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There is some question on whether the one-child policy was even needed. If you look at a graph of "children per mother" chart before and after the original poli

There is some question on whether the one-child policy was even needed. If you look at a graph of "children per mother" chart before and after the original policy went into effect, it's quite evident that rates were dropping for more than a decade beforehand: * https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/october/china-one-child-policy-effect https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/october/china... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Birth_rate_in_China.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Birth_rate_in_China.svg * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy Industrialization, urbanization, reduction in child mortality, and the education of women accomplished a reduction in the rate in China just like it did/does just about everywhere else. The ghastly human rights violations that led from the policy were completely unnecessary.

stefan_ 5y ago
There is another graph here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China#/media/File:China_single_age_population_pyramid_2020.png 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?
- faitswulff 5y ago
  Interesting how the assertion that Chinese people kill infant girls en masse goes completely unchallenged without nuance on this site.
  - HDMI_Cable 5y ago
    Are there any other explanations for the massive male surplus?
    - faitswulff 5y ago
      Is adoption murder? Abortion? Why is it easier to imagine that Chinese people murder infants than it is to imagine literally any other scenario? Why is it easier to assume that a massive sex imbalance is the result members of a particular group of people being psychopaths rather than the result of some systemic cause? Hmm.
      - eloisius 5y ago
        I think the systemic cause was clearly pointed out: the one child policy.
        faitswulff 5y ago
        And the killing of children follows, naturally
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        kbelder 5y ago
        Naturally.
      - prepend 5y ago
        Infanticide doesn’t mean psychopaths. It’s been practiced, and I think super bad, by many cultures. I don’t think that means the culture is full of psychopaths. Also, I assumed the reason there was no evidence posted for the Chinese infanticide claim is that it’s extremely common and has been known for a long time. I just assumed everyone was aware. It doesn’t mean people killing literal babies, but does mean stuff like more abortions of female embryos. [0] Wikipedia [1] has a more general article with more links to sources. [0] https://www.npr.org/2016/02/01/465124337/how-chinas-one-child-policy-led-to-forced-abortions-30-million-bachelors https://www.npr.org/2016/02/01/465124337/how-chinas-one-chil... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide_in_China
        5y ago
- toxik 5y ago
  The question was if it was NEEDED, not if it had any effect.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > How can we claim this policy has no effect if clearly people are still killing female infants? No effect ≠ no need. The intended purpose was to reduce birth rates for population control. This was being accomplished before the the policy even came into effect.
- himlion 5y ago
  Killed, or just unreported? Probably both, but I guess more unreported.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    Can you raise a unreported child in china? How would that work? With no papers at all and the communist buerocrats also really likes paper about everything. ?
    - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
      https://thediplomat.com/2015/03/chinas-hidden-children/ https://thediplomat.com/2015/03/chinas-hidden-children/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/11/30/researchers-may-have-found-many-of-chinas-30-million-missing-girls/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/11/30... It's also China, where they put toxic stuff in watered down milk to make it look as foamy as protein-rich good milk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal , i.e. a place with a lot of corruption and where gaps are possible.
      - alisonkisk 5y ago
        Are you suggesting that China is somehow unusual in poisoning the populace? Are you aware of Superfund? Nestle, who convinced mother's to starve and poison their babies with formula and dirty water that replaced and then blocked lactation?
      - MandieD 5y ago
        Up until Covid stopped business travel, my Chinese colleagues brought home as much infant formula or follow up milk powder for toddlers as they thought they could get away with when visiting HQ in Germany, and always asked us to bring some with us when we went there. Lots of stores here had limits on how much you could buy at once because of that.
      - whoevercares 5y ago
        It’s just matter of couple hundreds RMB “pay the toll”
- TimPC 5y ago
  Misread graph. Removed comment.
  - robjan 5y ago
    There is still a male surplus and culturally people still prefer to have boys because they carry their family name. Girls are married out of the family and if your one child is a girl there will be nobody to look after you in your old age.
    - thefounder 5y ago
      >> there will be nobody to look after you in your old age. What a sick, selfish society. If you can't take care of yourself maybe it's time to go?
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        What a sick little comment. The world is a lot larger than the rich West and historically children were what we have - in some wealthy places - a social security system for. But in many places where the state is barely functional and family ties are strong children tend to take care of their elders, because that's how it's been traditionally. The best way to reduce that factor in how many children people have is to up the standard of living, which more or less automatically reduces the number of children people will have because they no longer need to worry that much about their old age. On another note: those societies have - of necessity - much stronger family ties than that same rich West, so something valuable is lost along with the social needs.
        thefounder 5y ago
        It looks like in China it's even a law[1] that old people use to take advantage of their children. Just because it's a "tradition" doesn't make it good. It's been a "tradition" to beat your wife and children as well in many parts of the world or even worse. If you are miserable why would you like to make your children's life miserable as well? [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7422934/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7422934/
- dan-robertson 5y ago
  Wasn’t their some policy saying that rural mothers could have a second child if their first was a girl? If they each had the maximum number of children, it would lead to an average of about 1 boy and 0.75 girls per rural mother.
  - lozenge 5y ago
    Yes, the article saying the one child policy remained untill2016 is an oversimplification. There were already exceptions introduced including when both parents had never had any siblings.
  - areyousure 5y ago
    50% B + 25% GB + 25% GG = 0.75 B + 0.75 G. Can you think of a law ("stopping rule") that could even get the expected number of boys higher than the expected number of girls?
    - dmichulke 5y ago
      For gambling it would would work if you do a "double or nothing" type of bet. Unfortunately, you'll be quickly rate limited by birth capacity, even if you somehow manage to double the amount of children per birth. Also, asymptotically, you'll still be around a 50% split.
      - waterhouse 5y ago
        Assuming no selective-abortion shenanigans, every child you have is expected 50% male, 50% female (barring e.g. unusual men who only produce sperm of one gender—I think that exists but is extremely rare), so there's no possible strategy that leads to an uneven gender split, probability-wise. But I think there were selective-abortion shenanigans, and that the policy was effectively in response to them. If we assume each family wants, as its first objective, to maximize the number of sons, and, as its second objective, to maximize the number of daughters, then each selective-aborting family would have exactly one daughter followed by one son under such a policy.
- infinity0 5y ago
  You should always compare the data against other countries before jumping to hasty conclusions based on your own prejudices and confirmation biases. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:China_single_age_population_pyramid_2020.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:China_single_age_populati... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA2020dec1.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA2020dec1.png The proportional male surplus in China is just over double that of the US. Of course there is something different happening in China, but asserting that this is mostly due to people "killing female infants" is ludicrous. By your logic, there "only" about 2/5 (portionally) of female infants getting killed in the United States as well.
  - kec 5y ago
    The natural ratio between male and female births averages around 51:49, the US is almost bang on this number. China is currently closer to 55:45... clearly there is some unnatural pressure going on.
- vagrantJin 5y ago
  > How can we claim this policy has no effect if clearly people are still killing female infants? Strong statement. Evidence please.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    Not exactly “killing infants” but abortion. https://www.npr.org/2016/02/01/465124337/how-chinas-one-child-policy-led-to-forced-abortions-30-million-bachelors https://www.npr.org/2016/02/01/465124337/how-chinas-one-chil... https://www.bmj.com/content/338/bmj.b1211 https://www.bmj.com/content/338/bmj.b1211
    - faitswulff 5y ago
      Abortion is not the same thing as killing infants. The racism that's tolerated on this site is very telling.
      - carlhjerpe 5y ago
        While I agree that abortion isn't killing infants, I don't get the racist part about this.
        faitswulff 5y ago
        The racist part is the simple unchallenged assertion that Chinese people are so inhuman as to kill their infant children en masse.
        kbelder 5y ago
        They indisputably did, though. No fact can be racist. Not because they're inhuman, of course; that sort of behavior has happened all throughout human history. It's just that, with China in the 20th century, the scale was huge.
        5y ago
gadf 5y ago
Thank you, thank you. At least we, in the unimpressive rest of the world, can have some way to hate China, for each and every achievement or progress they make. Keep up the good work! You are truly bringing humanity forward with this backwards looking biased hatred!
roenxi 5y ago
China (and India) are dealing with population numbers never before seen, at a scale that is inconceivable without special training or focus (whats the difference between a million and a billion? about a billion). It is a mathematical possibility that growth rates overshoot and settle into patterns of boom and bust - and a bust in human populations can get really ugly. "It hasn't happened in the last 2 centuries" isn't an argument against Malthusian collapses either. China has a long memory. I have a lot of sympathy for the argument that the One-child Policy was a mistake. In my view, it was. But I also have a lot of sympathy for the people who implemented it. As ideas go it isn't an obvious mis-step in the class as, say, Communist economic policies.
- baybal2 5y ago
  They deserve no sympathy, it was sheer madness, and it is. > As ideas go it isn't an obvious mis-step in the class as, say, Communist economic policies. No, it's an exemplary case of completely bonker policies in rank with "4 pests" campaign. Sadly, stuff like that is very much intentional, and are signature of Maoesque political thought: You intentionally make populace outraged over something very obvious, and then keep obsessing over it for no reason making people think it's a big thing, when it isn't. When people people have something more close, personal, and painful to be outraged about, it shifts people's attention from an even more obvious fact of complete governance failure, and communist occupation of the country.
dirtyid 5y ago
One Child Policy prevented ~300M births. Currently PRC with 1.4B has 150-200M surplus / idle workers, 600M trapped in low(er)-middle income. PRC has too many people to elevate to upper-middle or high income status within reasonable time and simply not enough resources. Any policy to reduce population was "beneficial". 1.4B is already too much. PRC with population of 1.7B people would fall apart. Crassly, a more severe Great Leap Forward that suppressed current population to "only" 1B would alleviate a lot of strategic stressors. Family planning was completely necessary but came too late and arguably enforced too softly.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > One Child Policy prevented ~300M births. This is a questionable ascertain. The birth rate had already dropped, and had been dropping for over a decade, before the policy kicked in.
  - dirtyid 5y ago
    >The birth rate had already dropped, and had been dropping for over a decade, before the policy kicked in. That was due to the original 2-child policy from the 70s. To rephrase accurately: "family planning" prevented ~300M births, adjusted downward from 400M since 100M+ previously unregistered birth was logged since reversion to two child policy again. There's no credible analysis that suggest PRC family planning policies did not directly and dramatically reduce population. 300M IUDs and 100M sterilizations aren't placebos.
    - throw0101a 5y ago
      > That was due to the original 2-child policy from the 70s. [citation needed] Where is there more information on this? I do not see it mentioned for China: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-child_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-child_policy The birth rate also started falling in the 1960s: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Birth_rate_in_China.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Birth_rate_in_China.svg * https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINCHN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINCHN > There's no credible analysis that suggest PRC family planning policies did not directly and dramatically reduce population. 300M IUDs and 100M sterilizations aren't placebos. Of course the policies reduced fertility rates and population growth. The question is whether they were needed in the first place, or whether general development would have achieved the same result anyway.
sys_64738 5y ago
Was what we know now available information for the CCP to make rational decisions. This policy occurred in the shadow of the Cultural Revolution which crippled this nation. I doubt the leadership made rational decisions even if the data was available.
NicoJuicy 5y ago
One child policy is one of the major things that led China's historic revolution out of poverty. It's a very controversial policy, but you're free to prove me wrong. People could be employed longer without an abundance of young people taking their jobs.
- pelorat 5y ago
  I'm more inclined to think it was industrial espionage on an industrial scale.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    It started with a British colony that made it easy to do business, then China stole the good parts of the British colony and created special economic zones. Industrial espionage isn't even wrong. There is this absurd idea that a country should isolate itself from its neighbours and do everything on its own. How are you supposed to catch up or even overtake developed nations if all you do is reinvent things that have been available for decades? You can't.
  - NicoJuicy 5y ago
    One of the major things does not exclude other things...
officialjunk 5y ago
does this look like a sustainable world population growth curve? our resources are not increasing exponentially. and china's contribution towards this exponential growth has been decreased significantly as result of their policies. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population?country=CHN~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population?country=CHN~OW...
baybal2 5y ago
> There is some question on whether the one-child policy was even needed. > The ghastly human rights violations that led from the policy were completely unnecessary. No, this was entirely intentional. That was the whole point. This is "the big lie theory" taken to its extreme. It was done to keep people, and party cadres preoccupied. If you were to speak to an adult Chinese at around late eighties, the 1 child policy would've been the number 1 thing on people's tongues, as if there were no other problems. It was an entirely artificial crisis made to distract people from the total economic ruin, and destitution as a result of cultural revolution. I'm reading the progression of this thread, and can't believe my eyes. You HNers, supposedly intellectual elites, got completely hooked by the same cheap diversion. The point is not whether it was a legit, or not policy. The point is the entire conversation being completely pointless. The real rationale was to not to let people talk about something having a point — the real problems in a starving, falling apart nation in a deepest crisis, which China was at the time.
- DangitBobby 5y ago
  I did not consider this could be the case for China since I am frankly pretty ignorant of Chinese politics, but I have suspected for a while that the US government heavily invests in such distractions from the real issues.
- justicezyx 5y ago
  Right. And you known who proposed and architected the "one-child policy": Yinchu Ma. His theory is influenced by Malthus [2]. And you know what, Mr. Ma's theory were not recognized until Mr. Deng come into power. And Mr. Deng realized there are so many people but no way the economy machine is going to find jobs for so many people. Although in the end Mr. Ma and Malthus were all wrong. They never experienced the prosperity's effect on people's behavior in making baby. Like any mass production. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Yinchu#:~:text=Ma's%20theory%20also%20became%20enshrined,the%20dangers%20of%20population%20growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Yinchu#:~:text=Ma's%20theor.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism
  - 5y ago
_tik_ 5y ago
It is absolutely necessary. I have no doubt about it. There is a very strong Chinese pro Chinese belief to have many Children. Most of my grandfather generation. Chinese first generation immigrants have more than 5 children. 9 children is very common.

stefan_ 5y ago

There is another graph here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China#/media/File:China_single_age_population_pyramid_2020.png 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?

faitswulff 5y ago
Interesting how the assertion that Chinese people kill infant girls en masse goes completely unchallenged without nuance on this site.
- HDMI_Cable 5y ago
  Are there any other explanations for the massive male surplus?
  - faitswulff 5y ago
    Is adoption murder? Abortion? Why is it easier to imagine that Chinese people murder infants than it is to imagine literally any other scenario? Why is it easier to assume that a massive sex imbalance is the result members of a particular group of people being psychopaths rather than the result of some systemic cause? Hmm.
    - eloisius 5y ago
      I think the systemic cause was clearly pointed out: the one child policy.
      - faitswulff 5y ago
        And the killing of children follows, naturally
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        kbelder 5y ago
        Naturally.
    - prepend 5y ago
      Infanticide doesn’t mean psychopaths. It’s been practiced, and I think super bad, by many cultures. I don’t think that means the culture is full of psychopaths. Also, I assumed the reason there was no evidence posted for the Chinese infanticide claim is that it’s extremely common and has been known for a long time. I just assumed everyone was aware. It doesn’t mean people killing literal babies, but does mean stuff like more abortions of female embryos. [0] Wikipedia [1] has a more general article with more links to sources. [0] https://www.npr.org/2016/02/01/465124337/how-chinas-one-child-policy-led-to-forced-abortions-30-million-bachelors https://www.npr.org/2016/02/01/465124337/how-chinas-one-chil... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide_in_China
      - 5y ago
toxik 5y ago
The question was if it was NEEDED, not if it had any effect.
throw0101a 5y ago
> How can we claim this policy has no effect if clearly people are still killing female infants? No effect ≠ no need. The intended purpose was to reduce birth rates for population control. This was being accomplished before the the policy even came into effect.
himlion 5y ago
Killed, or just unreported? Probably both, but I guess more unreported.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  Can you raise a unreported child in china? How would that work? With no papers at all and the communist buerocrats also really likes paper about everything. ?
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    https://thediplomat.com/2015/03/chinas-hidden-children/ https://thediplomat.com/2015/03/chinas-hidden-children/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/11/30/researchers-may-have-found-many-of-chinas-30-million-missing-girls/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/11/30... It's also China, where they put toxic stuff in watered down milk to make it look as foamy as protein-rich good milk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal , i.e. a place with a lot of corruption and where gaps are possible.
    - alisonkisk 5y ago
      Are you suggesting that China is somehow unusual in poisoning the populace? Are you aware of Superfund? Nestle, who convinced mother's to starve and poison their babies with formula and dirty water that replaced and then blocked lactation?
    - MandieD 5y ago
      Up until Covid stopped business travel, my Chinese colleagues brought home as much infant formula or follow up milk powder for toddlers as they thought they could get away with when visiting HQ in Germany, and always asked us to bring some with us when we went there. Lots of stores here had limits on how much you could buy at once because of that.
    - whoevercares 5y ago
      It’s just matter of couple hundreds RMB “pay the toll”
TimPC 5y ago
Misread graph. Removed comment.
- robjan 5y ago
  There is still a male surplus and culturally people still prefer to have boys because they carry their family name. Girls are married out of the family and if your one child is a girl there will be nobody to look after you in your old age.
  - thefounder 5y ago
    >> there will be nobody to look after you in your old age. What a sick, selfish society. If you can't take care of yourself maybe it's time to go?
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      What a sick little comment. The world is a lot larger than the rich West and historically children were what we have - in some wealthy places - a social security system for. But in many places where the state is barely functional and family ties are strong children tend to take care of their elders, because that's how it's been traditionally. The best way to reduce that factor in how many children people have is to up the standard of living, which more or less automatically reduces the number of children people will have because they no longer need to worry that much about their old age. On another note: those societies have - of necessity - much stronger family ties than that same rich West, so something valuable is lost along with the social needs.
      - thefounder 5y ago
        It looks like in China it's even a law[1] that old people use to take advantage of their children. Just because it's a "tradition" doesn't make it good. It's been a "tradition" to beat your wife and children as well in many parts of the world or even worse. If you are miserable why would you like to make your children's life miserable as well? [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7422934/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7422934/
dan-robertson 5y ago
Wasn’t their some policy saying that rural mothers could have a second child if their first was a girl? If they each had the maximum number of children, it would lead to an average of about 1 boy and 0.75 girls per rural mother.
- lozenge 5y ago
  Yes, the article saying the one child policy remained untill2016 is an oversimplification. There were already exceptions introduced including when both parents had never had any siblings.
- areyousure 5y ago
  50% B + 25% GB + 25% GG = 0.75 B + 0.75 G. Can you think of a law ("stopping rule") that could even get the expected number of boys higher than the expected number of girls?
  - dmichulke 5y ago
    For gambling it would would work if you do a "double or nothing" type of bet. Unfortunately, you'll be quickly rate limited by birth capacity, even if you somehow manage to double the amount of children per birth. Also, asymptotically, you'll still be around a 50% split.
    - waterhouse 5y ago
      Assuming no selective-abortion shenanigans, every child you have is expected 50% male, 50% female (barring e.g. unusual men who only produce sperm of one gender—I think that exists but is extremely rare), so there's no possible strategy that leads to an uneven gender split, probability-wise. But I think there were selective-abortion shenanigans, and that the policy was effectively in response to them. If we assume each family wants, as its first objective, to maximize the number of sons, and, as its second objective, to maximize the number of daughters, then each selective-aborting family would have exactly one daughter followed by one son under such a policy.
infinity0 5y ago
You should always compare the data against other countries before jumping to hasty conclusions based on your own prejudices and confirmation biases. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:China_single_age_population_pyramid_2020.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:China_single_age_populati... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA2020dec1.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA2020dec1.png The proportional male surplus in China is just over double that of the US. Of course there is something different happening in China, but asserting that this is mostly due to people "killing female infants" is ludicrous. By your logic, there "only" about 2/5 (portionally) of female infants getting killed in the United States as well.
- kec 5y ago
  The natural ratio between male and female births averages around 51:49, the US is almost bang on this number. China is currently closer to 55:45... clearly there is some unnatural pressure going on.
vagrantJin 5y ago
> How can we claim this policy has no effect if clearly people are still killing female infants? Strong statement. Evidence please.
- kube-system 5y ago
  Not exactly “killing infants” but abortion. https://www.npr.org/2016/02/01/465124337/how-chinas-one-child-policy-led-to-forced-abortions-30-million-bachelors https://www.npr.org/2016/02/01/465124337/how-chinas-one-chil... https://www.bmj.com/content/338/bmj.b1211 https://www.bmj.com/content/338/bmj.b1211
  - faitswulff 5y ago
    Abortion is not the same thing as killing infants. The racism that's tolerated on this site is very telling.
    - carlhjerpe 5y ago
      While I agree that abortion isn't killing infants, I don't get the racist part about this.
      - faitswulff 5y ago
        The racist part is the simple unchallenged assertion that Chinese people are so inhuman as to kill their infant children en masse.
        kbelder 5y ago
        They indisputably did, though. No fact can be racist. Not because they're inhuman, of course; that sort of behavior has happened all throughout human history. It's just that, with China in the 20th century, the scale was huge.
        5y ago

gadf 5y ago

Thank you, thank you. At least we, in the unimpressive rest of the world, can have some way to hate China, for each and every achievement or progress they make. Keep up the good work! You are truly bringing humanity forward with this backwards looking biased hatred!

roenxi 5y ago

China (and India) are dealing with population numbers never before seen, at a scale that is inconceivable without special training or focus (whats the difference between a million and a billion? about a billion). It is a mathematical possibility that growth rates overshoot and settle into patterns of boom and bust - and a bust in human populations can get really ugly. "It hasn't happened in the last 2 centuries" isn't an argument against Malthusian collapses either. China has a long memory. I have a lot of sympathy for the argument that the One-child Policy was a mistake. In my view, it was. But I also have a lot of sympathy for the people who implemented it. As ideas go it isn't an obvious mis-step in the class as, say, Communist economic policies.

baybal2 5y ago
They deserve no sympathy, it was sheer madness, and it is. > As ideas go it isn't an obvious mis-step in the class as, say, Communist economic policies. No, it's an exemplary case of completely bonker policies in rank with "4 pests" campaign. Sadly, stuff like that is very much intentional, and are signature of Maoesque political thought: You intentionally make populace outraged over something very obvious, and then keep obsessing over it for no reason making people think it's a big thing, when it isn't. When people people have something more close, personal, and painful to be outraged about, it shifts people's attention from an even more obvious fact of complete governance failure, and communist occupation of the country.

dirtyid 5y ago

One Child Policy prevented ~300M births. Currently PRC with 1.4B has 150-200M surplus / idle workers, 600M trapped in low(er)-middle income. PRC has too many people to elevate to upper-middle or high income status within reasonable time and simply not enough resources. Any policy to reduce population was "beneficial". 1.4B is already too much. PRC with population of 1.7B people would fall apart. Crassly, a more severe Great Leap Forward that suppressed current population to "only" 1B would alleviate a lot of strategic stressors. Family planning was completely necessary but came too late and arguably enforced too softly.

throw0101a 5y ago
> One Child Policy prevented ~300M births. This is a questionable ascertain. The birth rate had already dropped, and had been dropping for over a decade, before the policy kicked in.
- dirtyid 5y ago
  >The birth rate had already dropped, and had been dropping for over a decade, before the policy kicked in. That was due to the original 2-child policy from the 70s. To rephrase accurately: "family planning" prevented ~300M births, adjusted downward from 400M since 100M+ previously unregistered birth was logged since reversion to two child policy again. There's no credible analysis that suggest PRC family planning policies did not directly and dramatically reduce population. 300M IUDs and 100M sterilizations aren't placebos.
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    > That was due to the original 2-child policy from the 70s. [citation needed] Where is there more information on this? I do not see it mentioned for China: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-child_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-child_policy The birth rate also started falling in the 1960s: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Birth_rate_in_China.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Birth_rate_in_China.svg * https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINCHN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINCHN > There's no credible analysis that suggest PRC family planning policies did not directly and dramatically reduce population. 300M IUDs and 100M sterilizations aren't placebos. Of course the policies reduced fertility rates and population growth. The question is whether they were needed in the first place, or whether general development would have achieved the same result anyway.

sys_64738 5y ago

Was what we know now available information for the CCP to make rational decisions. This policy occurred in the shadow of the Cultural Revolution which crippled this nation. I doubt the leadership made rational decisions even if the data was available.

NicoJuicy 5y ago

One child policy is one of the major things that led China's historic revolution out of poverty. It's a very controversial policy, but you're free to prove me wrong. People could be employed longer without an abundance of young people taking their jobs.

pelorat 5y ago
I'm more inclined to think it was industrial espionage on an industrial scale.
- imtringued 5y ago
  It started with a British colony that made it easy to do business, then China stole the good parts of the British colony and created special economic zones. Industrial espionage isn't even wrong. There is this absurd idea that a country should isolate itself from its neighbours and do everything on its own. How are you supposed to catch up or even overtake developed nations if all you do is reinvent things that have been available for decades? You can't.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  One of the major things does not exclude other things...

officialjunk 5y ago

does this look like a sustainable world population growth curve? our resources are not increasing exponentially. and china's contribution towards this exponential growth has been decreased significantly as result of their policies. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population?country=CHN~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population?country=CHN~OW...

baybal2 5y ago

> There is some question on whether the one-child policy was even needed. > The ghastly human rights violations that led from the policy were completely unnecessary. No, this was entirely intentional. That was the whole point. This is "the big lie theory" taken to its extreme. It was done to keep people, and party cadres preoccupied. If you were to speak to an adult Chinese at around late eighties, the 1 child policy would've been the number 1 thing on people's tongues, as if there were no other problems. It was an entirely artificial crisis made to distract people from the total economic ruin, and destitution as a result of cultural revolution. I'm reading the progression of this thread, and can't believe my eyes. You HNers, supposedly intellectual elites, got completely hooked by the same cheap diversion. The point is not whether it was a legit, or not policy. The point is the entire conversation being completely pointless. The real rationale was to not to let people talk about something having a point — the real problems in a starving, falling apart nation in a deepest crisis, which China was at the time.

DangitBobby 5y ago
I did not consider this could be the case for China since I am frankly pretty ignorant of Chinese politics, but I have suspected for a while that the US government heavily invests in such distractions from the real issues.
justicezyx 5y ago
Right. And you known who proposed and architected the "one-child policy": Yinchu Ma. His theory is influenced by Malthus [2]. And you know what, Mr. Ma's theory were not recognized until Mr. Deng come into power. And Mr. Deng realized there are so many people but no way the economy machine is going to find jobs for so many people. Although in the end Mr. Ma and Malthus were all wrong. They never experienced the prosperity's effect on people's behavior in making baby. Like any mass production. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Yinchu#:~:text=Ma's%20theory%20also%20became%20enshrined,the%20dangers%20of%20population%20growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Yinchu#:~:text=Ma's%20theor.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism
- 5y ago

_tik_ 5y ago

It is absolutely necessary. I have no doubt about it. There is a very strong Chinese pro Chinese belief to have many Children. Most of my grandfather generation. Chinese first generation immigrants have more than 5 children. 9 children is very common.