5 ms·

I think you were joking, but totalitarian regimes have done this before (Romania's orphan crisis was the result of similar policies, iirc). The poverty/immigra

I think you were joking, but totalitarian regimes have done this before (Romania's orphan crisis was the result of similar policies, iirc). The poverty/immigration dance - if you reduce poverty, women have less children. Eventually you reach the point where you need to allow immigration to provide enough workers to keep your aging population from starving. Immigration is an existential threat if your country is based on a single ethnic identity (e.g. Han). Immigrants are poorer and therefore have more babies, and at some point will become the ethnic majority, or at least a sizable minority, large enough to cause problems (and economically vital so you can't just round them up and deport them). Getting middle-class people to have more babies is difficult. Edit: of course, this isn't a problem if you don't base your country's identity on an ethnic identity.

Clewza313 5y ago
China internally makes a big deal about their 56 ethnic groups, living happily in harmony: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_minorities_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_minorities_in_China And woe betide anyone who dares be less than harmonious about being ruled by their Han big brother.
- infinity0 5y ago
  You seem to have a bit of sour grapes that a non-Western country dares to talk positively about their own policies. You should understand that translations often lose some cultural context, so when you have a prejudice against the English word "harmonious", understand that the Chinese equivalent is used much more freely in everyday speech. "Solidarity" might have been a better translation. -- Reply to the comment below: > I recall that, in the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony, China celebrated its ethnic minorities by having Han children dress up as them [..] In a big place like China or the US, there are always going to incidents like this. Furthermore, most news stories will exaggerate the headlines or twist the details, so I am not even sure if this particular incident is as you described. What matters is what the policies are doing for the larger scale of individuals. You can't judge anything about this larger scale by looking at a few incidents, especially when Western media have a vested interest in showing you these news items and ignoring the vast majority of what is going on. (To be fair, the vast majority is quite boring.) "Ask the people themselves" is used typically in these discussions as a weasel phrase, as if Western liberal democracies are truly "asking the people themselves". You have mass media bombarding the general population all the time with pre-ordained narratives. Nobody votes in elections with an independent analysis. So sure, it depends on what you mean by "ask the people themselves". There's lots of content on social media including from ethnic minorities, people are generally happy with their lives and the amount of freedom they have. Are you going to pick holes in that? Why not pick holes in what's happening with mass media de-jure "independent" de-facto manipulative elections in the West?
  - Clewza313 5y ago
    I've been to Tibet, and the endless barrage of slogans and posters celebrating 和谐 and 西藏各族人民的幸福生活 are there for a reason.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      Ya but is that any different than Beijing? The Chinese government has to keep the propaganda and slogans up everywhere, it’s really the only tool they know of to communicate broadly their apparent successes to the people.
      - Clewza313 5y ago
        It actually was, both in sheer intensity and in style. For example, in Beijing (at least when I last visited) it was kind of hard to find posters of Xi Jinping, while in Lhasa you had a lot of this kind of thing: https://imgur.com/a/GRN9VZz https://imgur.com/a/GRN9VZz Which to me seemed remarkably tone deaf (nothing like reminding Tibetans to celebrate their "liberation" and its mastermind Mao), but presumably worrying about how the message would land was not among the KPIs of the cadre responsible.
  - elefanten 5y ago
    You seem to have some sour grapes about criticism of China and some kind of twisted, paranoid presumption about Western attitudes toward non-Western policymaking. The point was not to make fun of the word choice “harmonious”, but rather to point out that CCP-led China is functionally an ethnostate that bluntly prefers and privileges one identity over the others.
    - infinity0 5y ago
      > paranoid presumption There is no "paranoid presumption", that's literally what the comment I'm replying to was doing. So, look at reality instead of sitting on your high horse, believing that all defenses of China are "paranoid". > The point was not to make fun of the word choice “harmonious”, but rather to point out [..] Again, read the comment. You are denying reality. They literally said nothing concrete, only imply negative connotations about the word "harmonious".
infinity0 5y ago
China is not a totalitarian regime - you shouldn't believe all the propaganda out there, you should actually go there yourself and you'll find that you can live your life quite normally and happily. China's identity isn't based on a single ethnic identity - the various restrictions (such as the now-3-child-policy, and permanent immigration between cities) apply to everyone. In fact ethnic minorities generally get preferential treatment - e.g. looser restrictions, affirmative action in various places such as state examinations - because it's recognised that a majority ethnic groups have disproportionate power. --- Reply to the comment below: > As long as you don't stick out, or criticize the government positively quite frequently. The ways in which this statement is both true and false in its details, is not particularly different from the West. In China, there are local protests quite regularly, and local governments respond. In Hong Kong the protests were incredibly violent and disruptive. You cite the crackdowns by the government, but you don't cite the actions by the protestors and opposition legislators, that also attack innocents and filibuster the legislature for years, much more disruptively and disrespectfully than anything that's happened in the West, including shouting "Fuck China" during legislative oath-taking. In China, mass organised protest against the national government is not tolerated, but nobody cares if you write some stuff on social media. In the West, in the rare case that actual mass protests ever get too rowdy they are shutdown quite brutally by the police. In China the government stops the situation before it gets to that point. In the West, anyone that sticks out enough to really be a bother, like Julian Assange, gets shut down very brutally too. In both cases, these types of mass protests don't generally change anything in the political system. And in both cases, most ordinary people actually really just don't care to do these things, because the situation is fine in both China and the West - certainly not like the levels of the revolutions in the 1800s or the wars in the early 1900s. So when you criticise China for not allowing these things, this comes from a position of privilege, you have forgotten what it's like to be hungry. Not being hungry matters more, and China has found an efficient way to do that, so I am happy for them (and "us" as far as I can claim that). Maybe later things will become more relaxed, but it's not a particularly big priority. > brutal suppression they do in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, or Inner Mongolia A-OK? Most of the "evidence" regarding Xinjiang is fabricated, the Hong Kong stories are exaggerated and one-sided. I'd be against any actual specific cases of brutal suppression that's going on. But that still wouldn't make me "anti-China" in the same way you're not "anti-US" or "anti-West" presumably (I am not either). But that's what Western media portrayals seem to be trying to do - saying that, oh China is doing some bad things, they are evil, they need to be stopped. China is not evil, the world is a complex place. > we all know it was would be like Putin and Medvedev, with Xi still controlling, Nobody really knows the details of these things high up, it's all conjecture. It's sure convenient that Democrat and Republican policies, compared to the rest of the world, are very similar. How do you know they're not essentially in cahoots and just putting up a show of being "opposites" for the rest of the world?
adamors 5y ago
Romania's orphan crisis was the result of restricting abortions to a select few categories of women. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  thanks for the clarification :) From the wikipedia page: > aimed at the creation of a new and large Romanian population by restricting abortion and contraception. Same idea, different mechanics

Clewza313 5y ago

China internally makes a big deal about their 56 ethnic groups, living happily in harmony: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_minorities_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_minorities_in_China And woe betide anyone who dares be less than harmonious about being ruled by their Han big brother.

infinity0 5y ago
You seem to have a bit of sour grapes that a non-Western country dares to talk positively about their own policies. You should understand that translations often lose some cultural context, so when you have a prejudice against the English word "harmonious", understand that the Chinese equivalent is used much more freely in everyday speech. "Solidarity" might have been a better translation. -- Reply to the comment below: > I recall that, in the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony, China celebrated its ethnic minorities by having Han children dress up as them [..] In a big place like China or the US, there are always going to incidents like this. Furthermore, most news stories will exaggerate the headlines or twist the details, so I am not even sure if this particular incident is as you described. What matters is what the policies are doing for the larger scale of individuals. You can't judge anything about this larger scale by looking at a few incidents, especially when Western media have a vested interest in showing you these news items and ignoring the vast majority of what is going on. (To be fair, the vast majority is quite boring.) "Ask the people themselves" is used typically in these discussions as a weasel phrase, as if Western liberal democracies are truly "asking the people themselves". You have mass media bombarding the general population all the time with pre-ordained narratives. Nobody votes in elections with an independent analysis. So sure, it depends on what you mean by "ask the people themselves". There's lots of content on social media including from ethnic minorities, people are generally happy with their lives and the amount of freedom they have. Are you going to pick holes in that? Why not pick holes in what's happening with mass media de-jure "independent" de-facto manipulative elections in the West?
- Clewza313 5y ago
  I've been to Tibet, and the endless barrage of slogans and posters celebrating 和谐 and 西藏各族人民的幸福生活 are there for a reason.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Ya but is that any different than Beijing? The Chinese government has to keep the propaganda and slogans up everywhere, it’s really the only tool they know of to communicate broadly their apparent successes to the people.
    - Clewza313 5y ago
      It actually was, both in sheer intensity and in style. For example, in Beijing (at least when I last visited) it was kind of hard to find posters of Xi Jinping, while in Lhasa you had a lot of this kind of thing: https://imgur.com/a/GRN9VZz https://imgur.com/a/GRN9VZz Which to me seemed remarkably tone deaf (nothing like reminding Tibetans to celebrate their "liberation" and its mastermind Mao), but presumably worrying about how the message would land was not among the KPIs of the cadre responsible.
- elefanten 5y ago
  You seem to have some sour grapes about criticism of China and some kind of twisted, paranoid presumption about Western attitudes toward non-Western policymaking. The point was not to make fun of the word choice “harmonious”, but rather to point out that CCP-led China is functionally an ethnostate that bluntly prefers and privileges one identity over the others.
  - infinity0 5y ago
    > paranoid presumption There is no "paranoid presumption", that's literally what the comment I'm replying to was doing. So, look at reality instead of sitting on your high horse, believing that all defenses of China are "paranoid". > The point was not to make fun of the word choice “harmonious”, but rather to point out [..] Again, read the comment. You are denying reality. They literally said nothing concrete, only imply negative connotations about the word "harmonious".

infinity0 5y ago

China is not a totalitarian regime - you shouldn't believe all the propaganda out there, you should actually go there yourself and you'll find that you can live your life quite normally and happily. China's identity isn't based on a single ethnic identity - the various restrictions (such as the now-3-child-policy, and permanent immigration between cities) apply to everyone. In fact ethnic minorities generally get preferential treatment - e.g. looser restrictions, affirmative action in various places such as state examinations - because it's recognised that a majority ethnic groups have disproportionate power. --- Reply to the comment below: > As long as you don't stick out, or criticize the government positively quite frequently. The ways in which this statement is both true and false in its details, is not particularly different from the West. In China, there are local protests quite regularly, and local governments respond. In Hong Kong the protests were incredibly violent and disruptive. You cite the crackdowns by the government, but you don't cite the actions by the protestors and opposition legislators, that also attack innocents and filibuster the legislature for years, much more disruptively and disrespectfully than anything that's happened in the West, including shouting "Fuck China" during legislative oath-taking. In China, mass organised protest against the national government is not tolerated, but nobody cares if you write some stuff on social media. In the West, in the rare case that actual mass protests ever get too rowdy they are shutdown quite brutally by the police. In China the government stops the situation before it gets to that point. In the West, anyone that sticks out enough to really be a bother, like Julian Assange, gets shut down very brutally too. In both cases, these types of mass protests don't generally change anything in the political system. And in both cases, most ordinary people actually really just don't care to do these things, because the situation is fine in both China and the West - certainly not like the levels of the revolutions in the 1800s or the wars in the early 1900s. So when you criticise China for not allowing these things, this comes from a position of privilege, you have forgotten what it's like to be hungry. Not being hungry matters more, and China has found an efficient way to do that, so I am happy for them (and "us" as far as I can claim that). Maybe later things will become more relaxed, but it's not a particularly big priority. > brutal suppression they do in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, or Inner Mongolia A-OK? Most of the "evidence" regarding Xinjiang is fabricated, the Hong Kong stories are exaggerated and one-sided. I'd be against any actual specific cases of brutal suppression that's going on. But that still wouldn't make me "anti-China" in the same way you're not "anti-US" or "anti-West" presumably (I am not either). But that's what Western media portrayals seem to be trying to do - saying that, oh China is doing some bad things, they are evil, they need to be stopped. China is not evil, the world is a complex place. > we all know it was would be like Putin and Medvedev, with Xi still controlling, Nobody really knows the details of these things high up, it's all conjecture. It's sure convenient that Democrat and Republican policies, compared to the rest of the world, are very similar. How do you know they're not essentially in cahoots and just putting up a show of being "opposites" for the rest of the world?

adamors 5y ago

Romania's orphan crisis was the result of restricting abortions to a select few categories of women. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770

marcus_holmes 5y ago
thanks for the clarification :) From the wikipedia page: > aimed at the creation of a new and large Romanian population by restricting abortion and contraception. Same idea, different mechanics