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…
Considering countries who have tried to increase their birth rate have failed to even budge the number by 10%, I’m pretty sure the risk of too many births is pretty much non-existent.
China allows couples to have three children
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Re: China allows couples to have three children
#32Re: China allows couples to have three children
#33Won’t be long before three children are mandatory.
Re: China allows couples to have three children
#34Earlier 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?
Misread graph. Removed comment.
Re: China allows couples to have three children
#35Earlier 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…
Considering countries who have tried to increase their birth rate have failed to even budge the number by 10%, I’m pretty sure the risk of too many births is pretty much non-existent.
Re: China allows couples to have three children
#36Won’t be long before three children are mandatory.
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…
And woe betide anyone who dares be less than harmonious about being ruled by their Han big brother.
Re: China allows couples to have three children
#37It 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.
TFA talks about this, saying they fear a child number explosion in poor rural areas.
Re: China allows couples to have three children
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't think China wants back to exponential growth ever. Any policy defined in terms of "X children per couple" or "X children per woman" is, by definition, exponential growth. When X is 3, it's very rapid exponential growth.
X = 1 is not exponential growth
Re: China allows couples to have three children
#39Won’t be long before three children are mandatory.
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'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 preferential treatment - e.g. looser restrictions, affirmative action in various places such as state examinations - because it's recognised that a majority ethnic groups have disproportionate power.
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Reply to the comment below:
> As long as you don't stick out, or criticize the government positively quite frequently.
The ways in which this statement is both true and false in its details, is not particularly different from the West.
In China, there are local protests quite regularly, and local governments respond.
In Hong Kong the protests were incredibly violent and disruptive. You cite the crackdowns by the government, but you don't cite the actions by the protestors and opposition legislators, that also attack innocents and filibuster the legislature for years, much more disruptively and disrespectfully than anything that's happened in the West, including shouting "Fuck China" during legislative oath-taking.
In China, mass organised protest against the national government is not tolerated, but nobody cares if you write some stuff on social media. In the West, in the rare case that actual mass protests ever get too rowdy they are shutdown quite brutally by the police. In China the government stops the situation before it gets to that point. In the West, anyone that sticks out enough to really be a bother, like Julian Assange, gets shut down very brutally too.
In both cases, these types of mass protests don't generally change anything in the political system. And in both cases, most ordinary people actually really just don't care to do these things, because the situation is fine in both China and the West - certainly not like the levels of the revolutions in the 1800s or the wars in the early 1900s. So when you criticise China for not allowing these things, this comes from a position of privilege, you have forgotten what it's like to be hungry. Not being hungry matters more, and China has found an efficient way to do that, so I am happy for them (and "us" as far as I can claim that). Maybe later things will become more relaxed, but it's not a particularly big priority.
> brutal suppression they do in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, or Inner Mongolia A-OK?
Most of the "evidence" regarding Xinjiang is fabricated, the Hong Kong stories are exaggerated and one-sided. I'd be against any actual specific cases of brutal suppression that's going on. But that still wouldn't make me "anti-China" in the same way you're not "anti-US" or "anti-West" presumably (I am not either). But that's what Western media portrayals seem to be trying to do - saying that, oh China is doing some bad things, they are evil, they need to be stopped. China is not evil, the world is a complex place.
> we all know it was would be like Putin and Medvedev, with Xi still controlling,
Nobody really knows the details of these things high up, it's all conjecture. It's sure convenient that Democrat and Republican policies, compared to the rest of the world, are very similar. How do you know they're not essentially in cahoots and just putting up a show of being "opposites" for the rest of the world?
Re: China allows couples to have three children
#40Earlier 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…
China may not be as concerned about uncontrolled population growth anymore due to their broader strategy of exporting their workforce: https://qz.com/africa/1963566/how-many-chinese-workers-are-t...