But long-term highly effective contraception for women is out there too, and it can be implanted in a simple office procedure (or immediately after childbirth). My gyno’s office is located right next to a large university campus with a large Chinese grad student population. She told me stories the last time I saw her about being requested to remove IUDs from Chinese women. The IUDs, unlike Western ones, didn’t have strings so that they could be removed easily. One actually buried itself in a patient’s uterine wall so deeply that it would have required invasive surgery to remove it.
I do know that in the past 20 years or so tons of little Chinese girls have been adopted by American families. So much that it has become a lucrative industry.
But China changed that all just a few years ago and pushed other couples to adopt all these “unwanted” children. So China is basically closed like Korea and Guatemala were before that. Now Africa is becoming a hot spot for adoptions.
With respect, by the time the policy was enacted, birth rates were already falling. Thailand has followed the same pattern. There was an overpopulation bulge, which are common in the gap between childhood mortality falling and birth rates dropping. But it was a problem that was likely to self correct, as it has in many contexts. And if policy was really needed, birth spacing policy or encouraging late childbirth would have the same effect with less intrusiveness. Encouraging massive families was a bad move, but the one child policy was not the answer.
The 35 (actually 37%) figure is from 2007 in the China Daily (admittedly not the best source.) I’ve seen other estimates of 40-63%.
Enforcement was inconsistent. In a large city, I don’t doubt it was by the books. But provinces had their own regulations and enforcement by local board, some more lax than others. In Zhejiang, couples can have two kids if the wife has one sister and her husband lives with her family to help take care of her parents. In Fujian, permission to have a second kid is calculated by population density. And fines and punishments vary wildly across provinces.
On a local level there are many times when officials turned a blind eye on some (I recall an audit where thousands of officials were found to have unauthorized kids), while using the policy as a mechanism for harassing others-- all while raising massive amounts of funds.
My horse in this race is that many people have the idea that it was a brutal but ultimately sensible policy that did some good. It wasn’t. It was a brutal and needless policy that didn’t really change much at the price of incredible misery.
Overpopulation is part of the Progressive Religion, which enables governments like China to assert control over someone’s freedom to procreate. Japan, Korea, Russia, U.S., and many other regions have declining birth/fertility rates.
https://www.pop.org/content/debunking-myth-overpopulation
http://www.eastwestcenter.org/news-center/east-west-wire/declining-birth-rates-raising-concerns-in-asia
The problem with the “long term contraception” is that it requires maintenance - either repeated injections, or monitoring of IUD’s, and so forth. Surgical sterilization is done once and it’s done.
Reversible birth control - hormonal or IUD - is also more likely to have side effects than surgical sterilization. But, hey, women having blood clots or strokes, maybe dying, is no big deal, right? True, surgical procedures can also result in that, but with surgery it’s one time risk vs. having the risk for years or decades.
Mind you, I don’t have an issue with women using hormones or IUD’s, I just think people have gotten this notion it’s a risk-free, totally harmless option and it’s not. There’s been a lot of work done to make those options safer, which is all to the good, but they’re not suitable for all women.
I’m not sure I would call it that, but it does seem that population control measures probably aren’t necessary in most of the developed world. My understanding is that the replacement fertility rate is about 2.1, and most of the Western world is below that, if not far below that. As of 2013, China is at 1.7, which seems to mean that even if they relaxed the law and allowed the rest of their population to have 2 kids, using the 35% number currently affected, means roughly 2/3 of those women would need to have a second kid just to get up to replacement, so it doesn’t seem like it would be that big of a deal.
Further, it seems like as standard of living increases that the desire for kids goes down. Considering that the group affected by this law, in general, have a higher standard of living than those not, then they probably aren’t going to be as concerned about having kids as one might expect. Further, as standard of living in China goes up in general, I think it’ll start to level off anyway. Maybe the Chinese government sees their current rate and realizes that even if population is still somewhat of an issue, if they don’t do something to raise the rates closer to replacement, they’ll major economic problems in the future.
This policy is evil. It’s slightly less evil than the previous policy. That’s all I can think of to say about it, as no government should have this level of control over the lives of its citizens.
The planet is already unsustainably overpopulated. If we don’t reduce the population voluntarily, mother nature will do it for us.
I can’t really conceive of how this policy is “evil.” It is just an example of the Tragedy of the Commons in action. Every individual person might be doing what they think is rational and “free” but when billions of people all exercise that same freedom it ends in catastrophe. The group as a whole needs to exercise some kind of governance and self-discipline.
It certainly does seem cruel to the individual, especially if they believe they have the resources to support a larger family. But a few generations down the road someone is going to have to pay the price for that “freedom,” when we start running out of drinking water, fuel, and livable space.
Well, one reason it’s evil is the method of enforcement-- forcing a pregnant woman to have an abortion. The other reason it’s evil is that there are other ways of controlling population, which China is actually pursuing, and that’s allowing standards of living to rise. But I would question your premise that the planet is “sustainably overpopulated”, so that’s another reason.
Serious question…are you aware of how the CCP has enforced it’s one child policy? Because if you aren’t, then you should educate yourself on it before making a call as to whether it’s ‘evil’ or not.
It’s also a problem that doesn’t require a direct solution. Look at Japan or Western Europe to see this in action…they are actually TRYING to increase their populations because they are below replacement levels, and it’s not really working all that well for them.
A few generations in, the one-child policy has been shown not to solve the problems it was designed to address. China had a complicated metric for who got an exception to the rule, to the point that most urban families that wanted two kids could have them. There is even a chain of stores that caters to the needs of parents of twins.
Kind of related to easing up on the one-child rule: China’s economic boom is largely driven by a housing construction bubble that is still building unpopulated ghost towns anyplace it can. If they hope to unload those apartments, they need a hefty boost in population ASAP.
Oceans are being overfished. Natural systems are being replaced. I’d argue that our population is already over the limit of long term sustainability. I know that future advancements in water desalination, crop yields, and atmosphere balancing may allow a larger capacity, but I’m looking at current technology.
I don’t think it is a reach AT ALL to say we have already overgrown the Earth’s carrying capacity. If not now, then obviously soon. It strikes me how many intelligent people see global warming for what it is without acknowledging that overpopulation is very intimately involved in that process.
Can we all admit that overpopulation is a huge looming issue? If we can do that, then we should also be able to understand that it is an issue we cannot fix ONCE it is a problem. It must be fixed before it is a problem, or we will face a much more inhumane process (i.e. killing billions of already living people or letting them die of thirst).
At what point does freedom infringe on itself? The main role of government is to make decisions based on what is good for a population. Roads would not be built if taxes were optional. Schools would not be funded. If given the choice, there is no way in hell I am paying taxes. I do not have loads of money just lying around. Given the opportunity, I keep that money and spend it on bettering my own situation.
Population control measures are the logical extreme of that line of rationale. Taxes do not benefit me in the short run. Neither does limiting my ability to reproduce. But both would benefit me in the aggregate. I’ll never have to worry about not having enough water so long as the global population doesn’t double. But if it does, it may be kill or be killed.
I’m not even talking in hyperbole. Within the next hundred years or so, if we continue our trend of population growth, we will reach a point where people kill each other for access to food and water. Wars will be fought by countries without adequate natural resources. It probably won’t affect me or my kids, but my grandchildren could be thrown into a situation where life is a living hell. That’s way more inhumane than forced vasectomies.
(I do not advocate forced vasectomies. I do, however, think that population control should be somehow incentivized on a global scale.)
The question is no longer whether the policy is good or bad, but whether the government’s rules make a huge difference any more.
In neighboring Asian nations, birth rates are at extremely low levels. Even if Chinese women are now allowed to have more children, are we sure they even WANT to any more? Korean and Japanese women sure don’t.
Then make your argument. The first two sentences don’t even come close to making one.
- If oceans are being overfished, then stop overfishing them. Fish can be farmed.
- Natural systems are being replaced… what does that even mean, and how is it different from what we’ve been doing for thousands of years?
It’s not “largely driven” by a building boom and it certainly isn’t driven by ghost cities. There is a property bubble, for sure, but that’s hardly the only thing they have going on economically. Ghost cities make for good headlines and they are strange (I’ve been through some). But they are nowhere near the defining characteristic of the Chinese economy.
The planned population for ghost cities is already there. They have been planned to house people from the countryside- and many a new suburb has indeed filled up this way.
Twins have always been allowed.
I am not suggesting that any particular form of contraception is risk-free. In fact, on that occasion I was seeing my gyno to have a (nonhormonal, copper) IUD inserted after a blood clot likely caused by oral contraceptives. But in my line of work I have read quite a number of asylum decisions that involved Chinese women forcibly having IUDs or contraceptive implants installed. Presumably their spouses and the Chinese government are also aware of the other options and relative risks.
Apparently we were somebody’s children and that didn’t work out too well.
This decision by China will exacerbate the climate change issue. The world needs less people not more.
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That is a byproduct of there being too many people in need of fish. Fish farming requires us to also farm fish food, which means we will be cutting into the human crop harvest. There are hundreds of things we can do. Stop eating beef and pork, supplant them with bugs. Is that honestly a solid answer? No. The western palette would not convert to eating bugs. The problem with whatever we do is no matter what, our resources on Earth are finite. There is no way supply can keep up with demand if demand refuses to stop growing.
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What I meant by that is we are expanding our urban and suburban footprint. True, we’ve been doing that for millenia. However you can keep putting drops into a bucket for days. Only once it is full will those drops begin to spill over. I don’t understand how “But this is how we have always done it” is a logical counterargument.
Here is an article from my local newspaper today about the brutality of the one-child policy. As even sven suggested, it is portrayed as in many ways just an opportunity for officials to engage in bribery.
I don’t see how abortions make the policy ‘evil.’ The government told you not to get pregnant and you didn’t listen. It’s not like you have anyone else you can blame.
And today you say the government shouldn’t be allowed to interefere in your freedom, but today’s short-sighted and irresponsible “freedom” won’t do anyone much good when we’re killing each other over lack of water.