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China allows couples to have three children

bbc.com

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Re: China allows couples to have three children

#41

Post by infinity0 »

Clewza313 wrote: post #36
marcus_holmes wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you were joking, but totalitarian regimes have done this before (Romania's orphan crisis was the result of similar policies, iirc). The poverty/immigration dance - if you reduce poverty, women have less children. Eventually you reach the point where you need to allow immigration to provide enough workers to keep your aging population from starving. Immigration is an existential threat if your country is based…

China internally makes a big deal about their 56 ethnic groups, living happily in harmony: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_minorities_in_China And woe betide anyone who dares be less than harmonious about being ruled by their Han big brother.

You seem to have a bit of sour grapes that a non-Western country dares to talk positively about their own policies.

You should understand that translations often lose some cultural context, so when you have a prejudice against the English word "harmonious", understand that the Chinese equivalent is used much more freely in everyday speech. "Solidarity" might have been a better translation.

--

Reply to the comment below:

> I recall that, in the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony, China celebrated its ethnic minorities by having Han children dress up as them [..]

In a big place like China or the US, there are always going to incidents like this. Furthermore, most news stories will exaggerate the headlines or twist the details, so I am not even sure if this particular incident is as you described. What matters is what the policies are doing for the larger scale of individuals. You can't judge anything about this larger scale by looking at a few incidents, especially when Western media have a vested interest in showing you these news items and ignoring the vast majority of what is going on. (To be fair, the vast majority is quite boring.)

"Ask the people themselves" is used typically in these discussions as a weasel phrase, as if Western liberal democracies are truly "asking the people themselves". You have mass media bombarding the general population all the time with pre-ordained narratives. Nobody votes in elections with an independent analysis. So sure, it depends on what you mean by "ask the people themselves". There's lots of content on social media including from ethnic minorities, people are generally happy with their lives and the amount of freedom they have. Are you going to pick holes in that? Why not pick holes in what's happening with mass media de-jure "independent" de-facto manipulative elections in the West?

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#42

Post by WhyNotHugo »

ginko wrote: post #2

It feels strange to me why they're not just getting rid of the limit at this point. Especially since they already seem to have trouble getting couples to have two children.

Not sure it's that simple. You might end up having couples with 10 kids, and many others with 1 kid.

As a very broad generalisation, it's usually less educated couples that go for the far higher numbers.

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#43

Post by simion314 »

ginko wrote: post #2

It feels strange to me why they're not just getting rid of the limit at this point. Especially since they already seem to have trouble getting couples to have two children.

I have no idea , just a random idea , maybe they want to prevent people from the "wrong" group having 10+ children.

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#44

Post by riffraff »

TimPC wrote: post #27
axiosgunnar wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFA talks about this, saying they fear a child number explosion in poor rural areas.

I was under the impression the one child policy never applied in poor rural areas. If it was universally enforced I’d like to see an explanation for China’s population growth over a period where it would have experienced a decline.

If people don't die as early as before and you have few newborns you can still experience growth for a while.

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#45

Post by blueblisters »

hackingthenews wrote: post #7
throwaway316943 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine there’s entire departments of people dedicated to managing this program. Probably dedicated party members. I don’t think they could take their titles away and reorganize them without starting a lot of infighting.

It could also be that they see no scenario ahead where they want the average number of children per woman to be above 3. I don't think China wants back to exponential growth ever. They probably want to find their equilibrium. Consider if something unlikely happens that completely changes the dynamic of families, e.g. a cultural shift where women stay more at home and have more babies. If the average family started ha…

I think the idea is to bring the average up to 2.1, which is the accepted "replacement" fertility rate, to stem a population decline. One way to achieve that level is when a majority of women have 2 children but a few have 3 children. For a population the size of China, a "few" might mean a few million. I don't see that happening without a few carrots.

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#46

Post by mgkimsal »

bottled_poe wrote: post #37
axiosgunnar wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFA talks about this, saying they fear a child number explosion in poor rural areas.

So, your saying which people have children is a concern? That is.. sad

Perhaps it’s more a function of the “where” (rural)? That’s less sad, imo.

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#47

Post by gadf »

throw0101a wrote: post #11

There is some question on whether the one-child policy was even needed. If you look at a graph of "children per mother" chart before and after the original policy went into effect, it's quite evident that rates were dropping for more than a decade beforehand: * https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/october/china... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Birth_rate_in_China.svg * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O…

Thank you, thank you. At least we, in the unimpressive rest of the world, can have some way to hate China, for each and every achievement or progress they make. Keep up the good work! You are truly bringing humanity forward with this backwards looking biased hatred!

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#48

Post by 29athrowaway »

The problem with China right now is the 4-2-1 problem.

Because of their one child policy, you have a family generation consisting of 4 people (grandparents), followed by 2 people (parents), followed by 1 person.

So now they are way on their way to an demographic crisis, where most people will be old.

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#50

Post by dan-robertson »

stefan_ wrote: post #17
throw0101a wrote: post #11

There is some question on whether the one-child policy was even needed. If you look at a graph of "children per mother" chart before and after the original policy went into effect, it's quite evident that rates were dropping for more than a decade beforehand: * https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/october/china... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Birth_rate_in_China.svg * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O…

There is another graph here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China#/media/F... Which shows a massive male surplus particularly in the young demographics, way larger than you would biologically expect. How can we claim this policy has no effect if clearly people are still killing female infants?

Wasn’t their some policy saying that rural mothers could have a second child if their first was a girl? If they each had the maximum number of children, it would lead to an average of about 1 boy and 0.75 girls per rural mother.
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