I disagree. In a country with no form of social security, the closest thing to keep you from starving in old age are sons [1]. The older generations would riot

I disagree. In a country with no form of social security, the closest thing to keep you from starving in old age are sons [1]. The older generations would riot if China started waging a war that took their sons - and thus their old age pensions away. China's current massive population is the consequence of Mao's belief that the Chinese could outbreed any nuclear war. The one-child policy is an attempt to get China back to a sustainable population size, which, for China's land and resources is about 1/2 the current size. Notes: 1 - Women marry into other families, and so one would lose the support in old age, as the resources earned by the daughters would go to the family she married into.