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China to begin two-child policy

bbc.co.uk

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Re: China to begin two-child policy

#191

Post by marrs »

lostInTheWoods3 wrote: post #180
rtpg wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Same with China - imagine them exploding with an extra 1 Billion people over next 20 years. Who will feed them? What would be social implications of such a move? Well for one thing, you'd have a billion more potential farmers... Population growth is a pretty old problem, and if recent developed nations' demographic reports show, it solves itself once you reach a certain level of development. China's success is not n…

a billion more potential farmers yes, but land and water are finite resources

Details. We'll just build multistorey farms.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#192

Post by jazzyk »

Infinitesimus wrote: post #188
arbitrage wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people would agree that mentally ill people should not have children. It is vastly oversimplifying, and prejudicial, to say something like that. Many more people than you seem to think have experienced, or will experience mental illness in their life. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/prevalence/any-men...

I could be wrong but I thought that was the point parent comment was making? > Most people would agree that mentally ill people should not have children. Turns out the definition of mental illness covers far more than the most extreme/visible cases so it will be unclear where to draw the line since "mental illness" is too broad a set

You are correct - that was my point!

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#193

Post by qnaal »

nsxwolf wrote: post #183
jazzyk wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just political views. Most people would agree that mentally ill people should not have children. But what constitutes mentally ill? The line is fuzzy - perhaps someone is just a bit "quirky", but still could be a good parent? In order to have a license the criteria would have to be crystal clear and added to the Constitution (sorry, US-centric). And even if in the Constitution, someone could abuse it (see: NSA, s…

Most people would agree that mentally ill people should not have children. Huh? They would? Are you sure about that?

not all, that's a pretty broad category. just eg criminally insane and useless retards

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#194

Post by fsloth »

hvs wrote: post #83
rubidium wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most disgusting thing about the policy is that the citizens let the state have that much power. It's a terrible thing to let economic concerns so dominant the public arena and politics that people let the gov't decide how many kids they have.

It's a communist gov't. The people "letting the gov't decide" has little do with it.

I think you are trivializing thousands of years of history with this. China is ... china. They use the same alphabet they used when egyptians used hieroglyphs. The sensibilities of the chinese population are not about a people being dominated by a marxist tyranny. It's china being ruled as it has always been ruled - the dynasties have come and gone but the dynamics of government - and the cultural sensibilities which coexist with these - have co-existed longer than most western countries have a written history.

The communist party is just another dynasty in the long succession of dynasties. That they have a specific brand of ideology should not fool you - the current china is more of a pragmatic autocracy than an ideological communist state.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#195

Post by gnaritas »

saryant wrote: post #172
hodwik wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case they're not totalitarian though. China is a Republic, it's just a Republic with a taller pyramid than our own. You elect district leaders, who elect state leaders and the congress, and they elect the president and prime minister. Technically, that's roughly the same system we have here with the electoral congress and faithless electors. The difference is that in the US, faithless electors are much less c…

> You elect district leaders ...from a list of candidates approved by the Communist Party.

Not so different from there, where our candidates are chosen by those from the wealthy. No access to large sums of money, no viable candidacy.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#196

Post by austenallred »

funkyy wrote: post #128
sethbannon wrote: post #56

From the article "All couples will now be allowed to have two children". So it seems China isn't so much ending its one-child policy, as augmenting it by one to a two-child policy. This means the brutal and cruel enforcement will continue, only it will kick in at the third child instead of at the second.

China managed to succeed in increasing people wealth and loosening laws (still bad for Western standards, but huge step comparing to China 30 years ago). Only because West thinks this is "brutal and cruel" dosent mean our laws would ever worked there. Some tried giving Arab countries democracy and it turned out they never really wanted it and most of the dictators were much better alternative (still bad, just better…

> China managed to succeed in increasing people wealth and loosening laws

To be clear, do you think that killing children or forced abortions were major contributors to that? Or does it just so happen that the two happened at the same time?

It seems like a bit of a logical stretch to me to say, "America installing democracy didn't work in Iraq, so we shouldn't be worried if China kills or forcefully aborts children."

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#197

Post by nrser »

haukilup wrote: post #185
nrser wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i've lived in China for a few years, and no one's ever seemed to care much about the one child policy. i just asked some people, and they said it depends on where you grew up, but that it hasn't ever really been a big deal for at least their lifetimes (~30 years). you have to understand that laws here usually range from completely unenforced to strong discouragement with possible financial implications. it wouldn't s…

The context you likely have is that of the more urbanized parts of China - not the rural towns and villages where most of the more extreme ("brutal and cruel") practices take place.

yeah, i know, i live in a big city. but i'm talking to some people that came from rural areas... no one's even heard of this stuff. that in no way means it doesn't happen - China's a really big place - but it certainly doesn't seem to be the status quo.

friends actually said the opposite: people in rural areas would tend to have a lot of kids trying for a boy (something about boys getting to go to school and being able to work the farm), though i guess that's getting better with the education and gender equality stuff.

did you grow up in one of those areas or something? or know people that did? which areas are you talking about?

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#198

Post by jazzyk »

nsxwolf wrote: post #183
jazzyk wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just political views. Most people would agree that mentally ill people should not have children. But what constitutes mentally ill? The line is fuzzy - perhaps someone is just a bit "quirky", but still could be a good parent? In order to have a license the criteria would have to be crystal clear and added to the Constitution (sorry, US-centric). And even if in the Constitution, someone could abuse it (see: NSA, s…

Most people would agree that mentally ill people should not have children. Huh? They would? Are you sure about that?

I am provoking to make my point. "Mentally ill" may mean a dangerous psychopath, or someone taking anti-depressants.

Labels: Slippery slope.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#199

Post by dheera »

rtpg wrote: post #164
funkyy wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China managed to succeed in increasing people wealth and loosening laws (still bad for Western standards, but huge step comparing to China 30 years ago). Only because West thinks this is "brutal and cruel" dosent mean our laws would ever worked there. Some tried giving Arab countries democracy and it turned out they never really wanted it and most of the dictators were much better alternative (still bad, just better…

>Same with China - imagine them exploding with an extra 1 Billion people over next 20 years. Who will feed them? What would be social implications of such a move? Well for one thing, you'd have a billion more potential farmers... Population growth is a pretty old problem, and if recent developed nations' demographic reports show, it solves itself once you reach a certain level of development. China's success is not n…

It won't be anywhere near a billion.

China already has an average of ~1.7 children per family [0] if you factor into account that the policy is enforced at a provincial level, and depending on that province, it may be the case that (0) people of certain backgrounds (e.g. farmers, minorities, parents with disabilities or medical conditions) can be exempt in some areas, (1) affluent people sometimes just pay the fine and have a second child, (2) in the most recent version of the law, if one parent is an only child, they were permitted have 2 children, (3) Chinese citizens who have resided overseas for some period of time may be permitted to have 2 children.

A lot of people may go from 1 to 2 children. Not that many people will go from 2 to 3 children. Children are very expensive for most families.

[0] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#200

Post by gjm11 »

code4life wrote: post #156

"A Christian Manifesto" by Francis A. Schaeffer gives a reason why. Our creator inspires freedom and love. When we follow him we seek to spread freedom to not only ourselves but to others as well. A population willingly adopting the new testament Biblical principles will spread freedom willingly. The humanist world view on the other hand has no moral absolutes and must enforce the popular or elected rules onto the ma…

If this account of things were correct, then we would expect to find that less-religious (or specifically less-Christian) nations have less freedom. It doesn't look to me as if this is true; for instance, the nations of Scandinavia are distinctly less Christian than the US (they often have established churches, but the rate of actual religious belief and commitment in the population is low) and they seem no less free than the US; and some notoriously un-free societies have been explicitly Christian (e.g., Franco's Spain, Pinochet's Chile, Mussolini's Italy).

We would also expect to see correlations between freedom and Christian belief and affiliation within nations on longer timescales. For instance, in Europe the Middle Ages are generally thought of as particularly religious; was that a specially free period of history? It doesn't seem so.

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