DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: R.R. on August 24, 2011, 11:00:46 AM
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Biden Says He's Not 'Second-Guessing' China's One-Child Rule
(http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a206/mainstreetmarshall/artbidenpointgi.jpg)
Vice President Biden is facing criticism after telling a crowd in China that he doesn't have a problem with the country's one-child policy.
The vice president addressed the policy while answering a question about the U.S. budget deficit at a university in Chengdu on Sunday. He was trying to explain how China has a looming entitlement crisis on its hands because its strict enforcement of the one-child-per-family rule has essentially eroded the "safety net" for seniors. Fewer children means fewer people earning money and supporting retirees.
But in explaining that concept, Biden appeared to condone China's policy.
"You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand -- I'm not second-guessing -- of one child per family," Biden said, according to the official transcript of the event. "The result being that you're in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable."
Conservative groups, and at least one GOP presidential candidate, slammed the vice president for the remark.
"Really, Mr. Vice President? You're not second-guessing a policy that has resulted in untold numbers of forced abortions, forced sterilizations, outrageous fines or even jail time for families that dare to defy the law, and a gender imbalance crisis?" the Susan B. Anthony List said on its blog.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, called China's policy "gruesome and barbaric" and questioned how Biden could have given it a pass.
"Vice President Biden's acquiescence to such a policy should shock the conscience of every American. Instead of condoning the policy, Vice President Biden should have condemned it in the strongest possible terms," he said in a statement.
Penny Nance, CEO of Concerned Women for America, said in a written statement that Biden's comment "crosses the lines of ignorant and wrong."
But a spokesman for the vice president said in a statement later Tuesday that, ?The Obama Administration strongly opposes all aspects of China?s coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization."
"The Vice President believes such practices are repugnant. He also pointed out, in China, that the policy is, as a practical matter, unsustainable. He was arguing against the One Child Policy to a Chinese audience," the spokesman added.
China introduced the policy three decades ago to help curb population growth. It does not apply to those in rural areas, but families living in cities can be subjected to stiff fines for breaking the rule. The policy has also resulted in families choosing to have male children more frequently than female children.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/08/23/biden-says-hes-not-second-guessing-chinas-one-child-rule/ (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/08/23/biden-says-hes-not-second-guessing-chinas-one-child-rule/)
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DISGRACEFUL!
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I think a three years ago china was reviewing shutting the program. but since the population is not shrinking it`s still going strong. the real problem is the policy is creating less productive people and it will effecti it`s economic status very quickly.
these newer models are not as durable as the 1980`s models.
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he's as ass kisser plus he probably agrees with it. after all, liberals believe humans are ruining the planet when in reality it's just liberals that are ruining everything.
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Mother Nature also has a solution for overpopulation that she has used on China for centuries. Famine is the alternative. And It matters not that Biden approves or not, because China will not pay the slightest bit of attention to what he or an American thinks, not should they. It is their solution to their country's problem, and we shall see pretty soon that it is far more humane than what India has done, which has not worked.
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DISGRACEFUL!
Why?
I don't *like* it, but as said in this thread, famine is the alternative.
Hasn't anyone ever wondered why the Chinese are willing to eat damn near anything? Famine is in their living memory.
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Mother Nature also has a solution for overpopulation that she has used on China for centuries. Famine is the alternative. And It matters not that Biden approves or not, because China will not pay the slightest bit of attention to what he or an American thinks, not should they. It is their solution to their country's problem, and we shall see pretty soon that it is far more humane than what India has done, which has not worked.
Have you ever prayed to Mother Nature?
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Why?
I don't *like* it, but as said in this thread, famine is the alternative.
here's just one of many
(http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/images/set3/NBC_News_Logo-Small.JPG)
What was missing from the debate over
Biden's controversial remarks in China.
By NBC's Jo Ling Kent.
Vice President Joe Biden received attention -- and plenty of GOP criticism -- when he said on his recent trip to China that he's "not second-guessing" that nation's one-child policy.
"You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand -- I'm not second-guessing -- of one child per family," Biden said in remarks discussing China's social-safety net.
"The result being that you're in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable."
But there was one major point missing from the debate over Biden's controversial remarks: The Chinese government, it turns out, has quietly been "second-guessing" its one-child policy for quite some time, given its aging population and millions of grooms without brides on the horizon.
For one thing, the massive Chinese population is getting older, which means a shrinking workforce. Indeed, the most recent national census in April revealed that the proportion of mainland Chinese people aged 14 or younger was 16.6%, down by more than 6 percentage points from a decade ago.
So some local governments are encouraging parents to think about adding more to the family. Two years ago, for instance, the Shanghai city government started actively encouraging eligible couples to have more than one child.
"We advocate eligible couples to have two kids, because it can help reduce the proportion of the aging people and alleviate a work force shortage in the future," Xie Lingli, director of the Shanghai Population and Family Planning Commission, said in a July 2009 edition of the China Daily, the country's largest state-run English-language newspaper.
Second, China also has a looming groom problem on its hands.
Approximately 24 million Chinese men of marrying age are projected to find themselves wife-less in 2020 -- partly because the one-child policy has led to sex-selective abortion of female fetuses, according to a study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the government's premier think tank.
In fact, in a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday, Deputy Health Minister Liu Qian unveiled even more census figures showing an increasingly imbalanced sex ratio at birth on the Chinese mainland. The China Daily cited "the abuse of medical technology such as illegal sex-selective abortion" among the culprits.
Although Liu did not discuss a loosening of the one-child policy, one thing is clear from all this: At the very least, whispers of change are circulating among government officials on the subject of punishing "ineligible" couples who do elect to have a second child.
It is also worthwhile to note that there are several loopholes and exceptions to China's one-child rule -- first established in 1979 -- that already exist. Some rural residents can have a second child if their first is a girl, because of the ongoing stigmatization of female births. Also, if both parents are single children, they can have two kids. And ethnic minorities are allowed to have more than one child.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/08/24/7462246-what-was-missing-from-the-debate-over-bidens-controversial-remarks-in-china (http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/08/24/7462246-what-was-missing-from-the-debate-over-bidens-controversial-remarks-in-china)
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Why would I pray to Mother Nature? Mother Nature is simply a convenient term we use to personify the combined forces of nature. One might as well pray to the weather or to good luck.
The point is that Biden could not change China's one-child policy no matter what he said, and there is no reason to engage in fruitlessly annoying an ally. There is a very good reason for a one-child policy, which is that China does not have sufficient resources to feed two billion people or three billion people, and therefore they must conquer territory or starve. Eventually even conquest would not suffice (Siberia is very cold), and the choice is severe restrictions on births now or atarvation in 20 years or so.
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Why?
I don't *like* it, but as said in this thread, famine is the alternative.
here's just one of many
It is complicated, I never said it wasn't.
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Why would I pray to Mother Nature? Mother Nature is simply a convenient term we use to personify the combined forces of nature. One might as well pray to the weather or to good luck.
The point is that Biden could not change China's one-child policy no matter what he said, and there is no reason to engage in fruitlessly annoying an ally. There is a very good reason for a one-child policy, which is that China does not have sufficient resources to feed two billion people or three billion people, and therefore they must conquer territory or starve. Eventually even conquest would not suffice (Siberia is very cold), and the choice is severe restrictions on births now or atarvation in 20 years or so.
If Biden can't change anything why is he in China in the first place? Is he just taking a vacation and sticking taxpayers with the tab? Since clearly our country is broke why should Biden waste his our money going to China, considering he has no effect on them. I agree with you in that Biden couldn't influence much of anything. Since Obama picked him it seems that Obama is an idiot or fool to select someone that isn't capable of stepping in and doing a better job than of course Obama himself? Unless he thinks a better job is screwing things up more than Obama has messed them up.
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It takes Biden a lot of words to say very little and have little meaning to the listeners.
http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/article/terry-jeffrey-bidens-obsequious-bow-beij (http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/article/terry-jeffrey-bidens-obsequious-bow-beij)
Vice President Joe Biden's talent for using many words to say little or nothing -- or worse -- was never more conspicuously displayed than during his trip to China.
At Sichuan University on Sunday, after Biden delivered a 4,600-word speech, a student asked him about the importance of public speaking. "That is a very good question," Biden said -- as he launched into an 863-word answer.
In the midst of those 863 words, Biden paid a tribute to brevity -- in an incoherent sentence of 68 words.
The White House transcribed this Bidenesque brilliance as follows: "And so language, the ability not only to master the ability to put your ideas into words succinctly on a platform to communicate ideas to your own people, it is even more impressive when you have the capacity to do that and communicate your ideas, especially as future business and political and moral leaders of the world in the language of the people to whom you are speaking."
At the same event, Biden congratulated Sichuan University for counting "amongst its alumni some of the most illustrious figures in recent Chinese history." He then hailed Sichuan's late graduate Zhu De as "one of the most illustrious figures and a founding father of the republic."
Zhu De, in fact, was the commander of the People's Liberation Army and a full partner with Chairman Mao in transforming the world's most populous nation into a communist dictatorship. "Zhu De was one of the most important members of the CPC's first generation of leading collective with Mao Zedong at the core," says the Communist Party of China Encyclopedia.
This "founding father of the republic," as Biden called him, was a key figure in a regime that outlawed the Roman Catholic Church to which Biden himself belongs.
While lauding Chinese communists in China, Biden was tongue-tied in trying to explain the greatness of America and our people.
"It's hard to define what an American is," Biden said in his speech at Sichuan. And apparently it is too hard for Biden.
What our vice president should have told the Chinese students was this: America became a great nation because it was founded on a true understanding of the nature of man and the purpose of government. We believe that all men are created equal and that God gives each and every one of us inalienable rights -- including the rights to life, liberty and private property -- and that it is the duty of the government to protect these rights. We believe God gave these same rights to every person here in China and that for China to become a truly great nation, the Chinese government must recognize these rights and protect them rather than deny them to its people.
Biden should have said to the Chinese regime: Tear down the wall between your people and their God-given rights.
He did not say that.
He said this: "Your policy has been one which I fully understand -- I'm not second-guessing -- of one child per family."
The Obama State Department's most recent human rights report on China says that China's one-child-per-couple policy "in some cases resulted in forced abortion or forced sterilization."
It also caused the selective annihilation of baby girls. "Female infanticide, sex-selective abortions, and the abandonment and neglect of baby girls remained problems due to the traditional preference for sons and the coercive birth limitation policy," said the report.
The same cowardly spirit seemed to guide what Biden did not say in China as well as what he did say.
According to the White House transcripts of the vice president's remarks at six different public appearances over three days in China, he did not say a word about the plight of faithful Catholic priests, bishops and laypersons in China.
As Obama's State Department concedes, China's still-communist regime is still arbitrarily arresting and detaining Catholic clergymen who refuse to betray their church, which is still denied the right to openly function in China.
Unlike the mothers and babies subject to coercive abortions in China, at least the faithful and courageous Catholic priests of China can be thankful that Vice President Joe Biden did not openly tell the communists he wasn't second-guessing their persecution of the church.
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CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER:
"The vice president of the United States should never say about a policy as immoral as that
"I understand."
This is one of the failings of this administration. Yes, we cannot do anything about China's one-child policy. We cannot unilaterally change the regime in Syria and Iran. But this administration simply refuses to speak out on the basic fundamental moral issues on which all Americans are united. It is a scandal to say, "We understand."
The number of forced abortions in China as a result of this, the misery and essentially the torture that people have felt having to destroy a child, even infanticide, as a result of this is simply outrageous. And for a vice president to say he understands is essentially to negate, even to betray our values.
Look, India tried this and that's a democracy. Many, many years ago, under Indira Gandhi. And the people in the democracy spoke up and said no, and ultimately it was cancelled.
But in China, which is a dictatorship and we forget it because it's also capitalist, but it's a communist dictatorship. There is no saying no.
And the other disaster that's going to happen because in China a male child is valued over a female child, a lot of the infanticide and the abortions have been for girls. And as a result, there are going to be tens of millions of unmarried, unmarriageable men on the loose essentially in China in the next generation, which will be a huge problem for China and its surroundings.
But aside from the policy issue is the moral issue.
And this administration refuses to speak out on the fundamental moral issues when it counts."
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Now the Obozo White House is trying to "save face" over Foot-In-Mouth-Biden!
FULL RETREAT TROOPS!
a spokesperson for the White House stated, Vice President Biden finds
the policy "repugnant," going on to explain the official opposition to the policy:
"The Obama Administration strongly opposes all aspects of China's coercive
birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jMo_0ynD0iZfofvq_HzZGJsD-BSQ?docId=CNG.69ea4bb79280a30dbb831673325c5a3c.2e1 (http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jMo_0ynD0iZfofvq_HzZGJsD-BSQ?docId=CNG.69ea4bb79280a30dbb831673325c5a3c.2e1)
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Biden is right, The Chinese have every right to make their own policies for their own people, and fuck Krauthammer and the jackass he rode in on. It is utterly futile for the US to badmouth China to please a handful of religious nutjobs.
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The Chinese have every right to make their own policies for their own people, and fuck Krauthammer and the jackass he rode in on. It is utterly futile for the US to badmouth China...
So the Obama White House and Joe Biden are wrong?
to call China's policy "repugnant," and to announce they"strongly oppose
all aspects of China's coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization"
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Biden is right, The Chinese have every right to make their own policies for their own people, and fuck Krauthammer and the jackass he rode in on. It is utterly futile for the US to badmouth China to please a handful of religious nutjobs.
I hope one day the Chinese abort you.
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Someday they will carry you away howling mad in a straitjacket, you hateful lunatic.
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http://www.npr.org/2011/06/15/137106354/in-asia-the-perils-of-aborting-girls-and-keeping-boys (http://www.npr.org/2011/06/15/137106354/in-asia-the-perils-of-aborting-girls-and-keeping-boys)
In her book, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, Hvistendahl writes that wider access to ultrasound technology and abortion has allowed parents in these developing countries to abort daughters in the womb and keep sons.
"As a country develops, birth rate falls, new technology comes in, and, unfortunately, one of the side effects is skewed sex ratio at birth," Hvistendahl tells Morning Edition host Renee Montagne.
The rise of an educated and wealthy clientele in many Asian countries has made sex-selective abortion more common. But, Hvistendahl says, there are a few key differences between the cultural context of abortion in Asia and the West.
"In the U.S., a woman may have to brave picket lines to get an abortion," Hvistendahl says. "She may not have a clinic in her town, and in many parts of Asia abortion is readily available, and so is ultrasound."
Hvistendahl adds that gender discrimination in developing nations does not fully explain the drop in the number of girls born. "You have countries where women have very low status — in the Middle East for example — and the sex ratio at birth is balanced," she says.
Gender imbalance comes, in part, from dramatic drops in birth rates. "The average Korean woman in the 1950s had six children. Now the birth rate is close to one," says Hvistendahl. "It's not that women necessarily want sons any more than before, but there's more pressure on them."
Hvistendahl explains that part of the drop in birth rates in Asia can be attributed to "a history of population control, and a dark history at that."
The Dangers Of Gender Imbalance
Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men
By Mara Hvistendahl
Hardcover, 336 pages
PublicAffairs
List Price: $26.99
Read An Excerpt
As an example of the consequences of sex selection, Hvistendahl says that in Taiwan, many men have difficulty finding wives using traditional methods. Some even spend thousands of dollars on "marriage tours" to other Asian countries.
The fee includes travel, lodging and the purchase of women there.
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CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER:
"The vice president of the United States should never say about a policy as immoral as that
"I understand."
This is one of the failings of this administration. Yes, we cannot do anything about China's one-child policy. We cannot unilaterally change the regime in Syria and Iran. But this administration simply refuses to speak out on the basic fundamental moral issues on which all Americans are united. It is a scandal to say, "We understand."
The number of forced abortions in China as a result of this, the misery and essentially the torture that people have felt having to destroy a child, even infanticide, as a result of this is simply outrageous. And for a vice president to say he understands is essentially to negate, even to betray our values.
He's right - Biden should have kept his fat mouth shut.
But as horrible as the policies are there, it's a terrible thing to decide WHEN the children should die - as part of a family planning program or of famines later.
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It matters not one whit what Biden says, he will change nothing.
Basically, that is what he said.
The Chinese have their values, as does every culture. And not all values are seen in the same way by all.
Krauthammer is a reactionary fruitcake.
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http://www.npr.org/2011/06/15/137106354/in-asia-the-perils-of-aborting-girls-and-keeping-boys (http://www.npr.org/2011/06/15/137106354/in-asia-the-perils-of-aborting-girls-and-keeping-boys)[As an example of the consequences of sex selection, Hvistendahl says that in Taiwan, many men have difficulty finding wives using traditional methods. Some even spend thousands of dollars on "marriage tours" to other Asian countries.
The fee includes travel, lodging and the purchase of women there.
China is more prosperous and we are less, if trends continue will Chineese tourists start buying our women?
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China is more prosperous and we are less,
OMG Plane what does this mean?
Most of China is VERY third world.
There is some unspeakable poverty in China, like nothing you could see in the US on such a scale.
Tens if not hundreds of millions of Chinese live on less than $5 a day.
Most Chinese homes do not have hot running water.
The 2010 Human Development Report by the United Nations lists
the US as #4 in the world and has China listed at #91.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index)
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http://www.npr.org/2011/06/15/137106354/in-asia-the-perils-of-aborting-girls-and-keeping-boys (http://www.npr.org/2011/06/15/137106354/in-asia-the-perils-of-aborting-girls-and-keeping-boys)[As an example of the consequences of sex selection, Hvistendahl says that in Taiwan, many men have difficulty finding wives using traditional methods. Some even spend thousands of dollars on "marriage tours" to other Asian countries.
The fee includes travel, lodging and the purchase of women there.
China is more prosperous and we are less, if trends continue will Chineese tourists start buying our women?
they can have all the liberal women we have in America for free!!! Why sell em?
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actually it`s the whole spectrum . extreme poverty to extreme excess .
don`t forget taiwan is not china,despite what china says.
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The average income in the US is higher than the average income in Taiwan, Singapore, and there prosperous overseas Chinese communities. It is MUCH higher than the average income in mainland China, though surely there are many, many millionaires in Mainland China.
So far, buying wives seems to be more common in the US than most other places. There are cultural factors involved. There are few American wives in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, despite the enormous prosperity of those places. On the other hand, Rupert Murdock ditched his Aussie first wife for a younger Chinese woman. Senator Phil Gramm of Texas also has a younger Chinese wife.
Biden's mission to China was not to cause them to change their one-child policy. It was concerned with trade arrangements, and to give the Administration a chance to get acquainted with China's probable new leader.
Note that when Germans or French or British leaders come here, it is not to tell us that we have far too many people in jail in this country, considering our population, are really bad at preventing recidivism and should end the death penalty. In the same way, China's policy on population control is also not really any of the business of our leaders.
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China is more prosperous and we are less,
OMG Plane what does this mean?
China is more prosperous than it used to be, they have not caught up to us at all, yet.
But where is it written that the USA will never combine enough mistakes to fritter away its own prosperity?