DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Christians4LessGvt on May 25, 2015, 11:26:34 AM
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Population Control Has China Headed for "Demographic Disaster"
35 years of the nation's one-child policy.
By Edward Pentin
05/19/2015
The Chinese Communist Party will never end the "one-child policy" because the policy is effectively terrorizing the Chinese people into keeping the Communist Party in power, according to Reggie Littlejohn of Women's Rights Without Frontiers, who gave testimony on April 30 to the U.S. Congressional Executive Commission on China on the effects of the country's population-control measures.
The 35th anniversary of the policy, which continues to impose forced abortions on countless Chinese mothers, will be marked on Sept. 25. In this May 8 interview with the Register in Rome, Littlejohn explains in more detail what is keeping the policy in place, why reports about China ending the policy are incorrect and why a more accurate name for it would be "China's forced-abortion policy."
What have been the effects of the one-child policy?
First of all, you have to look at the demographics. The Chinese Communist Party is very aware that its one-child policy has caused, and is continuing to cause, an increasing demographic disaster, in three ways.
One, because of the traditional preference for boys, girls are selectively aborted, so they have approximately 37-40 million more men than women living in China. This is driving human trafficking and human slavery in China and is also a recipe for domestic instability.
Two, they have a rapidly aging population. The reason why they instituted the one-child policy 35 years ago is that, during the Mao era, fertility rates among women became very high, 5.9 births per woman. Under the one-child policy, it has plummeted to approximately 1.3 to 1.5 births per woman, depending on who you ask. But the population explosion under the Mao era is now heading towards retirement, so they don't have a young population to support that elderly population, and they don't have social security as we know it. That's a disaster waiting to happen.
Then the third problem is that China's workforce is actually beginning to become depleted. 2013 was the first year when the trend went down, and the number of workers is going down. It's actually too late. Taiwanese demographers say that the recent modification of the policy is too little, too late to stave off the threefold demographic disaster they're heading into. Why do they keep the policy?
China's population problem isn't that they have too many people, it's that they have too few young people and too few women. I believe I can answer the unanswerable and explain the unexplainable. I believe that the reason the Chinese Communist Party has not abandoned and will never abandon the one-child policy is that the one-child policy is keeping them in place. How does it keep them in place?
In four ways. No. 1, when the one-child policy was instituted 35 years ago, China was experiencing a population explosion, and I believe it was originally instituted as population control. The terror that is caused by forced abortion and forced sterilization was a by-product of the policy and was not the purpose of the policy. Now that the policy makes no sense whatsoever, I believe terror is the purpose of the policy.
China has many different human-rights abuses, they have problems in terms of executing prisoners to harvesting organs for transplant, persecuting of Christians, Falun Gong and other faiths, overuse of the death penalty and the detention of human-rights lawyers and journalists. All of these are human-rights abuses of the Chinese Communist Party, but they affect only a thin sliver of the society.
The one-child policy is unique because it affects everyone. It is a way for the Chinese Communist government to instill terror across the board in China and to demonstrate to people that the reach of its power extends from Beijing to every single woman in China, the power to declare life or death over the baby in that womb. That is terrifying. So I believe this is social control masquerading as population control.
The spirit of the "cultural revolution" lives on in the family-planning police. The family-planning police function as domestic terrorists; and in my opinion, forced abortion is official government rape. That's what they're doing to the population.
What are the other reasons for maintaining the policy?
The second reason is that they're making a lot of money out of it. According to one estimate, the Chinese Communist Party has taken in $314 billion in fines through the family-planning police, so women are fined in all kinds of different circumstances. These fines are arbitrary; they?re not uniformly imposed throughout the country.
But if you get someone pregnant without a birth permit, a fine can be 10 times your annual salary. And these fines are completely not regulated. They're not accounted for. There's complete opacity, there's no transparency in where this funding is going, and local officials have been accused of pocketing the money. So that's a big reason not to get rid of the policy.
The third reason is that the family-planning officials, the family-planning police, form a wide infrastructure of coercion. According to one estimate, there are approximately 1 million people engaged in coerced population control in China. If that were a standing army, it would be the sixth-largest standing army in the world, on par with the army of North Korea. Social unrest is on the rise in China; it's sharply increasing. They can use this army of family-planning police, turn it in any direction, to quash dissent in any direction. So why would they get rid of this elaborate infrastructure of coercion? They need it to keep the population down, to keep security in China.
The fourth reason, I believe, is to deliberately rupture the natural relationships of trust with the Chinese people. In China, they employ a system of paid informants, where anyone can inform on a woman who is pregnant without a birth permit.
It can be her neighbors, her friends, her co-workers, people in the villages, who are paid to look at women's abdomens to see if they're a little bit bigger. So since anyone can inform on you, there's no relationship of trust.
Do you have any examples of this?
A couple of years ago, I testified in Congress about a woman who had had five forced abortions in a factory in China. She said that, in her work unit, if one person became illegally pregnant, the entire work unit would be punished, so all the women were spying on each other to report on each other about an illegal pregnancy. Then, if a woman runs away because she wants to have her baby, because she wants to run away from the family-planning police, they can detain her family, her parents, her husband and her extended family. They can be detained and tortured.
So if the one-child policy can be used to rupture relationships with family, friends, co-workers and neighbors, it can be used to keep down organizing for democracy. If you cannot trust anyone, you cannot organize for democracy.
Could China be forced to end the policy?
I don't think that the Chinese Communist Party will ever abandon the one-child policy. What's frustrating, for me, is there's such a misunderstanding of the one-child policy, because it has been misnamed. The one-child policy is actually not a one-child policy: There are many exceptions to the policy, and the Chinese Communist Party is heading towards this demographic disaster and creating exceptions of small segments of population that can have another child.
There were media reports not long ago about China ending the policy. Can you explain why this was not correct?
On Jan. 1, 2014, they [the Chinese government] said if one member of a couple is an only child, that couple can have a second child. Because it's called a one-child policy and a couple can have a second child, Western media blares out, "China Abandons One-Child Policy,? and people say, "Oh great, I'm so glad they're not doing that anymore."
But, actually, you need a birth permit for the first and second child. The core of the policy is not that the Chinese government allows a woman to have one child or two children. The core of the policy is that they're telling people how many kids they can have, and they're enforcing that limit coercively, including through forced abortion and forced sterilization.
It should really be called "China's forced-abortion policy" because that doesn't end. The forced-abortion policy doesn't end, no matter how many children they allow you to have. So that would be a better name for the policy.
Of course, they didn't name it that, because it sounds so terrible, but it's much more accurate.
http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/population-control-has-china-headed-for-demographic-disaster/#view-comments
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China cannot support an increasing birth rate. People will starve. In the past, people in some areas of China have starved because the region could not produce enough food to support them. Famines were common in China until recently.
China has not enforced the one child policy. A friend of mine married a mainland woman, and she is one of two children, both girls.
India has no single child policy, and has similar problems with too few female children, and India is far more likely to suffer famines due to overpopulation. People starve in India regularly, much more than in China. Bangladesh has even more severe problems with overpopulation.
Nature deals with overpopulation in much more cruel ways than requiring a permit to have a second child. The excess child simply starves. Perhaps all the children in the family starve. It is not like CU4 is going to send money to support excess Bangladeshis: they are "muzzies" and deserve to die.
I do not think there is any population policy, voluntary or compulsory that will make everyone happy about China's population. I don't know what I would do, but that is hardly important, since they would not listen to me anyway.
I think this is up to the Chinese to decide. It could be that only the cleverest Chinese will be able to outwit the regulations, and since intelligence has a heritble rate of at least 50%, this will result in an increase in smarter Chinese over the long run.
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If a crash and famine is really inevitable in China .
We need not just have sympathy just for the Chinese, they are still a big dog in a small yard and can share their problems.
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I do not think that anything is inevitable. The planet could support many times the population if we would just get logical and start raising bugs to eat for protein. But I do not see this happening. I have eaten ants and grasshoppers, and have had no desire to repeat the experience.
But there is a limit to the number of people that a country the size of China can support comfortably. I am pretty sure I would find Hong Kong cramped.
It might be that China's so-called "one-child policy" caused problems. The issue is did it cause more problems than doing nothing would have done?
Chinese society has always been more collectivist than Western society. Whether a Chinese policy violates the beliefs of the average Knight of Columbus or Opus Dei member is of lesser concern to those who rule China and those who live in it.
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The one child policy was a correction on a previous policy of encouraging fertility.
Even if we are all eating crickets , there will have to be a workforce to raise and distribute them.
Japan is struggling with this sort of demographic problem, even though they don't have an insane government.
We are going to take our lumps when the baby boom is helpless.
This is predictable , and predicting that it will be worse for China is based on the numbers.
Now whether this is because the Mao government encouraged too much reproduction or the following governments got too restrictive with it , either way, this is the fault of the government .
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And if we in the US did nothing about telling people how many children to have and also have the same aging problem, can we blame the government as well for its inaction?
What we can do is blame the SOCIETY. Not that it will do any good.
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And if we in the US did nothing about telling people how many children to have and also have the same aging problem, can we blame the government as well for its inaction?
What we can do is blame the SOCIETY. Not that it will do any good.
Our problem is smaller , because people are less liable to radical experiment than government is.
The birthrate of the US population is just barely replacement , and our population is growing with immigrants that mostly arrive at a productive age.
Some neglect really is benign,
The people have made a gestalt decision better than the government could have , and have implemented it at minimal cost.
Of course we are still an attractive nuisance , as we rob the rest of the world of it s youth and skill we alleviate our problems out of everyone else's hide.
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I do not see any need for the government to be concerned with overpopulation in the US.
China and India, both with four times our population, are in a different situation.
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Yes.
and a large part of the difference between their situation and ours is the people being lead differently.
The better freedom here leads indirectly to the population being better educated and willing to be persuaded to employ birth control.
Draconian enforcement of harsh law might be a viable alternative, but I see it as open to criticism.
If, of course, that isn't forbidden also.
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The major difference is the huge number of people in China and India
Americans do not tend to have large families, while in China, they number that do is greater.
China does not impose any policy on non-Han Citizens, such as Uigars and Tibetans.
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Americans do not tend to have large families, ....
This is a recent development , as most American Women are more educated than they were , and as Americans are more and more persuaded that there is advantage in small families.
This same thing is happening in Germany and Russia even though the society is different each of these.
Are Chinese and Indians harder to educate or harder to persuade?
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Chinese and Indians are much harder to convince, because male children are what is needed to support the parents in their old age. Female children are a drain as you must pay a dowry to marry them off, and then, they are linked to the husband's family and the daughter's parents are out of luck. That is why Indians have larger families: if the child is a girl you have her aborted and start over or you have her and then start over.
Girls are not worth much as employees in India, and only slightly more in China.
It is not that therse people are stubborn, it is just that everyone follows the customs of their culture.
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Well
The one child policy has actually increase a females status fairly high.due to the smaller ratio families pay more attention to thier one child. It's actually harder for wealthy chinese men to get wives now. They actually say no alot more often.
I've been told often to avoid the city girls back home.
That articke failed to mention since the policy was introduced alot more peoples personal wealth has increased to the point certain food are not eaten anymore due more people enjoying more luxury
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That articke failed to mention since the policy was introduced alot more peoples personal wealth has increased to the point certain food are not eaten anymore due more people enjoying more luxury
Yes, this has been good news for people who gather winter worm, but bad news for shark and rhinoceros.
Is increased private purchase power in China good news for the government of China?
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Aborting females seems not only cruel to those girls , but also likely destabilizing to the social order.
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Sort of yes,maybe
China is hoping to replace hong kong with shanghai . China always prefered power over money. But th global community cannot trust shanghai for the moment. Ex. Legslly speaking foriegn technology is not made in china it's assemble due to china's copyright laws that is extremely prohibited. Anything made in china will be half owned by the government. This really puts a hamper in the typre of manufacturing done in china. Apple only has it's stuff assembled there.
Chips can't be copied there due to the fact it cost billions to make a plant running. Not something any business willing to trow money at yet
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Oops
Aborting girls actually increased the status of women there is thiers less of them. You can't say thier disposable anymore
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Oops
Aborting girls actually increased the status of women there is thiers less of them. You can't say thier disposable anymore
Is this like I could get better pay as an electrician if I were to kill off 20% of my union brothers?
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I think this is a poorly planned strategy for getting a raise. Chances are you would simply get thrown in jail for life and executed.
Plus, you are not in China and this is about China.
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Normally I like to read a Donald Westlake book, but let me warn you about "the Axe" which he must have written in a funk.
A very smart engineer is desperate to find work , and finds he is pretty good at getting away with murder, so he reduces his competition.
This is enough spoiler, the book was well written and plotted , but the subject and the conclusion I found depressing.
But it would work! If you got away with it.
So women being scarce is good for their status?
And all they had to have was the decimation of their daughters.
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It is not a given that girls will be more valuable. It is a given that young men will have more difficulty in finding a bride. It might mean that kidnapping will become more prevalent. There are many places in the world where the man absconding with the girl is the usual manner of acquiring a spouse. It avoids the expense of both the dowry and the wedding.
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Supply and demand determine price.
If women are harder to get , they will be worthy of more protection.
Eventually they might be actually worthy of keeping alive from the beginning.
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Well not sure the men are desperate yet. But since the family has one child and if its a girl she will have alot more attention than normal and as such will be abit more picky who she marries and the parents are likely not push that hard anymore.
Were talking one child per family so if the daughter live for a few years she likely have no competition to kill.
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What will make the biggest impact on societies in China and India is not a government imposed one child policy, but the invention of a system which can predict the gender of a fetus. The Maoists did not think of this when they imposed a one child policy, because it did not exist.
This will change the relationship between the sexes, just as the birth control pill did.
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Well actually india does lean toward boys alot more so possibly alot of girl don't make to term. I already stated china has already changed in it's atitudes towards women. They might gasp go marry indian women. Kidding that will never happen.
Globally speaking indians are probably the most down upon people in the world. Crazy
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Globally speaking indians are probably the most down upon people in the world. Crazy
What do you mean by "down upon people"?
It is much more difficult for Indian men to find miss right, because she must (1) be from the proper caste and subcaste (2) speak the same language, and (3) have the same social status (or appear to). Indian mothers in law have more ways to look down on their son's wives than any other mothers in law on the planet.
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Typo
Looked down upon
From people i know from various other countries. I've never heard a possitive remark about them. At least here in the U.S. They are soo unknown they get the benefit of the doubt.
I love torturing them by telling they don't know how hard it is to be asian and rant til he scream "I'm asian" lol
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I have not heard anything against Indian Americans as a group. Some right wingers really like Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley, and probably worship Dinesh D'Souza.
Amusing fact: Israelis are also Asians. So are Palestinians.
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Well. Thier both children of abraham so thier pretty much the the same . They even admit the irony of it.
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Nonetheless Israel gets to enter the Eurovision contests and plays with Europeans in soccer.