per this argument, I would think that an exponential
| _function_ is different to something experiencing
| exponential _growth_. One of them is a definition, the
| other is a description. They aren't really
| interchangeable when it comes to communicating a point.
| anoncake wrote:
| Sure it is: x = 1^t
| yakubin wrote:
| When X is 2, then 2 people replace 2 in theory, so there
| is no growth. In practice, some of those children will
| die early, so 2 is actually a minor reduction, not
| growth, forget about exponential.
| [deleted]
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| When X is 2, you have one of the most important functions
| in the family of functions that display exponential
| growth. It is the one in which the exponent is 0.
|
| > not growth, forget about exponential.
|
| This is really weird phrasing, since you're on much
| stronger ground saying "not growth" [arguable] than you
| are "not exponential" [flat wrong]. I _just pointed out_
| that defining results in terms of "X children per woman"
| will always necessarily produce an exponential curve.
| That's the definition of an exponential curve. If you
| want to distinguish between "growth" and "decay", you can
| say so, but you're still stuck with labeling them
| "exponential growth" and "exponential decay".
| yakubin wrote:
| _> When X is 2, you have one of the most important
| functions in the family of functions that display
| exponential growth. It is the one in which the exponent
| is 0._
|
| This is technically correct, but also purely academic. If
| I called the function f(X) = 5 in an analysis exam
| "exponential", then I would be laughed out of this exam,
| and for a good reason.
|
| _> This is really weird phrasing, since you 're on much
| stronger ground saying "not growth" [arguable] than you
| are "not exponential" [flat wrong]._
|
| "not A" implies "not (A and B)". That's all I meant.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > If I called the function f(X) = 5 in an analysis exam
| "exponential", then I would be laughed out of this exam
|
| That's not true at all; you'd have to look at the
| context. If you called it an exponential function as part
| of a discussion of exponential functions, you'd raise no
| eyebrows.
|
| Even if you were doing it in a weird way, it's unlikely
| you'd get laughed out of the room; math exams are not
| known for penalizing you for being correct.
| [deleted]
| hackingthenews wrote:
| You are correct of course.
|
| The 3 children per woman limit is still the smallest
| number that accommodates for the 2.1 average required for
| replacement level. To achieve equilibrium and avoid rapid
| growth the limit must be set to 3 and then hope that the
| average will be drawn down enough by the women who
| can't/won't have children for various reasons.
|
| Not advocating for this policy, and I am not considering
| how well it works in practice and the morality. This is
| just a reductionist model.
| blueblisters wrote:
| I think the idea is to bring the average up to 2.1, which
| is the accepted "replacement" fertility rate, to stem a
| population decline. One way to achieve that level is when a
| majority of women have 2 children but a few have 3
| children. For a population the size of China, a "few" might
| mean a few million. I don't see that happening without a
| few carrots.
| hackingthenews wrote:
| Yup agreed, commented the exact same below.
| dragonelite wrote:
| Its a hard problem to solve don't even know a developed
| country that actually managed this problem well.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| I am not sure, that this is a problem that needs
| centralized "solving".
|
| I don't want anyone tell me, how much children I can or
| should have.
|
| We got to make sure the work life balance is in order for
| people to have the time and money to afford a family and
| give adequate support like daycare etc.
|
| But apart from that, I really don't like some buerocrats
| in some buerau somewhere calculating the "correct" number
| of births. That regulates itself. There is immigration
| and emigration. There is automatisation (elderly care),
| better medicine, so older people can tend to themself
| longer and less need of a "dumb" workforce etc. etc.
|
| Trying to calculate it and declare meassures based that,
| can only fail in my opinion.
| WillDaSilva wrote:
| > We got to make sure the work life balance is in order
| for people to have the time and money to afford a family
| and give adequate support like daycare etc.
|
| Stuff like this can and does result from bureaucrats /
| policy-makers deciding what an ideal number of children
| (for the well-being of the society) is. You say "that
| regulates itself", but clearly the things you listed
| (work-life balance, economic prosperity, daycare, etc.)
| are not self-regulating. You also mention specifically
| that this matter doesn't need centralized solving, but
| that's different from what you went on to say, that the
| factors that go into determining how many children are
| had are self-regulating. A decentralized approach does
| nothing to guarantee that.
|
| Whether you like it or not, the government has a large
| influence over all of these matters. Choosing to not
| regulate them is a choice that will affect how they turn
| out. Likewise, the very structure of the economy and
| social systems will affect these things. A government can
| not avoid determining what those are like, whether by the
| government's active influence over them, or its more
| laissez-faire approach. When you have a monopoly on
| violence, you cannot truely recuse yourself from what
| happens in the society around you, and if you lack a
| monopoly on violence then you aren't really a government.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| I have a young family, so I can tell you that I do know a
| bit how things go and how many things don't work so well
| - to which I do in fact blame the various regulations.
|
| Because you know, what worked best for us? All the things
| that are not regulated, like grandparents watching over
| the childs or teenage babysitter. The very well regulated
| state kindergarten?
|
| It was a nightmare so far, even though we have a quite
| good kindergarden compared to the various stories I heard
| so far of what is possible, as well. And sure, Corona was
| not helping with that either, but I know quite some
| people in social jobs and I listen to their stories since
| way before corona.
| iammisc wrote:
| Wow... I can't believe you're advocating for something
| completely normal, like choosing to decide how many
| children you have, and how creepy it is that some
| governments literally dictate to you this most private
| aspect of you and your spouse's life, and you are being
| downvoted. The shills must be out in full force today.
| refurb wrote:
| Considering countries who have tried to increase their
| birth rate have failed to even budge the number by 10%, I'm
| pretty sure the risk of too many births is pretty much non-
| existent.
| hackingthenews wrote:
| Agreed. But if you could maintain a system that avoids a
| _very_ unlikely scenario with possibly huge disastrous
| consequences, then why not?
| jelsisi wrote:
| This has to be looked at country by country. Unlike
| Europe, China still has a large rural, poor population.
| Without regulation, their population will explode,
| something the chinese government probably wants to avoid.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| Instead of regulating their lives like they do with the
| child policy and making migration illegal maybe they
| should try improving their lives a little so they don't
| need to have a ton of kids or work illegally and without
| services in order to get by? Who would have thunk a
| communist country would treat their poor workers so
| badly?
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| It seems like they should be pivoting into getting people to
| have more kids.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| TFA talks about this, saying they fear a child number explosion
| in poor rural areas.
| amelius wrote:
| Perhaps time for better social security then.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Which also happens, there are significant anti-poverty
| efforts in China that have been quite effective.
|
| Attacking both sides of a problem is sometimes necessary
| for effectively dealing with it.
| TimPC wrote:
| I was under the impression the one child policy never applied
| in poor rural areas. If it was universally enforced I'd like
| to see an explanation for China's population growth over a
| period where it would have experienced a decline.
| riffraff wrote:
| If people don't die as early as before and you have few
| newborns you can still experience growth for a while.
| TimPC wrote:
| I agree but definitely think 1979 to 2016 is longer than
| that while.
| woutr_be wrote:
| It generally wasn't strictly enforced anyway, as in, if you
| had a second child, you could pay a fine, and legally
| register your child.
|
| And yes, it didn't apply to rural areas as well.
|
| I had a friend in China who lived in Shenzhen and has 3
| children, he essentially just payed two fines (not even
| sure how much it was).
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| Must give parents leverage when arguing with a child
|
| ,,I paid a 50000 yuan fine for you just so you could
| live! Now do your homework!"
| hutzlibu wrote:
| I doubt that works.
|
| Every parent spends lots of money on their children. It
| should be a gift, not a dept.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| I thought it was obvious my comment was tongue-in-cheek
| :-)
| rfoo wrote:
| This is a big factor, but poor rural areas usually just
| blatantly ignore child number limits anyway. So, unlikely to
| be the sole reason.
| bottled_poe wrote:
| So, your saying _which_ people have children is a concern?
| That is.. sad
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Perhaps it's more a function of the "where" (rural)? That's
| less sad, imo.
| Proven wrote:
| Not sure how to put it....
|
| Have you been following the main news from China in recent
| years?
| slver wrote:
| When I see how our governments evolve I always compare global
| restrictions to similar processes in multicellular organisms.
|
| Cell division is globally and locally restricted in the body in
| ways single cellular organisms aren't. We have "growth hormone"
| which encourages or suppresses division at certain periods of
| life and even certain periods of day and night.
|
| And uncontrolled growth we call "tumors" and "cancer" and it
| leads to the rapid decline and death of the multicellular
| organism, and with that, the death of all those cancer cells as
| well.
|
| So who knows what the future holds. Maybe that's not a China
| thing. Maybe it's a society thing, that we've not wised up to
| yet.
| tsss wrote:
| Probably because exactly the wrong people will have five or
| more children while the highly educated that they want to
| reproduce continue to have only one.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Probably don't want fringe groups to procreate without limit.
| Not just with respect to Uyghurs, where family planning
| sterilizations are being applied to those who had 3+ kids, but
| any potential (non-secular) groups.
| sd4ee3 wrote:
| But not the Uyghurs, who have a -2 child policy.
| dalbasal wrote:
| At this point, it seems that China's family planning policies
| aren't really directly related to population growth anymore. No
| policy/restrictions at all would probably not meaningfully impact
| gross population growth.
|
| It's just about maintaining family planning as a public
| prerogative, atthis point.
| bsenftner wrote:
| I wonder about stories like this, how much western propaganda
| they are composed. I've been to China, and observed this number
| of children policy to be completely ignored outside their major
| cities. It is not uncommon to see large families with 5-8 kids in
| their farming and areas of less population.
| demarq wrote:
| Thanks government
| bruiseralmighty wrote:
| I find it a bit odd how accepted a child mandate has become when
| it comes from the CCP with the global community.
|
| For instance, it seems that a large reason that China is hesitant
| to lift any limits whatsoever is a belief that rural women will
| have large families and urban women will not and that this would
| be 'unfair'. This cant help but feel like a eugenics argument
| about not wanting to swamp the gene pool with 'low IQ rural
| undesirables'.
|
| What would be the foreign response if some of the more
| distasteful ideas behind mandated birth rates were brought to the
| fore-front:
|
| * 'all able-bodied women must have at least one child.'
|
| * 'citizens in these jurisdictions can have as many children as
| they want.'
|
| I believe we would see a lot of outrage in other countries over
| these policy, but I worry the CCP sees no difference ethically in
| mandating one or the other. Instead opting for whatever is deemed
| necessary.
| officialjunk wrote:
| the world summary of the policy is not the whole truth. you
| could always have more than one child, but there's a tax. so
| you get one child for "free" and the others you have to pay a
| tax. there are countless families with multiple siblings of all
| generations, even in cities.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Rural families- especially farmers and ethnic minorities- have
| had exceptions to the one child policy for quite a while now.
|
| The reluctance to lift limits is perhaps better owing to the
| fact that means yielding a bit of control, and not wanting to
| appear to have been wrong (why today and not yesterday?).
|
| That said, you don't see much outrage in other countries
| (despite stories of infants being thrown out, forced abortions,
| forced sterilizations) because we have short attention spans
| and no real hope of forcing the government's hand.
|
| Look at all of the accusations, allegations and witness over
| the treatment of uighurs. Or, look at the middle eastern
| countries where women couldnt vote, drive, or even travel out
| of the county without their husband's permission. Even of we
| had pushed harder for faster reforms, we would have faced
| internal criticism for a "colonial" attitude.
| whoevercares wrote:
| It boils down to three succinct word in Chinese: Yang Bu Qi
| roody15 wrote:
| Interesting side note on china during the one-child policy era.
| This policy was enforced on the masses but highly educated people
| were given waivers. If you were a engineer, professor or any
| highly skilled professional you were encouraged to have lots of
| children.
|
| China's one child policy was mainly about population control but
| also had a eugenics component to it as well.
| screye wrote:
| > China's one child policy was mainly about population control
| but also had a eugenics component to it as well.
|
| IMO, traditional societies have had a fascination with eugenics
| for practically centuries. 19th and early 20th century thinkers
| were deeply fascinated by it, and the idea didn't really get
| tabooed until Nazi Germany adopted as part of its agenda and
| that horrified the whole world for centuries to come.
|
| For that reason, many posters with western values might find
| the accusation of eugenics to be quite harsh. But IMO, the
| social stigma against eugenics isn't nearly as prominent in
| non-European societies and it's even softly encouraged and
| openly talked about in some cases.(Singapore's SDU est.1984
| being a good example)
|
| To be clear, I do not endorse eugenics in any way. Also, I mean
| eugenics in purely: "Adding incentives for reproduction among
| certain people in society to promote what are perceived to be
| desirable traits within said society" and not "Genocide
| everyone who isn't of high blood".
| GordonS wrote:
| > China's one child policy was mainly about population control
| but also had a eugenics component to it as well
|
| That seems like a ludicrous leap to jump to.
|
| Surely some far more obvious reasons are: better educated
| people are better able to judge whether they can afford to look
| after a child; people in skilled professions earn more money,
| and are more likely to afford to look after a child.
| nitrogen wrote:
| It seems the problem is in the use of force. Apart from that,
| if there's a group of people that would make better than
| average parents, and whose kids would be more likely to
| contribute more to society than they consume, then shouldn't
| that group be encouraged to have and adopt as many kids as they
| can afford to support?
| milofeynman wrote:
| You're describing eugenics. The same sort of casual
| propaganda that the Nazi party and others would use. Most
| people who are highly successful right now got there through
| privilege and parental wealth, not through some sort of
| inherent talent.
| ackfoobar wrote:
| > Despite full Maoist Communism in China, descendants of
| former landlords and rich peasants today earn 16% more than
| descendants of others.
|
| > They couldn't inherit wealth from grandparents, parents
| were barred from university in Cultural Revolution, but
| they inherited something
|
| https://twitter.com/whyvert/status/1301012672138285059
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Just because one was barred from university or wealth
| doesn't mean that the political entrenchment was
| eliminated. If I was a wealthy family that rubbed elbows
| with other wealthy families, such that all my family
| friends were from wealthy families, any success I gather
| would also have me nepotize my family friends into
| whatever companies I make and whatever government success
| I achieve.
| duped wrote:
| Putting aside the ethics of eugenics, the tacit assumption
| there is that encouraging children is a good thing.
| nitrogen wrote:
| No problem was ever solved by deliberately reducing the
| potential number of people available to solve it. If
| humanity faces resource constraints, the way to solve them
| is to get as many net-positive-resource people as possible
| working on solutions.
|
| One person could devote one lifetime to solving a problem.
| Or, they could have 4 kids, everyone devotes half of one
| life time (the other half to raising kids), and now there
| are 2.5+ lifetimes of effort spent on the problem.
| duped wrote:
| We aren't facing resource constraints, we're facing
| overuse of resources. The problem of overpopulation is
| not one of an inability to feed, house and water people -
| the problem is the impact we have upon our own
| environment.
|
| The single greatest thing we could do to improve our
| species' odds of survival today is reduce ourselves in
| number. Because we are currently causing a mass
| extinction event.
| rainworld wrote:
| Westerners so enthusiastic about "China's demographic problem"
| would be well advised to worry about their own, local sub-
| replacement birth rates, in particular for natives (you know, the
| ones who built the countries everybody else seems so hell-bent
| immigrating to), as well as for the educated, the middle classes.
|
| Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19095925
| sudosteph wrote:
| I'm guessing you don't mean "natives" in the modern sense. But
| I am still one of those people who's ancestors have been in
| this country since the 17th century, and I don't get what
| worries you. I was always taught that being American is not
| about being a particular race or ethnicity. Heck, my family
| couldn't even tell you our ethnicity other than "white". And I
| may be educated middle class, but my grandparents who grew up
| in the Appalachian mountains sure weren't.
|
| So long as the children of immigrants are adapting fine to the
| rest of American culture, who cares if our population growth
| depends on them?
| skybrian wrote:
| Historically much of the US was built by immigrants, and it's
| still the case that recent immigrants do a lot of work. They
| could do more if allowed. So, if you think that the demographic
| problem is _not enough workers_ it could fairly easily be
| solved.
| pcbro141 wrote:
| I assume by 'native' you mean 'white'? Looking at the
| students/faculty of elite schools/research labs and staff of
| top companies, I see plenty of highly intelligent and educated
| non-white immigrants producing great work (sometimes they even
| make up the majority of these elite groups).
|
| And many (most?) Western countries do provide various
| incentives to have kids, as well as Asian countries, but the
| incentives don't ever seem to work to get above that 2.1
| replacement level, so Western governments are
| 'worried'/concerned about birth rates, but boosting them
| significantly not an easy thing to do. Especially when part of
| the reason might be that people simply don't want more than 1
| or 2 kids these days regardless of finances.
| rainworld wrote:
| _white_
|
| At this point it affects most countries outside of Africa.
|
| _immigration_
|
| I believe in diversity. Immigration will forever change the
| countries it affects, typically making them more like the
| source countries.
|
| _boosting hard_
|
| One might be able to push it just above 2.1, but
| fundamentally the causes are significant, unprecedented
| technological and social changes since the industrial
| revolution. Nowhere is it guaranteed that these changes
| produce a stable, lasting order.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| Re: replacement ration > 2.1
|
| Its not just about the number of children per women/couple:
| the missing element is to have children really young.
|
| Like 16 - 24
|
| Make childcare, schooling, etc tax deductible for starters.
| pcbro141 wrote:
| IMO even with all those incentives I just don't see the
| typical age at first child getting to 16-24 in any Western
| country even with strong incentives.
|
| Not just because of costs, but the harder to modify
| cultural reasons like people valuing independence, "casual
| dating"/FWB more common instead of dating with intent to
| marry, less social pressure/shaming from parents ("why
| don't you have a husband/wife/kids yet?!"), freedom to
| "find yourself/travel" or "get sexually experienced/have a
| ho phase before settling" for years after college, etc.
|
| Most people don't want to go from college to marriage and
| kids right away these days, and a few years of this type of
| casual dating/exploration after college eats up a lot of
| prime reproductive years like you said. But these cultural
| factors are very hard to change especially with the absence
| of religion/strong communities these days.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >> in particular for natives (you know, the ones who built the
| countries everybody else seems so hell-bent immigrating to)
|
| It was difficult to read this and not laugh because it
| conveniently leaves out First Nations, as well as the fact that
| the USA in particular used immense amounts of slave labor while
| the "natives" you refer to (the whites) reaped the rewards in
| relative comfort.
| rainworld wrote:
| I'm not american.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| I didn't say only America used slave labor.
| rainworld wrote:
| What you are _implying_ is that the wealth of western
| nations in the present is in a significant way the
| product of slavery (by whites, of blacks; ignoring the
| universality in time and space of slavery) which is not
| the case. In the counterfactual, western nations without
| slavery, colonialism today would look roughly the same--
| except, of course, _whiter._
| zanethomas wrote:
| The government decides how many children you can have?
| screye wrote:
| The CCP (and often communist revolutions in general)
| underestimate the massive intergenerational effects of societal
| rehaul that can only be restored with policies more draconian
| than the ones that destroyed those norms in the first place.
|
| China now has 2 generations that've never known uncles, aunts,
| siblings or the conception of family beyond the nuclear unit. New
| norms have developed around the amount of investment that parents
| are expected to put in a child, with work being the only other
| thing that is supposed to matter.
|
| The soft incentives have realigned to strongly discourage
| children. Multiple children makes it difficult for parents to be
| invested in a single child or work in a way that society expects
| them to. The thousand year long values of sibling relationships
| have to be built back up from zero, and is not trivial in the
| least.
|
| For a country where maternity leave is punishing to a woman's
| career, a career that women are also taught to care deeply for,
| convincing women to have multiple children will be a tall ask. We
| are already seeing a plummeting marriage rate and an average
| marriage age that's steadily rising.
|
| With all of these things in mind, the only way CCP reverses the
| current trend, is if they pull a Mao and practically force people
| to marry more and earlier/have multiple children by introducing
| incentives as draconian as Mao's China.
| temp8964 wrote:
| After the communist "land reform", the Chinese communist party /
| Chinese Government owns all the land in China. Now, local
| governments use land control and land sales as their major source
| of revenue. The end result is that vast majority of Chinese
| people live in small apartments, which are designed for 1 couple
| + 1 kid families. In big cities, average apartment size is around
| 60-80 sqm. In small cities, it could be 100-120 sqm. For a family
| of three kids to live in those small apartments, life is gonna be
| really tough.
| patall wrote:
| Pardon me, but how is 100-120 sqm small? 60 sqm is small for 4
| people yes, but everything else subject to how rooms are
| organized. We had 105 sqm growing up with 5 people and we had a
| very large living room + 4 bed rooms, no second bath room
| though.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Yes. In theory you can have 10 people live in one bedroom,
| and living room isn't even necessary. You can even share
| bathroom and kitchen in the apartment building. Sorry, I am
| too spoiled.
| em500 wrote:
| It's small for most Americans, but not for most Europeans
| (especially not for European city dwellers).
|
| It's huge if you live in Hong Kong.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Well, euro birth rate is 1.5, hong kong birth rate is 1.1.
| We are talking about having 3 kids here. This is the
| context of discussion.
| zed88 wrote:
| Most of us in the west can't relate to the idea of government
| regulating how many children one can have, but hey, it might work
| for them.
| jp555 wrote:
| Good luck.
|
| With a shrunken generation of family to help due to 30+ years of
| one-child policy, and almost no social support (China does not
| really have socialized healthcare in practice) there's no one to
| help take care of larger families. But there is a HUGE number of
| rapidly aging parents and grandparents to take care of.
|
| Add a culture that puts accumulating wealth as the #1 virtue, and
| it becomes nearly impossible to reverse a low birth rate.
|
| In Canada Quebec has been paying French families to have more
| kids for a very long time. Today Quebec has the lowest provincial
| birthrate in Canada.
| zacherates wrote:
| > Today Quebec has the lowest provincial birthrate in Canada.
|
| Not remotely true. As of 2016 Quebec has a fertility rate of
| 1.59 children per women which is higher than the Canadian
| average (1.54), Ontario (the largest province by far, 1.46) as
| well as BC (1.40) and the Atlantic provinces (1.42-1.58).
|
| See
| https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/91-209-x/2018001/article...
| jp555 wrote:
| Ah that's new to me thanks! I recently saw numbers showing
| something different (wish I could find that link), and I was
| remembering this interview from 2019 -
| https://www.tvo.org/video/the-worlds-shrinking-problem
|
| I found it interesting that the authors looking at the
| history of efforts to financially simulate birthrate found
| that it has never worked to reverse the decline. @21:15
| Kaze404 wrote:
| If you omit the part about the one-child policy I would think
| you were talking about the USA.
| jp555 wrote:
| US has one of the best demographics in the Western world.
| Millennials are larger than Boomers. Plus the US can use
| immigration to decide what population they want. Countries
| not built on immigration cannot really do this in practice.
| see Japan.
| simbas wrote:
| Your comment is a bit bigoted, the government has been paying
| families, not "french families", to have more kids. This isn't
| segregated by language at all. Everyone gets their child
| allowance payments, whatever their origin.
| HDMI_Cable wrote:
| It had its basis in the anglification of Montreal and other
| cities. After 1763, Quebec was a French province ran by the
| Brits, and due to immigration policies and family sizes,
| cities like Montreal became more English than French. When
| the French came into power after Dominion, they and the
| catholic church incentivized French people to have more
| children. After a few generations of very high birth rates
| (think 4 or 5 children per women), Montreal was once again
| more French than English. Nowadays, that policy is extended
| to all families, regardless of language.
|
| Source: Something we learn in Canadian History classes.
| w0de0 wrote:
| Is the origin of the policy a desire to preserve and increase
| Quebec's unique culture ("French families"), or not? If so,
| is it bigoted to say so?
| jp555 wrote:
| It's not meant to be bigoted (that's you mind reading) - it's
| meant to give context to non Canadians. But I probably should
| have said "Quebec Families".
| m3kw9 wrote:
| An observation is that birth rates were highest when 1 child
| policy was installed. I wonder if the psychological scarcity
| spurs more children.
| Axien wrote:
| Peter Zeihan has an interesting take on it:
|
| https://zeihan.com/video-dispatch-chinas-demographic-decline...
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| As far as I am aware [1] one of the big issues here is housing.
|
| With the one child policy all of the housing was built for 1
| child families (i.e. 2 bedroom apartments). Even with the two
| child policy it was really difficult to find apartments built for
| larger families.
|
| [1] I know someone who lived in China, who said this was an
| issue, but I don't have any actual sources so this may be wrong.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Allow ... for 1/5+ humanity. For a fundamental human rights. And
| we are ok with it, aren't we?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Imagine being the government official who proposed a policy to
| make sure the country eventually disappeared if carried out
| indefinitely.
| frankbreetz wrote:
| I feel like a ton of government policy would be a disaster if
| carried out indefinitely. Look at this last year with covid,
| somethings are intended to be temporary
| lammalamma25 wrote:
| Every story about China should include a note that the government
| decides how many children its citizens are allowed to have. We've
| grown numb to how terrible this is.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| This doesn't seem intrinsically terrible to me, particularly if
| it's done through incentives and doesn't involve say, murder or
| sterilisation.
|
| If we accept that any biome will eventually have a finite
| carrying capacity while the possibility of human reproduction
| is exponential it seems inevitable that there must be some
| limits to reproduction. Regulation is crude but might be less
| bad than "direct environmental feedback" such as die-offs or
| drastically decreasing quality of life.
|
| Of course it's a co-ordination problem, which is very
| difficult.
|
| I can imagine many cultural and technological approaches to
| population control, some of which already exist, and might not
| be terrible.
|
| It seems to me that in particular any engineered habitats with
| well-defined carrying capacities, e.g. mars, would have to deal
| with this quite early on.
| woeirua wrote:
| It turns out that as countries develop their birth rates
| naturally decline and eventually turn negative without
| requiring the government to set the number of children you
| can have. Indeed Japan and others are doing almost everything
| possible to encourage people to have more children and cannot
| get their populations to return to growth.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| I agree that market forces and cultural trends seem to be
| curbing population growth in wealthy countries.
|
| I'm just not sure it's a sign of cultural maturity; it
| feels like we've quietly skirted a difficult conversation
| through low wage growth and expensive housing, health care
| and education (more humans are discouraged because of
| bottlenecks in key supports).
|
| In theory if there were "smooth" environmental feedback the
| population would nicely sigmoid without too much overshoot,
| maybe that's what is actually happening. I wish I knew.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| When there are too many deer and not enough predators in
| an ecosystem, the deer consume all the available food and
| many die from starvation, self regulating the population
| to a sustainable level. I see parallels to this in human
| economic systems.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| The most precious resource by far is human ingenuity. Home
| Sapients are not like other organisms. Every additional
| person increases the rate of innovation across the entire
| species. Because of cultural transmission there are
| increasing returns to scale that don't exist in other
| species.
|
| For that reason, we are exempt from the normal laws of
| Malthusian ecology and carrying capacity. More people
| translates into higher, not lower, living standards. That's
| why over the past 200 years the population has increased
| seven fold, while the percent living in poverty has fallen to
| unprecedented lows. The greatest risk by far is not having
| _enough_ people. Population control robs us of future
| Einsteins, Borlaugs, and Turings.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| "Every additional person increases the rate of innovation
| across the entire species."
|
| This is a wild claim. Not everyone is a net positive
| contributor to the species. The world's resource are
| already consumed beyond their replenishment rates, and
| hundreds of millions of people suffer from abject poverty
| and constant food insecurity. Total fertility rate decline
| curves are objectively positive for humans as a species and
| resource contention.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Not everyone, but on aggregate due to the network effect,
| specialization, and the odd statistics of the small % of
| humans able to grok mathematics.
| kubav wrote:
| Murders or "abortions" in final stages of pregnancy were
| commonly used in China to enforce this policy. See
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8923482/
| dougmwne wrote:
| Forced sterilization was also common. The whole thing is
| pretty indefensible if you have any respect for individual
| rights. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-
| for-may-2-20...
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > This doesn't seem intrinsically terrible to me,
| particularly if it's done through incentives and doesn't
| involve say, murder or sterilisation.
|
| I do agree with the finite carrying capacity aspect you
| mentioned but if you think China's child policies weren't
| awful then you should read up on what it really means to live
| your life as heihaizi.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I'm a pretty staunch critic of China, but population control
| seems like a pretty good thing. I suppose ideally it would be
| promoted but ultimately voluntary, but I don't think their
| single child policy was the worst thing they've done by far.
| xdennis wrote:
| > population control seems like a pretty good thing
|
| It's not often that you see people agree with Hitler on HN.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Godwin's Law was quick this time
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Nazis are brought up daily in political discussions in
| the US. I wonder if it's true in the EU.
| solox3 wrote:
| Proportionately increasing or decreasing the number of
| people in a country is not the same as trying to wipe a
| race off the map.
| lolinder wrote:
| How about forced sterilization, forced abortions, and the
| interplay between the one child policy and culture that led
| to massive numbers of sex-targeted abortions and infanticide?
| Calling it "population control" euphemizes away the horrible
| human cost of the enforcement methods and the collateral
| damage.
|
| I'd agree it's not the worst thing they've done so far, but
| given that they're actively committing genocide that's a
| pretty high bar.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Agreed. The comment I was responding to took issue with
| China dictating a number of children--I don't have a
| problem with that. The specific enforcement (sterilization,
| abortions, etc) are grotesque. Conceivably you can enforce
| population control without resorting to those measures.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| How?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Fines seem like the most straightforward approach, though
| there are certainly tradeoffs with anything.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Doesn't work on the rich or poor...
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| That's _an_ opinion.
| cheph wrote:
| And this: https://neveragainrightnow.com/
|
| And this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_China#Peo...
| oreally wrote:
| Would you be willing to pay for their excess population then?
| As a US citizen? Because the excess population puts more
| pressure on China's infrastructure and you're pushing for no
| birth control.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| China also isn't the first country to screw themselves with
| misguided family planning policies. Singapore and South Korea
| have gone through the same thing also.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| How is anyone screwed?
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