191–200 of 339 posts
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 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.
Every story about China should include a note that the government decides how many children its citizens are allowed to have. We've grown numb to how terrible this is.
This doesn't seem intrinsically terrible to me, particularly if it's done through incentives and doesn't involve say, murder or sterilisation. If we accept that any biome will eventually have a finite carrying capacity while the possibility of human reproduction is exponential it seems inevitable that there must be some limits to reproduction. Regulation is crude but might be less bad than "direct environmental feedb…
I do agree with the finite carrying capacity aspect you mentioned but if you think China's child policies weren't awful then you should read up on what it really means to live your life as heihaizi.
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What a sick little comment. The world is a lot larger than the rich West and historically children were what we have - in some wealthy places - a social security system for. But in many places where the state is barely functional and family ties are strong children tend to take care of their elders, because that's how it's been traditionally. The best way to reduce that factor in how many children people have is to u…
It looks like in China it's even a law[1] that old people use to take advantage of their children. Just because it's a "tradition" doesn't make it good. It's been a "tradition" to beat your wife and children as well in many parts of the world or even worse. If you are miserable why would you like to make your children's life miserable as well? [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7422934/
And even in the affluent West it isn't all that rare to find children caring for their elders: it's perfectly ok, even if there is a tendency to stick old people in old folks homes and to try to forget about them even though they are still alive that definitely isn't something everybody subscribes to. Those that came before us deserve some respect and care in their old age, they are still family.
The COVID-19 epidemic has brought out one thing quite clearly: that there are people who wouldn't care one bit whether older people die off en masse. I wonder what the overlap is between those egoists and the ones that want to live forever.
Gotta love HN comment section on a story such as this. People here solving math problems more than questioning the power of a government to tell people how many children they are ALLOWED to have.
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Are there any other explanations for the massive male surplus?
Is adoption murder? Abortion? Why is it easier to imagine that Chinese people murder infants than it is to imagine literally any other scenario? Why is it easier to assume that a massive sex imbalance is the result members of a particular group of people being psychopaths rather than the result of some systemic cause? Hmm.
Also, I assumed the reason there was no evidence posted for the Chinese infanticide claim is that it’s extremely common and has been known for a long time. I just assumed everyone was aware.
It doesn’t mean people killing literal babies, but does mean stuff like more abortions of female embryos. [0]
Wikipedia [1] has a more general article with more links to sources.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2016/02/01/465124337/how-chinas-one-chil... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide_in_China
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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 lived in China, in Shanghai, near the French Concession, speak Mandarin, read 汉字，(not fluently, but HSK5-6), and have been to pretty much every province in China. About as privileged as you can be as an ex-pat, and I can still say, IMHO, it's pretty totalitarian. Totalitarian: "relating to a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state." Is China centraliz…
He is still needed? Maybe, because you said:
> The last 4 years saw rising nationalism in the US, and it has also been rising in Europe and in China. This is not good.
It is not good. Eventually the future for the mainland is bright, with good material condition and freedom. The situation is not ready yet. You can not "impose" democracy, the population must be ready.
But I believe all is done right and set for the generation being born now ("3 children per family") to be the happiest in the world.
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> One Child Policy prevented ~300M births. This is a questionable ascertain. The birth rate had already dropped, and had been dropping for over a decade, before the policy kicked in.
>The birth rate had already dropped, and had been dropping for over a decade, before the policy kicked in. That was due to the original 2-child policy from the 70s. To rephrase accurately: "family planning" prevented ~300M births, adjusted downward from 400M since 100M+ previously unregistered birth was logged since reversion to two child policy again. There's no credible analysis that suggest PRC family planning pol…
[citation needed]
Where is there more information on this? I do not see it mentioned for China:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-child_policy
The birth rate also started falling in the 1960s:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Birth_rate_in_China.svg
* https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINCHN
> There's no credible analysis that suggest PRC family planning policies did not directly and dramatically reduce population. 300M IUDs and 100M sterilizations aren't placebos.
Of course the policies reduced fertility rates and population growth. The question is whether they were needed in the first place, or whether general development would have achieved the same result anyway.
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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?
Just curious are such policies considered a human right violation. For example could US or let's say France implement such law as well? Let's say the government just want's to prevent families having more than 5+ children for whatever reason.
Let countries be free to do birth control of their own violation - you do not want more births whose lives they cannot support properly which in turn threatens the social fabric of their societies. To push this as a human rights violation in support of the west's rhetoric is pretty hypocritical since they don't have to support the excess births.
For instance, it seems that a large reason that China is hesitant to lift any limits whatsoever is a belief that rural women will have large families and urban women will not and that this would be 'unfair'. This cant help but feel like a eugenics argument about not wanting to swamp the gene pool with 'low IQ rural undesirables'.
What would be the foreign response if some of the more distasteful ideas behind mandated birth rates were brought to the fore-front:
* 'all able-bodied women must have at least one child.'
* 'citizens in these jurisdictions can have as many children as they want.'
I believe we would see a lot of outrage in other countries over these policy, but I worry the CCP sees no difference ethically in mandating one or the other. Instead opting for whatever is deemed necessary.
