China’s Family Planning Goes Awry

http://www.feer.com/essays/2009/december51/chinas-family-planning-goes-awry

by cwan • 17 years ago

85 96 17 years ago

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wglb• 17 years ago

An excellent article about the profound demographic implications of China's decades old one-child policy.

teyc• 17 years ago

There will be change, but not necessarily bad.

1. The lack of marriageable women is a problem that can be solved by time. Men are prepared to marry at 40 if their work prospects are good.

2. The advent of low trust societies that doesn't rely on guanxi, but on merit can be a boon rather than a detriment. Cronyism can only go that far in a society where all are alone.

3. The absence of economic growth is a political one. In an overpopulated country, there is no such thing as sustainable growth. Whereas in the past, there are wars, disease, famine and mass slaughter to reset the population numbers, controlling fertility is the least worst option, and one that can be done voluntarily.

4. Looking after the aged is a necessity in the ages of pre-mechanization. Today, the basic needs of many can be provided by a few.

pyre2• 17 years ago

The one thing that they don't mention is the female children that are abandoned so that the parents can try for a son (due to cultural preference for a son to be the family successor and support the parents in old age). (i.e. not aborted, but born and then abandoned; causing the need for orphanages to take them in)

DTrejo• 17 years ago

There is no inexpensive way to check the sex of a child before it is too late to abort?

oldgregg• 17 years ago

"Never fight a land war in Asia." ...unless you have 30 million single, angsty, poorly educated men...

evgen3• 17 years ago

> The lack of marriageable women is a problem that can be solved by time. Men are prepared to marry at 40 if their work prospects are good.

This is a very naive conclusion. Human societies deal reasonably well with a large female:male ratio (usually after a war) but large male:female ratios usually leads to war, revolution, or unpleasant social changes like fast increases in violent crime rates and similar problems. This has happened in the past on smaller scales, but in this case you are talking about regions with 10s of millions of young men who have almost no chance at reaching the societal norm of a wife and child -- they are not going to be pleased when the reality of the situation starts to make itself apparent.

If men are prepared to wait until they are older and richer then you will find this cohort out-competing their younger, poorer peers for an ever-dwindling supply of young women. This just leads to a repetition of the cycle but with more and more competitors fighting over the pool of "resources."

This is not a situation that is just going to fix itself unless there is a radical change to family planning laws, societal norms, the role of women, etc. The only thing that can really be said is that the solution will be painful and its consequences could end up being quite far-reaching...

bilbo0s2• 17 years ago

You haven't been to China have you.

Do you have any idea how many women from Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia etc. etc. etc. are DESPERATE to get into China? SOLELY for the purpose of latching onto a man? Even African women are trying to get in on the action.

Student visa my @$$! Not unless they are studying for an M-R-S degree!

I have seen this first hand.

A shortage of 30 or 40 million women?

Believe me when I tell you . . . the Chinese Government knows this won't be a problem.

It really won't. Believe me.

ivenkys• 17 years ago

Fascinating article on the change in demographics and composition of the family unit in China.

jrockway• 17 years ago

Upmodded because the Captcha at the bottom of the article displays its source code.

https://www.feer.com/manager/includes/veriword.php?rand=hell...

Change "rand" and watch the background change.

brianobush• 17 years ago

Interesting how a simple policy can lead to large imbalances in the natural population (at many levels: SBR, social, labor, etc). Wonder what other policies that other countries have instituted that lead to similar manifestations?

mitjak• 17 years ago

How exactly is this a simple policy?

whatusername• 17 years ago

Because you can state it in one sentance.

Compare it to an ETS or something similar. You could create the laws for a one-chile policy very very simply.

Evgeny• 17 years ago

"Through locally determined birth targets, vigilant surveillance of prospective mothers, and state pressures ranging from the threat of job loss to crippling financial penalties and involuntary forced abortion, the policy has already driven China's birth rate far down—below the replacement level"

So what about the countries where the birth rate went below the replacement level naturally, without government intervention? Are they facing the same problems in the future as China or not, and why?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility

Today about 42% of the world population lives in nations with sub-replacement fertility.[citation needed]

The countries or areas that have the lowest fertility are Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Taiwan, Ukraine and Lithuania.

mbrubeck• 17 years ago

Yes, many countries with low birth rates are facing the same problems. This long NYT Magazine article from 2008 has some interesting stories from different countries (mostly in Europe):

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazine/29Birth-t.html?_r...

dkokelley• 17 years ago

I think the difference might be that in China, the TFR is regulated, while the nation's economy is growing rapidly.

In a declining economy, it would make sense that fewer children are being born, since the parents on average can't support as many, but in a growing economy, we would usually see many more children being born because times are good, and parents can afford to care for more children - something that isn't being allowed in China.

Also keep in mind that according to that Wikipedia article, the US is also below the replacement level. I think the article intends to focus more on the social implications that the policy has.

Mz2• 17 years ago

WWII dragged America (and the world) out of The Great Depression and into the post-war boom. Part of how that happened: American families were forced into having two incomes (so the wife could work in the factory and the husband could be in the army), no new children being conceived/born (what with hubby being off at war on another continent) and war time rationing forced very high savings rates on America -- as high as 50% at one point -- because there wasn't much to spend your dual income on (especially since they were also encouraging people to grow "Victory Gardens"). We went from people moving every 13 months to take advantage of new rental deals (where you got the 13th month free if you could make your rent the first 12) before the war to Levittowns sprouting like mushrooms to try desperately to meet the sudden high demand for middle class housing after the war.

So it's not like something like this has never happened before. Maybe nothing so protracted, but the precedent I am aware of is generally considered to be a good thing.

dkersten• 17 years ago

You forget that the Chinas economic boom is artificially propped up by China [1] forcing its banks to lend money to other countries so that they can buy Chinese goods. I read an article recently which had a great analogy, comparing Chinas lending to the US (so that the US can continue to buy Chinese exports) to Lucent Technologies in the nineties, lending money to dot com startups so they could keep buying Lucent hardware - economic growth continues steadily, but eventually when these loans are to be cashed in, the economy will crumble. Of course, China has an exit that Lucent did not, as mentioned here (and the article mentioned it too) - China has the option of war!

It seems to me that the Chinese economy is a giant bubble; one which I'd rather not see burst, but bubbles tend to do that... China isn't stupid though, so hopefully they can buy themselves enough time to figure something out and avoid a giant crash (and most likely a war).

[1] meaning that it can (and probably should) be treated as a declining economy

Xixi• 17 years ago

There is no male/female imbalance in countries where the birth rate went below the replacement level naturally. That's a major problem that China will have to face, and not the other countries mentioned.

ars• 17 years ago

Some of the problems can be alleviated if you don't assume that people stop working at 64. If people kept working at an older age, and that age kept increasing, the workforce size could stay stable, and possibly even grow.

The unmarried men problem is unsolvable barring a war. (And with the very very low death rates of wars these days, even that might not "help".)

Expect to see china legalize prostitution soon. They are almost not going to have a choice.

There is one other effect you will see. There is going to be intense competition for wives in china. Only the best will get one. Over time this natural selection should have very interesting implications for china.

I'm not sure what women in china look for (height? looks? brains?), (I'm not going to assume it's the same as in other countries). But whatever it is, these women will be shaping china's future.

One thing you should not expect is a dramatic change. It will be gradual, very very gradual. So I guess people will adjust.

chrischen2• 17 years ago

> I'm not sure what women in china look for (height? looks? brains?), (I'm not going to assume it's the same as in other countries). But whatever it is, these women will be shaping china's future.

They look for wealth. Most would probably want to lift themselves out of poverty.

> The unmarried men problem is unsolvable barring a war. (And with the very very low death rates of wars these days, even that might not "help".)

I'd bet that the PLA is less developed than the US armed forces enough that the casualty rate would be much higher if they were in Afghanistan or Iraq. The US should contract the PLA to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. Kill 2 birds with one stone.

middus• 17 years ago

"Kill 2 birds with one stone." I find your post extremely disgusting.

jefftown• 17 years ago

Maybe everything is just going to get a lot gayer in China.

Not that there is anything wrong with that, it seems like a pretty good solution actually.

chrischen2• 17 years ago

Well, they have other choices besides homosexuality. There's pedophilia, xenophilia, prostitution, masturbation.

chancho• 17 years ago

I think it's more likely that the imbalance between the sexes will correct itself through any of the myriad feedback mechanisms before it has a significant effect on Chinese evolution.

For example, parental preference could shift back to girls (or at least even out) since couples will probably be expected to support all four parents in their old age, and eligible bachelorettes will become a valuable commodity. Having a boy becomes an evolutionary gamble: a daughter will surely bring grandchildren but a son may die childless.

gvb• 17 years ago

The problem has been 30 years in the making. Undoing that is going to take approximately as long.

The big question is whether China will remain stable long enough for the feedback mechanisms do their job. What with the shrinking labor force in what is currently the land of cheap labor (labor costs will rise) and the social obligations (cost) that come with an aging population, it is a pretty scary picture.

catzaa8• 17 years ago

Parent's in some areas can have girls that aren't subject to the one child policy (i.e. they can get another).

donaldc3• 17 years ago

I've been wondering for a while now why China doesn't back off to a two-child policy. Most of the problems caused by the one-child policy would go away or be greatly eased, and yet the population would still attain stasis. I've put it down to organizational inertia.

Really, given that population trends in most countries are headed towards or are under replacement level, they could probably just ditch the n-child policy altogether, but I don't think the government of China is capable of making such a momentous change any time soon.

snagage2• 17 years ago

From what I understand, if both mother and father are single children - there actually is a two-child policy in action

donaldc3• 17 years ago

Perhaps, but there doesn't seem to be any terribly good reason at this point not to always allow two children.

tokenadult6• 17 years ago

I've been wondering for a while now why China doesn't back off to a two-child policy.

People with enough money or connections can have all the children they desire. Men who divorce and remarry get at least one child per wife, and women who can pay fines can have more than one child also.

donaldc3• 17 years ago

Excellent point! That explains it...

jhancock2• 17 years ago

The policies are uneven (at least unevenly enforced) throughout China. Currently:

* Peasants (a crude/outdated name, but its the one commonly used) have little to no government punishment for having more than one child. Most don't because they cannot afford it and do want to attempt to give their one child the best they can to enable them to move up in society.

* Farmers (a subset of peasants) also can't afford it, but having more hands to help many times outweighs the costs of education and health care which they can't afford for even one child.

* Couples of any class who are single children are allowed to have 2 children.

* Wealthy that rely on government for their continued prosperity (which is most) usually do not have more than one child despite their ability to afford government fines and lack of social support.

snagage2• 17 years ago

Although the content of the article is interesting, I don't like how the author is basically concluding: Because the one-child policy is introducing dynamics that are different from the past, it's dangerous.

Most things are not any different from those currently experienced by western countries: declining fertility rate, aging population, etc. The only thing that's really in the unfamiliar territory is the male:female ratio imbalance.

What would really have been unprecedented was if the one-child policy was not implemented and population kept growing unabated. I personally think there would be alot of social problems had this been the case.

wheels2• 17 years ago

The thing that's different from China and the West in this case is that China is doing this before its economy has matured. Growth of a labor force and economic expansion tend to go hand in hand, often through immigration if not birth rate.

baguasquirrel3• 17 years ago

I couldn't agree more. What would be sadistically amusing in the context of this problem is if another "black swan" event occurred, like a famine caused altered global weather patterns. All the countries with shrinking populations ought to fare a lot better if some such thing were to happen.

Who knows what the future will bring? It's arguable that they should probably turn around that one-child policy now, but China's had far too many people anyway. 1 billion is far too many for a space that small. China's hinterland ain't no American dream. The actual habitable land in China is only about a third to a quarter of what you see on the map.

araneae6• 17 years ago

Yes, an aging population is a problem in any country that's seen a drop in fertility rates. This effect is actually the worst in Japan, followed by Italy.

re: lack of women

The nice possibilities are polyandry, in which one female marries multiple males. Another is the the devaluing of males. I.e. because of the rareness of females, males may some how compensate their families, and girls could become more valuable for parents to have. A third "nice" possibility would be to import females from other countries, or for males to emigrate to higher female areas. This would diffuse the problem, although if China's population becomes high enough it will just spread the problem to everyone.

The not-so-nice possibilities include increased male-male competition for mates (which happens in all species, including humans; single males are much more likely to be murdered or be murderers than their married counterparts/women in all cultures.) In history, it would be quite common for violence to occur at least in part for the purpose of procuring more females.

We can't predict it, but there's likely to be some sort of fallout. Maybe there's a technological solution: androids? Virtual reality brides? Prostitution? The excess boys need something to keep them occupied. Perhaps porn will be sufficient.

m_eiman• 17 years ago

single males are much more likely to be murdered or be murderers than their married counterparts/women in all cultures

You don't think that that might have more to do with single males being younger and more likely to do risky things in general? Also, being married implies a commitment to being part of a family for a long time - and not do things that are likely to get you killed.

Nekojoe• 17 years ago

Although this article [1] is 9 years old, it's still relevant as it shows the impact of the one child policy.

Women become valuable commodities. I've heard stories about rural Chinese girls being scammed and promised offers of marriage from rich men in the city. In reality they're sold into a life of slavery.

At the other end of the scale though more educated women in China can take their pick of males.

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/927309.stm

kalendae• 17 years ago

in terms of just fertility rate problem (not the gender ratio) the difference between japan, western europe, and china is that china has more or less the option to change policy and tune the fertility number where as others do not.

daltonlp• 17 years ago

It's been one generation since the Once-child policy was introduced. I believe that in another generation, China's example will be seen as a smart and forward-thinking idea.

It'll be pretty easy to test whether I'm right or wrong. To the south of China is India, a country of comparable population size with no centralized family planning.

wheels2• 17 years ago

> It'll be pretty easy to test whether I'm right or wrong...

Whoa, there. That's assuming that all other important variables in the social dynamics happen to be identical between India and China. That's so far from the truth that it'd be difficult to make any conclusions from a sample set of those nations.

baguasquirrel3• 17 years ago

Oh even better. Then we have the effectiveness of a totalitarian free-market regime, a perversion of the Soviet communist model, vs. a social-bureaucratic regime, a perversion of the Western republican model. I can't wait for the fireworks and popcorn on this one.

araneae6• 17 years ago

Well, the irony is that re: population control, it seems to happen naturally with the development of Western civ ideas (i.e. feminism.) China doesn't even begin to have the lowest r(growth rate); Japan has that honor, followed by Italy, then the rest of Europe.

The second you give women the opportunity to work instead of raise a pack of squalling children, they seem to prefer work.

However, China is very anti-feminist and is aborting all their women, thereby impeding the natural events which could lead to an even lower r. So I'm not sure it's correct to say that their lead is the best to follow if you want global r to decrease, human rights issues aside.

forensic4• 17 years ago

>The second you give women the opportunity to work instead of raise a pack of squalling children, they seem to prefer work.

Debatable. Women in the West were forced into work due to declining wages. A single income was no longer enough to support a family, and as more women went to work the other families would bid up the price of goods.

Are women choosing to work or doing it out of necessity and social pressure?

philwelch• 17 years ago

I would not describe Japan and Italy as particularly feministic cultures, actually.

Also, selectively aborting your future female population is a great way to reduce r.

herdrick• 17 years ago

* any future increase in demand for labor will only be supplied by increasing wages *

Heavens, not that! Look, less available labor means higher wages. That's good.

darien• 17 years ago

Unmarriageable men = rise is prostitution, gangs. Also suicide rate is higher for unmarried men. For middle-case men who cannot marry, China would be wise not to over-regulate MMRPGs like WoW lest create more unease. Think about it.

Rise in prostitution = rise in STDs. Investing in China's medical services sounds like a long term growth prospect.

Also less women means that women will be more likely to marry into families with the most disposable income. Therefore it is likely that spendthrift wives will expand the fashion and cosmetics markets for some time.

wooster• 17 years ago

There have been fairly cogent cases made elsewhere that having too many young unmarried men in a society is a setup for international aggression.

For example: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&...

  Hudson and den Boer argue that this surplus male
  population in Asia's largest countries threatens 
  domestic stability and international security. The 
  prospects for peace and democracy are dimmed by 
  the growth of bare branches in China and India, 
  and, they maintain, the sex ratios of these 
  countries will have global implications in the 
  twenty-first century.

fauigerzigerk• 17 years ago

The author is missing a crucial point. Any decline in working population has to be offset against productivity growth. Otherwise it means very little for overall wealth and for the ability of a society to replace traditional family based social security with a formal rights based social security system.

In my view, the potential for productivity growth in a country like China is enormous. Knowledge and skills and capital, it's all there, but it is still advantageous in many cases to use manual labour instead. With rising wages and a shortage of labour this equation will change dramatically and productivity will skyrocket.

forensic4• 17 years ago

The most efficient use of excess males is war.

The most efficient solution to an excess of geriatrics is euthanasia. (Baby boomers should be worried about this.)

These are bitter pills to swallow.

Chinese social planners are not fools. They know very well that it is better for their excess males to die in battle (and win boons for the country) than for those males to be cooped up in the interior where they will inevitably cause strife.

Even with the most massive pacification campaign in history, that glut of childless-males is guaranteed to cause massive social unrest.

If anything could conquer Asia and India, it would be a gigantic excess of childless males in an authoritarian society. Alexander the Great would have never dreamed of such a perfect country to conquer with.

berntb• 17 years ago

But war is fast going robotic? OTOH, China, the world's factory, can certainly make lots of robots. :-) :-(

Retric2• 17 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio The global average is ~1.06 males per female. With China's population of 1.3 billion people that works out to ~25 million extra men. But the global 65+ ratio is 0.79 males/female.

So a basic solution to gender imbalance has traditionally been older men married to younger woman. With death culling enough young men to fix the problem. When that is not enough, the widow population can fill in for an even larger shortage. China's gender imbalance might seem huge, but individual city's have often faced similar problems so it’s not hard to find past examples of the situation.

tokenadult6• 17 years ago

The percentages matter, but the numbers matter too. Taiwan had nearly a 10 percent surplus of men when Chiang Kai-shek's defeated armies settled there in 1949. Women who were young in the 1950s in Taiwan (I have spoken to many of these about that era) remember fondly that they could be very choosy about whom they married. Many men in that era never did marry. (Taiwan has had tolerated prostitution throughout the postwar period, which presumably is how the unmatched men dealt with being unmatched.) Today, Taiwan is a HUGE destination for young women from poorer countries (there are a lot of poorer countries than Taiwan, notably Vietnam) who are brought in as "mail-order brides" for older men. But for China to do the same, the Communist Party would have to explicitly give up the claim that it eliminated prostitution after "Liberation" in 1949, and the number of women needed to move into China--from countries that themselves often have shortages of women--would be enormous. Absolute numbers matter. It's much more difficult for China to deal with this problem than for any other country, because of the sheer size of the problem.

bioweek• 17 years ago

I'm thinking another option is that the excess males might just leave for other countries. It seems like the most rational approach when an area doesn't provide the resources you need.

forensic4• 17 years ago

How many poor, rural, Chinese men have that option?

It will be the poorest Chinese who go without mates. They are the most violent and the most dangerous, and no country is capable or willing to support the immigration of literally millions of childless and aggressive poor men.

The Chinese leadership really only have two potentially effective options in my view. Try to manage it through pacification campaigns (estrogen in the water?) or send them abroad to die in wars.

tokenadult6• 17 years ago

Is there ANY country in the world that is interested in allowing in millions of single, male Chinese peasants? Which country is that?

fakeslimshady• 17 years ago

I'm surprised by the lack of common sense on this topic. (1) China doesn't just exports goods. It is a leading (if not the leading ) exporter of people http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Chinese (2) Extrapolating birth ratios stats into "unmarriagable men" doesn't work if you ignore the large difference in marriage rates due culture. Mainland Chinese has a relatively simple old school culture. People marry earlier than in the US and therefore "utilitize" their women at higher rates in the US and have lower divorce rates. I know an surprising number of decent guys in the US in their 40s of all sorts of ethnic backgrounds (white, latino, jewish, asian etc) that never married - sometimes never had a girlfriend. I know an equal number of women in US that have never married into their 40s and dont' look to marry soon. American culture simply does not PUSH as hard as Chinese culture to get married therefore the real gap is not as big as one might assume

jhancock2• 17 years ago

Your view on using excess males for war has some historical support. However, I do not feel most of China's leaders hold this view. China is working very hard at modernization. There are more than enough work projects to keep the excess males busy. China's leadership has shown over and over for the last 20 years that it values internal and external investment rather than military use. Sending extra males to Africa and Australia to build mining systems is far more likely (and something actually happening) than using them to die in battle.

The glut of China's males is not a particularly new problem as selective breeding for males is a deep part of their culture.

To be sure, a series of missteps could place China in a position to use its military. However, the surplus males would be used in this case simply as a resource available and not as part of some master plan.

gaius4• 17 years ago

There are more than enough work projects to keep the excess males busy.

Motivated by what, tho'? Don't underestimate biological imperatives. How much money is enough to pay a hundred million men that there simply aren't women for?

forensic4• 17 years ago

I agree with you that that is what China's leadership wants.

But it's almost impossible to estimate the kind of pressure that will be put on those leaders, when these 30million+ poor males start realizing they are not going to reproduce.

On top of not having the ability to reproduce, these 30million+ poor males are going to be shouldered with the responsibility of spending their money to support their parents.

It's a psychological crunch if there ever was one. A psychological crunch of epic proportions.

I predict the Chinese authorities already have pacification plans in place. Probably a combination of wide-scale drugging and relentless propaganda emphasizing pacifism, loyalty, and duty to the state. The Chinese authorities will need to find a scapegoat that isn't themselves, and it will probably be some combination of every other country. :)

If the Chinese authorities point the aggression of these poor males in the direction of other countries, you have a recipe for war even if the war is just an Orwellian war-for-show.

I would recommend slavery as an option to relieve the pressure, but typically even slaves are allowed to have children and then the children are used as collateral to keep the men in line when they would otherwise revolt.

Beyond mass-scale drugging and propaganda of unimaginable magnitude I don't see how this can't end violently - whether the violence occurs within China or is exported to some dumping ground like Africa.

dang• 2 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20100216070004/http://www.feer.c...

China’s Family Planning Goes Awry

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