China reforms: One-child policy to be relaxed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-24957303

by ck2 • 13 years ago

40 60 13 years ago

bbc.co.uk

ck23• 13 years ago

While it is the moral thing to do, it doesn't bode well for their already horrible pollution problems.

api• 13 years ago

The best way to reduce human fertility (without child abandonment and forced abortions and other human rights horrors) is to educate the population and make them wealthy... at least to somewhat middle class standards. Then fertility drops to replacement level or near it, sometimes even below. This has been validated countless times in many cultures and seems to be a general pattern in human behavior.

China is slowly doing this, and will do so better if it can get its political corruption issues under control.

China's pollution is definitely a problem, but that stems mostly from corruption, lack of concern, and heavy industry that is largely done in service to customers not in China. The one child policy would not impact this much.

toyg2• 13 years ago

The problem with the "natural" approach is that then you have to deal with 1) natural increase in life expectancy, and 2) immigration.

Because of this, most European countries are still growing, albeit slowly. Japan has all but removed factor 2 and so its population is overall stable, but they're experiencing a slow shrinking of their working population (which brings a lot of economic problems).

cm20124• 13 years ago

China is currently far below replacement rate: https://www.google.com/search?q=china+fertility&oq=china+fer...

ck23• 13 years ago

The Romneys are some of the wealthiest people in the US and fairly well educated and their immediate family has something close to 20 children total.

jrs993• 13 years ago

what's the moral thing to do if the world's population was 250 billion?

twerquie6• 13 years ago

Scientists centuries ago could not imagine our modern world, with people living vertically in the sky, in dense urban metropolises, eating frozen food, enjoying vaccines and generally having an awesome quality of life. Just as we cannot imagine advancements that have not yet come, and are led to believe we are doomed to starvation by our current mental constraints. Acting politically on this belief is incredibly dangerous and has contributed to many human atrocities over the years, including the Jewish holocaust, English subjugation and starvation of Irish potato farmers, China's misguided one child policy, and many more.

Be careful of this mental trap. If you'd like to see fewer babies, educate women and give them equality in the workplace and in political power.

ck23• 13 years ago

Force catholics to start using birth control?

rayiner2• 13 years ago

Poorly-regulated economic development is a much bigger problem for China's environment than population growth. Their fertility rate is around 1.5 and their population will peak in the next decade: http://www.economist.com/node/21553056. By 2050, China will be smaller than it is today, but if economic development continues will generate a lot more pollution and use a lot more energy.

In any case, India has managed to bring its population growth under control without resorting to such barbarism. Indeed, by 2050, India will only grow moderately more than the U.S. if current fertility trends hold. What's far more concerning is increases in India and China's per-capita resource and energy use, which could easily triple or quadruple their total numbers even with zero population growth.

toyg2• 13 years ago

Duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6738881

tokenadult• 13 years ago

Not a duplicate submission, but rather a story from a different source about the same news of the day.

odoren• 13 years ago

Does anyone know why ethnic minorities are exempt from the one-child policy? Considering all the ethnic-based political tensions in Western China, I don't see how this would be beneficial from the point of view of the Han-dominated government.

azernik• 13 years ago

Most of the ethnic minorities are so small that their numbers are not threatening to the Han majority. On the other hand, forcing population control on ethnic minorities tends to make them really angry (even more than they already are) really fast. This is part of a wider policy in which, while the government is Han-dominated, its official policy is of neutrality in ethnic disputes, and it even professes a commitment to preserving minority ethnic culture and traditions.

maaku• 13 years ago

This is great news. One-child has huge negative social implications. When a family has only one child, that child gets showered with attention. In a society where this is nearly universally the case, effects of that develop into social norms. This includes selfishness, egoism, and a lack of sibling-like lifetime relationships.

VladRussian22• 13 years ago

that child gets showered with attention.

and all the other resources are poured into one child instead of being spread around several children. Thus only child has higher IQ and development level than when there are several of them.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mckibben-one.html

"A twenty-year tracking study of 3,000 high school students demonstrated that only children have higher IQs than their peers with one sibling -- in fact, "there are marked negative effects on IQ of increasing sib size."

--- end of citation --

There are also similar results of first child having higher IQ than second - as all the attention goes to him/her during the critical first years of brain development while second child doesn't have such undivided attention.

eddieplan9• 13 years ago

As if IQ is the only or the most important factor that can dictate whether someone will have a happy and prosperous life.

subsection1h• 13 years ago

"A twenty-year tracking study of 3,000 high school students demonstrated that only children have higher IQs than their peers with one sibling -- in fact, "there are marked negative effects on IQ of increasing sib size."

I didn't see any mention of household income in the NYT article. I'm interested to know if the researchers factored in household income because from what I've read, people with higher incomes tend to have higher IQs and fewer children, and intelligence is heritable.

wavesounds• 13 years ago

"By the end of the decade, demographers say China will have 24 million "leftover men" who, because of China's gender imbalance, will not be able to find a wife"

This will be an interesting thing to watch what will happen. Will women receive more power in society because they are more sought after? Will societies 'losers' unable to find wives become resentful and prone to violence or substance abuse? Will new types of un-orthodox relationships become more common? Will marriage/divorce rates increase/decrease? Will men leave for other nearby countries for a better chance at finding a spouse?

dharmach• 13 years ago

There is a simple solution: polygamy

lmg643• 13 years ago

i think you mean polyandry. polygamy would make the problem worse.

most likely, the men will leave in search of a better life. or stay at home and cause trouble. or the government can organize them in some fashion - military would be an obvious one.

tokenizer2• 13 years ago

It's pretty unprecedented (as far as I know).

I'm assuming they can just live normal lives? We have millions of males/females who choose to be single, so I don't see the entirety of this group being upset.

CmonDev• 13 years ago

There is a difference between dating single and non-dating single.

angersock2• 13 years ago

My guess:

Will women receive more power in society because they are more sought after?

No, they'll receive even less power, because they become scarce goods and thus commodities and thus less empowered as people. The ability of a guy to get his pick of the women or maintain multiple women at the expense of other guys will become a status symbol, and nowhere in that picture does one see respect or empowerment for the women.

Will societies 'losers' unable to find wives become resentful and prone to violence or substance abuse?

Yep, as has always been the case.

Will new types of un-orthodox relationships become more common?

Depends what you mean by unorthodox.

Will marriage/divorce rates increase/decrease?

See point 1. I'd wager divorce rates will decrease, though marriage rates will increase (women should have no problem finding men).

Will men leave for other nearby countries for a better chance at finding a spouse?

Almost certainly, especially if the alternative is staying in a lonely environmental shithole.

jamra• 13 years ago

I think you are missing a very fine point. The wealth gap in China is the only factor that comes into play. Men who cannot find a wife will almost always be in the working class. The middle and upper classes will be fine. Since China treats their working class so poorly, there will likely be no effect on their society socially.

One of China's biggest fears as a nation is the unrest among the working class. They are the backbone of China's manufacturing economy. This is the only thing I would worry about.

Women will not have better or worse rights.

cm20124• 13 years ago

Marriage rates might follow the path of South Korea or Japan and fall precipitously anyway. Mostly because women earning major money don't seem to have the urge to rush into deeply patriarchal relationships.

bane2• 13 years ago

For cultural reasons, this is a recurring pattern in Chinese society. IIR my Chinese history lessons, it was usually followed by costly border wars and massive building campaigns to thin out the herd and quell domestic unrest caused by too many men milling about with nothing to do and nobody to do it with.

joshuacc• 13 years ago

The headline here should be edited to reflect the BBC original. China is only "relaxing" the policy, not ending it.

cm20124• 13 years ago

The Chinese population birth rate is currently far below replacement, so that makes sense.

: https://www.google.com/search?q=china+fertility&oq=china+fer...

eliben• 13 years ago

Interesting... based on that graph the US is borderline below too (isn't the replacement rate something like 2.1 or close to it)?

cm20124• 13 years ago

Yes, replacement rate is about 2.2 per woman in my memory. The only reason its as high as it is is because of our relatively open immigration policy.

OneOneOneOne• 13 years ago

I wonder how countries such as China will adapt to an aging population?

http://www.indexmundi.com/graphs/population-pyramids/china-p...

It looks like they will be in a difficult position 30-40 years out once the proportion of elderly grows.

ddoolin• 13 years ago

By the article and Wikipedia entry, it sounds like this has been relaxed for most people around China already anyway (since it's handled by the provincial governments).

bane2• 13 years ago

It's not well followed in the countryside as-is, and a quickly modernizing urban lifestyle tends to self-regulate to low birthrates anyway.

The real story is the end of (or reformation of) the re-education camps.

China reforms: One-child policy to be relaxed

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