On Monday, China announced that it will continue its so-called “One-Child Policy.” In spite of skewed sex ratios (millions more boys than girls), an expanding elderly population that will sink any nascent social security program and hobble an economy with a shrinking labor force, and all that without even mentioning the massive human rights violations involved, China says that it will continue to restrict fertility. As the policy now stands, couples in urban areas are allowed just one-child and in some rural areas, parents can bear two children.
Li Bin, head of China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission stated: “We will stick to the family planning policy in the coming decades.” That is really puzzling. Demographers acknowledge that by 2025 China’s population, in absolute numbers, will begin shrinking and they will enter into a phase of population freefall. For all of you who have hitched your financial fortunes to a belief in China’s economic prowess, you might want to start rethinking your strategy.
Demographers also acknowledge that China’s fertility rate would more than likely have fallen without the introduction of the one-child policy. Over the last three decades, fertility rates of other Asian countries have fallen at almost identical rates to China-without the use of coercive population control programs. What a tragedy—one that just doesn’t seem to end.
To read more analysis and news stories on China’s one-child policy, see:
Three Decades of Forced Abortion… and counting:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/sep/10092803.html
China’s Silent Holocaust to Continue:
http://europeanlifenetwork.blogspot.com/2010/09/chinas-silent-holocaust-to-continue.html
The Tragedy of China’s Bare Branches:
http://unitedfamiliesinternational.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/the-tragedy-of-bare-branches/
Nearly Three Million Chinese Babies Are Hidden Every Year to Get Around the Country’s One-Child Policy