One-child no longer

As part of a social reform initiative announced last week, China is to “relax” its one-child policy. There have been exceptions to it for years for certain groups, but this makes it officially-approved. Naturally my reaction was dismay (“the environment is now f*cked”). The policy has been criticized by some for being inhumane, but it somewhat it at least kept the country’s already-huge population from becoming even larger.

Someone on r/overpopulation did a rough projection of what population numbers might look like under a worldwide one-child policy. There is a decline to just over 6 billion by 2053, and 3.4 billion by this century’s end. As for a 2-child policy: “If 2 is input, the population would increase slowly until it peaks at 9 billion in 2063 before it slowly decreases, bottoming out at 5 billion in 2373”.

Colonization by stealth?

“The Unintended Consequences Of China’s One-child Policy”, io9, 3/10. I usually emit a groan when this topic comes up, as the critics of the policy come out in force. The article points out the issues with such a policy:

• Males outnumbering females due to a long-standing cultural preference for boys.
• “Surplus males” – men greatly outnumbering women, which can be an instigator of social unrest from frustrated males. This was “traditionally” (if not consciously) dealt with by war.
• The elderly outnumbering the young in a declining population.

As more than one commenter remarks there, however, what else was the Chinese government to do? If they allowed unrestrained reproduction the population would be even greater than the already huge figure (1.4 billion or so), with all the social problems and environmental damage that result (and still are afflicting the country, anyway). The policy does not apply to everyone, anyway – some ethnic groups, for example, are exempt (perhaps to keep them mollified?), and some cities are reversing the policy to address the aging problem (see previous entries with the China label).

Another traditonal way of dealing with “surplus people” is to export them, and China is certainly doing this – Australia is a popular destination. However this strategy can incite resentment amongst the host country’s citizens as they face increased competition for living space and jobs, as described this article: “In Africa’s warm heart, a cold welcome for Chinese”, Reuters, 18/9. Many African citizens are growing resentful of increased Chinese immigration there, as the latter can undercut them with cheap imported labor and goods. They also have no qualms about bribery when deemed necessary.

China is also, to put it bluntly, plundering the rest of the world for resources, such as Australia and Africa for minerals and farmland. This is also another potential source of conflict, though those raising alarm about this – such as recent controversy over the sale of a large cotton farm to Chinese investors – are invariably branded “xenophobic”. With future food and resource security at stake, though, why is this so unreasonable? I doubt the Chinese government has any scruples about their activities. In Africa’s case, China is effectively colonizing and exploiting the continent, as Europe did in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries – the term for this new version is neocolonialism.

Edit, 28/10: forgot to mention Tibet as an example.

Loopholes

“Chinese couple pay to have second child”, Telegraph, 1/6. Another article proving that many selfish people will seek to circumvent whatever birth restriction policies are in place. My opinions on this were stated in my 11/2/2012 entry.

However, the [one-child] policy has never been evenly enforced. There are exemptions for ethnic minorities, for families where both parents were single children themselves, and for couples in the countryside whose first child is a girl. In addition, a growing number of rich families now choose simply to pay the fine, which is a multiple of between three and ten times the average after-tax income of the city where they live. Aspirational advertisements in Beijing, including propaganda posters from the local government, often now show families with two children, rather than one.

“China’s One-Child Policy’s Unexpected Issue: Infertility”, Forbes, 25/5. In an overpopulated country (and world) I can’t see this as a bad thing, sorry! I would like to see a ban on IVF – or at least not have it taxpayer-funded.

Huang Hefeng, director of the Zhejiang province reproductive medical center, said that factors like heavy workloads, stress, environmental pollution and unhealthy lifestyles are known to be related to a rising infertility level in China. The WHO expects infertility and sterility to be the third-most serious disease worldwide in the 21st century, after cancer and cardiovascular diseases.

Oh no, please don’t

“Urgent calls to alter one-child policy”, The Age, 3/3. There is a push to gradually abolish this policy, the main reason being to encourage economic growth (i.e. produce future consumers – “Relaxing the one-child policy is ‘urgent’ to help shift the economy towards greater consumption”) – never mind the impact on China’s already-degraded environment, or the additional increase to its huge population. Another symptom of this current civilization’s growth addiction. If there is a population decline – mainly a decrease in births – there seems to be a panicked reaction to try to rectify this.

“Shanghai Gets Supersized”, Smithsonian, November 2011. A general overview of the city of 23 million – approximately Australia’s population – squeezed into an area of a little over 6 km². A dystopian, polluted nightmare, but this is the future that technological types seem to find desirable. My reaction to such places is: Nuke it from Orbit.

“Big Australia looms as migration surges”, AN/PublicPopForum, 7/3. This unwanted increase when there are weekly reports of hundreds of job losses and rising unemployment. The asylum seekers are an extra burden on welfare. As noted in “ Australia a ‘soft touch’ for asylum”, the situation with illegal boat arrivals has reached absurdity, but a lot of idealistic fools would let them all in unchallenged.

Cheating the system

“China warns parents against Hong Kong ‘birth tours’ ”, H-S, 8/2 (also at The Age). Here is evidence that some people will go to great lengths to avoid birthrate control restrictions – in this case, Chinese women going to Hong Kong to have more children. It shows that some can be irrational when it comes to reproduction and they therefore can’t be trusted to do the right thing. The punishments are monetary fines, but in a future dystopia, or fictional one, these punishments could be a lot harsher (I’ll leave those to the imagination). If you look under my fiction tag you can see previous entries with examples of these dystopias.

Urban nightmares

“The future is a high-rise world”, The Age, 22/12/2010. I have come to detest architects in general; most seem to be enraptured by the idea of cramming millions of humans into futuristic hi-tech cities, and rendering utopian artwork of such. One of the most extreme examples is that of housing up to one million people in a single tower in London (architect’s webpage) to accomodate its growing population. To me that sounds like a nightmarish way to live, crammed into a small space with that many people – “battery-hen living” is my name for it. The architect in the first article, Thom Mayne, seems to be one of those arrogant types who think city living is sophisticated and sneers at suburbs – I just want to slap him!

“What future for intelligent life in space?”, The Space Review, 7/11. This opinion piece by Stephen Ashworth asserts that colonizing space (as opposed to other planets) and exploiting its resources will enable humanity to keep expanding almost indefinitely. This comes across to me as “Space Cadet” thinking – an overly-optimistic view that going into space will magically solve humanity’s problems. Somewhat alarmingly, he notes that such expansion will supposedly allow the human population to expand hugely:

In this way, very large future human populations are conceivable. For example, John S. Lewis has reckoned that the material resources of the main asteroid belt, together with large-scale use of solar power, would allow at least 10 million billion people to support themselves (Mining the Sky, p.196). When one adds in the Jupiter trojans and the opportunities presented by the outer solar system, even larger populations become possible. Frank Drake and Dava Sobel have put the overall carrying capacity of our system at “more than a hundred billion billion human beings” (Is Anyone Out There?, p.128), while Marshall Savage suggests an even larger figure (The Millennial Project, p.303). We do not need to quibble over orders of magnitude in order to make the point that the propensity for economic and population growth characteristic of industrial civilization is well matched with the opportunities offered by its local environment, provided that the 21st century sees a shift of the focus of industrial and population growth away from Earth and onto large-scale development of the natural resources of near-Earth space.

It’s the same old infinite growth mentality that is causing so much damage to humanity and the enviroment on Earth. Realistically, I can’t see space colonies happening before mid- or late-century – if ever. And most people would want to stay on Earth, on which humans have evolved and are intensely adapted to.

China’s population reached 1.34 billion last year – attributed mainly to people living longer rather than more births. But now the furphy of the “ageing population” is being raised:

Cai Yong said allowing more births now would help the country cope with looking after its large and growing elderly population. “To have a stable society, you better start now, to think ahead of time because it takes 20 to 30 years to have another generation come down the line,” he said.

And then they will be back to square one, because the increased number of young people born will grow old, and require yet more young people born to look after them… *Sigh*

Bad decision

“Ageing China flags truce in one-child revolution”, The Age, 13/9. Some dismaying news that China is easing its 1-child policy because of alarm over who will look after their aging population. Perhaps they should consider alternatives such as developing helper robots. Their population is still growing, however:

By 2050 India is expected to have grown to 1.75 billion people compared with China’s 1.44 billion, according to the Population Reference Bureau. China’s population is now 1.34 billion and India’s 1.19 billion.

Ideally, I would like to see a 2-child policy implemented worldwide – but that would require a dictatorial world government to reinforce.

“Nation fertile ground for IVF”, Herald-Sun. IVF treatments in Australia are on the increase. I am adamantly against government funding for this procedure (on Medicare) and this should be abolished, though there would be an outcry as people get irrational when it comes to reproduction. There is no intrinsic “right” to IVF. With the world being already overpopulated, more people should not be created artificially.

“Strict curbs on IVF treatment a must, says Susie O’Brien”, H-S, 11/5. The taxpayer-funded treatment is being abused and should be reined in.

It’s made me realise that having babies through IVF is fast being regarded as a right, not a privilege. And this makes me profoundly uneasy.

[…]

And take the case of Victorian woman Kimberley Castles, who is serving three years in a minimum security jail for welfare fraud, and who is pushing to get IVF in jail. She has only seven months left before she turns 46 and becomes ineligible for in vitro fertilisation treatment. Although I don’t think any human rights should be denied to people in jail, this is one privilege that should not be granted to Castles.

Unfortunately the IVF was granted to her – despite her already having 2 children – because denying her treatment (and justly so, in my view) was a breach of her “rights”. What bullshit! There is no intrinsic “right” to reproduce, and certainly not at taxpayers’ expense while incarcerated, as in her case. In this society there is too much emphasis on rights and not enough on responsibilities.

“Big fall in IVF attempts as cost soars”, The Age, 13/8.

But instead they had increased the proportion of the total cost met directly by people seeking the treatment, said Sandra Dill, chief executive of the patient group Access Australia Infertility Network. “There are 1000 babies that won’t be born,” she said. “It’s not as if IVF’s a hit-and-miss thing. It’s highly successful.”

1000 people who won’t exist in an overpopulated world – that is a good thing!

Cramped city

Tokyo’s population has reached an astonishing 13 million (13.1 million as of 1/4), packed into a dense urban area of 2000 km² (Victoria, in contrast, has 3.4 million people in nearly 9000 km²). I suppose some would say that such density is an efficient use of space, but to me it sounds nightmarish. Granted, Japan has a cultural mindset that allows people to mostly live civily in such crowded conditions (one can imagine how those from a relatively uncivilized and violent Australian culture would cope – namely, not at all!), but it is hardly a desirable way to live.

Some officials in China are pushing to ease the one-child limit, because of alarmism over an aging population. (However, the one-child limit does not apply to ethnic minorities and rural families.) The surfeit of younger people will supposedly slow down economic growth. But the population is still growing, expected to reach 1.4 billion in 2026 before shrinking – how do they expect to find employment and resources for such huge numbers? Some are opposed to relaxing the limit.

Still, not all experts agree the one-child rule should be dropped. Li Xiaoping, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, welcomes the coming population decline, saying it will ease food and water shortages and limit pollution. Writing in the state-run China Daily newspaper, Li said the government should stand firm on the one-child limit while finding ways to boost the earning power of a smaller work force.

“Taiwanese solution to soaring house prices: don’t have kids”, The Age, 27/4. Like Australia’s housing market, Taiwan’s is also out of control, no thanks to investors, and one inadvertent result has been a decline in fertility. Its population at over 23 million is only a little more than Australia’s, but crammed into a small island, so such a decline is a good thing – but not according to the writer, who raises the usual ageing population alarmism.

But not having children creates even bigger costs ahead. Right now, Taiwan has 6.8 people of working age for every retiree. But preschools are already closing for lack of children, and the population is set to shrink dramatically. By 2032, demographers project, Taiwan will have just 2.5 potential workers for every retiree – and by 2056, just 1.4. If nothing changes, Taiwan – like China, Japan and Korea – will slowly become economically unviable.

“The shock of the old: Welcome to the elderly age”, 8/4. This article states that an ageing population is not necessarily a bad thing, and even a positive thing in many respects – one being that the pathological social obsession with youth might abate. Society will need to make some adjustments, such as being prepared to employ older workers, but it won’t be the disaster many doomsayers predict. Another positive aspect not mentioned: with fewer young males around, violence should also lessen.

“Too many people packed into dirty, crowded cities”, Daily Telegraph, 11/2. An opinion piece by businessman Dick Smith, who has become an opponent of population growth (one of the good guys, in other words!). Australia should not seek to emulate the megacities of the world, which are horridly overcrowded.

Damned if they do or don’t

Article reproduced below in case it disappears:

Study warns aborting girl fetuses will leave China with 24 million more men than women by 2020

Beijing – Abortions of girl fetuses are expected to leave China with 24 million more men than women over the next decade, according to a study that warns the imbalance will dash many young men’s chance at marriage and lead to increased crime.

China enforces strict family planning controls, including limiting most couples to having one child. Because of a traditional preference for male heirs, many families terminate pregnancies of girl babies in order to be able to continue trying for a boy. Infanticide of baby girls has also become a problem.

The study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, reported in Chinese state media this week, specifically said such preferences were behind the ballooning imbalance.

“Sex-specific abortions are extremely commonplace, especially in rural areas,” the CASS report said. “The phenomenon of abortions of female fetuses is very serious.”

China bans tests to determine the fetus’ sex for non-medical reasons, but they are still commonly done, mainly by underground private clinics in the countryside.

The report said the male-female ratio at birth in China was 119 males to 100 females, with the gap as high as 130 males for every 100 females in some provinces. In industrialized countries, the ratio is 107 to 100.

The report is similar to other studies in recent years that warn of serious social problems because of the gap.

The official Global Times newspaper quoted researcher Wang Guangzhou as saying men with lower incomes would have trouble finding spouses in rural areas, leading to crime problems. The newspaper also said abductions and trafficking of women were widespread in areas with excess numbers of men.

The CASS study mirrors a report published last April in the BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal, that said China has 32 million more young men than young women because parents facing strict birth limits abort female fetuses to have a son.

The BMJ study found even higher gender ratios, with 140 boys for every 100 girls in the 1-4 age range in Jiangxi and Henan provinces. The figures were based on data from 2005.

China imposed strict birth controls in the 1970s to limit growth of its huge population, noting that resources, especially land, were increasingly strained and that changes were needed in its new push to modernize. The government says the controls have prevented an additional 400 million births in the world’s most populous country of 1.3 billion.

Seems China can’t win either way – it has to get its population growth under control, but cultural preferences lead to a gender imbalance that could result in social instability. I have remarked in previous entries (2/6/2008, 18/1/2009) that a brutally pragmatic solution would be to cull the surplus males (wars do that anyway, in an uncontrolled manner).

“MPs call for 70m population cap”, BBC News, 6/1. UK politicians seem to belatedly be realizing that their island might be a tad overcrowded at 61 million or so. It will be even worse at 70 million! Public resentment at high immigration levels is growing, and will result in social unrest if not alleviated.

“It’s ‘dog eat dog’ on London’s overcrowded Tube: report”, The Age, 2/12/2009. An earlier article describing how overcrowding, here on the railway underground network, leads to a “survival of the fittest” attitude. I’ll again link to the article, “London’s a rat hole”.

Ageing threat?

“Shanghai urges ‘two-child policy’ ”, BBC News, 24/7. China has a growing ageing population, so some cities are wanting to increase the one-child policy to two children. Big mistake! China already has nearly 1.4 billion people; the last thing they need is to increase this.

Micky Bristow, BBC News Chinese and foreign experts have been saying for some time that China needs to change its strict family planning rules. If the country continues as it is, the proportion of elderly people in society will continue to increase. This is a problem because it will leave a smaller group of workers paying for the country’s retired population.

All these extra young people will one day be old, so, using this logic, even more younger people will be needed to support them…and this keeps growing exponentially until the population reaches some absurdly high and unsustainable number. Ageing is a fact of life that countries just have to deal with; once that particular generation of older people have passed on, the population declines.

Coincidentally, there was an opinion piece in The Age, 25/7, on the issue of an ageing population, and how it is not necessarily a bad thing: “We should celebrate enhanced longevity” (originally from The Guardian).

China’s surplus males

I have addressed this topic before (2/6/2008 entry), but there have been three articles this week about the potential for social unrest that ensues from a population of single, unemployed young men. The cultural preference for boys in China and the one-child policy means that female foetuses are sometimes aborted.

“Chinese Bias for Baby Boys Creates a Gap of 32 Million”, New York Times, 10/4.

The Chinese government is openly concerned “about the consequences of large numbers of excess men for social stability and security,” the researchers said. But “although some imaginative and extreme solutions have been suggested,” they wrote, China will have too many men for a generation to come.

“With 32.7 Million ‘Excess Males,’ What Will Become of China?”, io9, 14/4.

“Sex Reversal”, Slate, 15/4.

The government is very aware of the problem and has openly expressed concerns about the consequences of large numbers of excess men for societal stability and security. As early as 2000 the government launched a range of policies to specifically counter the sex imbalance, the “care for girls” campaign. This includes changes in laws in areas such as inheritance by females, as well as an educational campaign to promote gender equality. These measures have had some success, with reports of lower sex ratios at birth in targeted localities.

In other words, the quota on children, translated through sexism into a quota on girls, has created a political problem for the government. And this, in turn, has forced the government to confront sexism economically and culturally. This policy change is being driven not by moral enlightenment but by practical necessity. The old problem was too many children. The new problem is too few girls. Without enough girls, the boys become unruly. So the government, following the same collective logic that inspired the one-child policy, has become the world's biggest promoter of sexual equality.

A few commenters remarked that the time-honored method of dealing with a male surplus was a war, though this is somewhat uncontrolled and messy. The other rather drastic solution would be a controlled cull, as I noted in that entry. China can’t afford to relax its population policy if its government is to maintain social stability.

“The cut and thrust of secret men’s business”, The Age, 14/4. A short but positive profile of a doctor who has performed a huge number of vasectomies (13 000 to date!).

One too many

“Chinese women ‘want more babies’ ”, BBC News, 16/1. A 2006 survey by Chinese family-planning officials found that most (70%) women want to have more than one child. The one-child policy, however, does not apply to everyone:

…in most rural areas couples are allowed a second child if their first is a girl. Different birth-control policies also apply to some ethnic-minority groups.

Other countries see the policy as draconian, but if it was not (mostly) enforced, the population would be even higher. There is a latent problem of a gender imbalance as female foetuses are sometimes aborted as male children are preferred, which will become increasingly socially disruptive with an increasing number of males not being able to find female partners.

The Chinese economy has to be kept growing in order to keep a growing population employed, but this is ultimately unsustainable in a world of finite space and resources, and environmentally destructive. As noted in “Chinese hit by growing pains”, The Age, 17/1:

“Unemployment of migrant workers on a mass scale implies severe political and social problems,” he says. “Any minor mishandling will cause social turmoil.”

(The migrant workers in this case are mostly peasants from the countryside who go to cities to look for work.) As I remarked in my entry, “Culling surplus males”, unmarried, unemployed young males tend to be the most troublesome elements in any society. Many will get killed off if a country goes to war, but this is a rather uncontrolled way to go about it. (If this seems rather callous, I am just looking at the problem from a pragmatic point of view.) Therefore if the Chinese government is to maintain control, it has to contain its population growth in some manner.

“How Many Chinese Are Enough?” by Gwynne Dyer also looks at the problem and comes to much the same conclusion: however unpalatable the one-child policy is, the alternatives are worse. One has to be realistic, not sentimental – individual rights must be overridden in this case for the survival of a society as a whole.

Most ecologists would say that China is well beyond its long-term “carrying capacity” even with its present population. Maybe the government is actually listening to them. Maybe it also knows that climate change will not be kind to China. There are things worse than a one-child policy. Famine, social disintegration and civil war, for example.

Culling surplus males

A relevant article: “Waking from the dream”, ABC News, 28/5. Our wastefully extravagent lifestyles are becoming unsustainable.

“The Family Way”, Time magazine, 29/5. The recent Chinese earthquake has given some in the media an excuse to once again attack its one-child policy, as some families lost their only child when shoddily-built schools collapsed. But the issue is with the corruption that resulted in the buildings collapsing – if a family had 2 or more children and lost all at the school, it is still the same result (if that makes sense). The article does note that “couples whose only child was killed or disabled will be permitted to have another one”, which is fair enough. But China can’t afford to otherwise relax this policy – its already-huge population is having a worldwide environmental impact as they become more affluent (the hunt for mineral resources in other nations being one consequence of this).

Clearly, a rising birth rate would place an enormous burden on China’s social and medical infrastructure, which is far less developed than physical infrastructure like roads and rail. A change in emphasis will be essential. Hospitals will need vast new infusions of money and other resources. The weak system of homes for the elderly, child-care providers and other social services will have to be greatly expanded.

Where will the money and resources come from to provide for a massive population?

China also faces one of the most skewed sex ratios in the world: men outnumber women 1.2 to 1. The male surplus, which means many Chinese men will never be able to have a family, creates an ominous future; already, an underclass of young male thugs is proliferating in Chinese cities, a group easily recruited for crime. In Beijing’s worst nightmare, these angry young men could turn against the state. As scholars Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer wrote in a 2004 book, in the mid-19th century unequal sex ratios, which left men idle, contributed to armed rebellion in the Chinese countryside.

A radical solution might be to cull (as in kill) the surplus young males (wars already tend to do this, in a somewhat uncontrolled manner). In fact, that is something that could be done in any society with a surplus of single, young, unemployed males between 12-25 years (who tend to be the most troublesome elements – just consult any statistics for violent crime). As a female, I would feel a lot safer if there were fewer aggressive young males around. How would you identify the aggressive ones, as, of course, not all males fit this description? One way is to catch those who roam the streets at night in groups or gangs – I see the results in my neighborhood the next morning (graffiti, vandalism). Another is to target those convicted of violent crimes. Note that humans don’t hesitate to cull other species (some being elephants and kangaroos) – species that are seen as being in competition with humans for land and resources.