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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

#61

Post by roenxi »

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…

China (and India) are dealing with population numbers never before seen, at a scale that is inconceivable without special training or focus (whats the difference between a million and a billion? about a billion). It is a mathematical possibility that growth rates overshoot and settle into patterns of boom and bust - and a bust in human populations can get really ugly.

"It hasn't happened in the last 2 centuries" isn't an argument against Malthusian collapses either. China has a long memory.

I have a lot of sympathy for the argument that the One-child Policy was a mistake. In my view, it was. But I also have a lot of sympathy for the people who implemented it. As ideas go it isn't an obvious mis-step in the class as, say, Communist economic policies.

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#62

Post by areyousure »

dan-robertson wrote: post #50
stefan_ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

50% B + 25% GB + 25% GG = 0.75 B + 0.75 G.

Can you think of a law ("stopping rule") that could even get the expected number of boys higher than the expected number of girls?

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#63

Post by temp8964 »

After the communist "land reform", the Chinese communist party / Chinese Government owns all the land in China. Now, local governments use land control and land sales as their major source of revenue. The end result is that vast majority of Chinese people live in small apartments, which are designed for 1 couple + 1 kid families. In big cities, average apartment size is around 60-80 sqm. In small cities, it could be 100-120 sqm. For a family of three kids to live in those small apartments, life is gonna be really tough.

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#64

Post by infinity0 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #53
infinity0 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is not a totalitarian regime - you shouldn't believe all the propaganda out there, you should actually go there yourself and you'll find that you can live your life quite normally and happily. China's identity isn't based on a single ethnic identity - the various restrictions (such as the now-3-child-policy, and permanent immigration between cities) apply to everyone. In fact ethnic minorities generally get pre…

I spent years travelling around SE Asia, and met plenty of Chinese, enough to decide I did not want to go there. All of them were openly racist (mind you, all of SE Asia is openly racist, so this is nothing unusual). I accept that there are minority ethnic identities within China, but I have been told over and again (by Chinese people) that China is Han. I have Chinese friends here in Berlin who still won't talk abou…

My direct experience contradicts your direct experience. I'm Chinese, grew up in China until I was 5, and visit it every now and again.

> I have been told over and again (by Chinese people) that China is Han.

You are either selectively reporting, or selectively misremembering things based on your own existing prejudices. I have certainly talked to more Chinese people than you, and nobody has ever said this.

I lived in Berlin for 3.5 years, I found plenty of racism there as well; also in the UK and US where it's more subtle.

I'd assume your Chinese friends are a non-representative sample of Chinese people - likely, you are friends with them because they ran into issues with the government, and hence had similar interests and were attracted to the same events and locations. China has 1.4 billion people, this is bound to happen.

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Reply to the comments below:

> little point in discussing anything China-related in Western internet forums.

Thanks for the advice, I am indeed trying to take it in moderation. I think it's important to try to maintain some level of healthy discourse though, the anti-China propaganda is taking the world down a dark path.

> Curious on what you think of what China is doing to the Uyghur people. Do you believe that this is fabricated by all these media outlets?

Yes, they are all citing the same fake reports written by a few people working non-independently, driven ultimately by geopolitical strategy and taking advantage of liberal media's existing prejudices to portray China as "evil". See https://www.qiaocollective.com/en/education/xinjiang - a collection of a large number of sources from many different people, working independently.

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#65

Post by jp555 »

Good luck.

With a shrunken generation of family to help due to 30+ years of one-child policy, and almost no social support (China does not really have socialized healthcare in practice) there's no one to help take care of larger families. But there is a HUGE number of rapidly aging parents and grandparents to take care of.

Add a culture that puts accumulating wealth as the #1 virtue, and it becomes nearly impossible to reverse a low birth rate.

In Canada Quebec has been paying French families to have more kids for a very long time. Today Quebec has the lowest provincial birthrate in Canada.

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#66

Post by dragonelite »

blueblisters wrote: post #45
hackingthenews wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Its a hard problem to solve don't even know a developed country that actually managed this problem well.

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#67

Post by seanmcdirmid »

dan-robertson wrote: post #50
stefan_ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those were local family planning board decisions and never really applied in the cities. In fact, family planning was applied so unevenly across China that some people got in trouble for having one kid at all (because of corruption), or on their second kid had to give up their government jobs even though they technically had rural hukou.

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#68

Post by dandellion »

areyousure wrote: post #62
dan-robertson wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

50% B + 25% GB + 25% GG = 0.75 B + 0.75 G. Can you think of a law ("stopping rule") that could even get the expected number of boys higher than the expected number of girls?

Is that correct? The left side adds to 1 and the right to 1.5.

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#70

Post by dirtyid »

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.

Probably don't want fringe groups to procreate without limit. Not just with respect to Uyghurs, where family planning sterilizations are being applied to those who had 3+ kids, but any potential (non-secular) groups.
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