15 ms·

China reforms: One-child policy to be relaxed

40 points by ck2 13y ago

toyg 13y ago
Duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6738881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6738881
- tokenadult 13y ago
  Not a duplicate submission, but rather a story from a different source about the same news of the day.
ck2 13y ago
While it is the moral thing to do, it doesn't bode well for their already horrible pollution problems.
- jrs99 13y ago
  what's the moral thing to do if the world's population was 250 billion?
  - twerquie 13y ago
    Scientists centuries ago could not imagine our modern world, with people living vertically in the sky, in dense urban metropolises, eating frozen food, enjoying vaccines and generally having an awesome quality of life. Just as we cannot imagine advancements that have not yet come, and are led to believe we are doomed to starvation by our current mental constraints. Acting politically on this belief is incredibly dangerous and has contributed to many human atrocities over the years, including the Jewish holocaust, English subjugation and starvation of Irish potato farmers, China's misguided one child policy, and many more. Be careful of this mental trap. If you'd like to see fewer babies, educate women and give them equality in the workplace and in political power.
    - bencollier49 13y ago
      I think you need to back up with evidence that assertion that Malthusianism was the reason for the holocaust. Or the potato famine, for that matter.
      - twerquie 13y ago
        I never said Malthusian theories were _the reason_, only that they contributed significantly. I'm not a PHD in this or anything, your google search result is as good as mine.
    - pvnick 13y ago
      Your comment deserves so much attention and praise, it's difficult to put into words. It never ceases to amaze me when I look around and see psuedointellectual arguments for shrinking the population (read: genocide), mandatory birth control, totalitarian systems of government. All to protect against some theoretical future event - global warming, running out of space, not having enough meat to put on our cheeseburgers. Technological advancement and human good-will has historically been way more than enough to thwart these dangers. Look around. We're living in a world in which smallpox has been completely eradicated. Amazing! And peak oil? With all the advancements in solar energy coming out of our ivy league universities that seams so silly now. And yet we frequently hear so-called "enlightened" individuals calling for policies that immediately lead to suffering and death out of fear that the future holds certain doom.
      - jrs99 13y ago
        I'm not saying that it's a good policy to limit children. But more to spark dialogue. It's an interesting question. What happens when there are 100 billion people on this planet, and if possible, what happens if one day there are 1 trillion people. Does it one day make sense to say you can't have more than 1 kid? Is it amoral?
        twerquie 13y ago
        > Is it amoral? Yes for two reasons. A) You're telling other people what they can do with their own bodies, and that is fundamentally wrong (see the ridiculous abortion debate in the USA). B) It's impossible to apply the rules evenly and fairly, creating (at best) destructive social imbalance and (at worst) an opportunity for slippery-slope eugenics.
  - ck2 13y ago
    Force catholics to start using birth control?
- api 13y ago
  The best way to reduce human fertility (without child abandonment and forced abortions and other human rights horrors) is to educate the population and make them wealthy... at least to somewhat middle class standards. Then fertility drops to replacement level or near it, sometimes even below. This has been validated countless times in many cultures and seems to be a general pattern in human behavior. China is slowly doing this, and will do so better if it can get its political corruption issues under control. China's pollution is definitely a problem, but that stems mostly from corruption, lack of concern, and heavy industry that is largely done in service to customers not in China. The one child policy would not impact this much.
  - toyg 13y ago
    The problem with the "natural" approach is that then you have to deal with 1) natural increase in life expectancy, and 2) immigration. Because of this, most European countries are still growing, albeit slowly. Japan has all but removed factor 2 and so its population is overall stable, but they're experiencing a slow shrinking of their working population (which brings a lot of economic problems).
  - cm2012 13y ago
    China is currently far below replacement rate: https://www.google.com/search?q=china+fertility&oq=china+fertility&aqs=chrome..69i57.3233j0j1&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#es_sm=93&espv=210&q=china+fertility+rate https://www.google.com/search?q=china+fertility&oq=china+fer...
    - kalleboo 13y ago
      They're slowly educating the population and making them wealthy, not slowly lowering the reproduction rate. The reproduction rate is low due to the one child policy. I imagine when the policy is dropped it may spike.
  - ck2 13y ago
    The Romneys are some of the wealthiest people in the US and fairly well educated and their immediate family has something close to 20 children total.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Poorly-regulated economic development is a much bigger problem for China's environment than population growth. Their fertility rate is around 1.5 and their population will peak in the next decade: http://www.economist.com/node/21553056 http://www.economist.com/node/21553056. By 2050, China will be smaller than it is today, but if economic development continues will generate a lot more pollution and use a lot more energy. In any case, India has managed to bring its population growth under control without resorting to such barbarism. Indeed, by 2050, India will only grow moderately more than the U.S. if current fertility trends hold. What's far more concerning is increases in India and China's per-capita resource and energy use, which could easily triple or quadruple their total numbers even with zero population growth.
odoren 13y ago
Does anyone know why ethnic minorities are exempt from the one-child policy? Considering all the ethnic-based political tensions in Western China, I don't see how this would be beneficial from the point of view of the Han-dominated government.
- azernik 13y ago
  Most of the ethnic minorities are so small that their numbers are not threatening to the Han majority. On the other hand, forcing population control on ethnic minorities tends to make them really angry (even more than they already are) really fast. This is part of a wider policy in which, while the government is Han-dominated, its official policy is of neutrality in ethnic disputes, and it even professes a commitment to preserving minority ethnic culture and traditions.
maaku 13y ago
This is great news. One-child has huge negative social implications. When a family has only one child, that child gets showered with attention. In a society where this is nearly universally the case, effects of that develop into social norms. This includes selfishness, egoism, and a lack of sibling-like lifetime relationships.
- VladRussian2 13y ago
  >that child gets showered with attention. and all the other resources are poured into one child instead of being spread around several children. Thus only child has higher IQ and development level than when there are several of them. http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mckibben-one.html http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mckibben-one.html "A twenty-year tracking study of 3,000 high school students demonstrated that only children have higher IQs than their peers with one sibling -- in fact, "there are marked negative effects on IQ of increasing sib size." --- end of citation -- There are also similar results of first child having higher IQ than second - as all the attention goes to him/her during the critical first years of brain development while second child doesn't have such undivided attention.
  - eddieplan9 13y ago
    As if IQ is the only or the most important factor that can dictate whether someone will have a happy and prosperous life.
    - VladRussian2 13y ago
      >someone will have a happy and prosperous life. the driver of adaptation, survival and progressive development of the species [and its civilization if any] are not necessarily the ones who live happy and prosperous life. 30+ years ago China made a choice between 2 alternatives - "1B population with IQ 135" or "2B population where 1B has IQ 130 and 1B has IQ 120" (the specific values 135/130/120 are just for illustration)
  - subsection1h 13y ago
    > "A twenty-year tracking study of 3,000 high school students demonstrated that only children have higher IQs than their peers with one sibling -- in fact, "there are marked negative effects on IQ of increasing sib size." I didn't see any mention of household income in the NYT article. I'm interested to know if the researchers factored in household income because from what I've read, people with higher incomes tend to have higher IQs and fewer children, and intelligence is heritable.
wavesounds 13y ago
"By the end of the decade, demographers say China will have 24 million "leftover men" who, because of China's gender imbalance, will not be able to find a wife" This will be an interesting thing to watch what will happen. Will women receive more power in society because they are more sought after? Will societies 'losers' unable to find wives become resentful and prone to violence or substance abuse? Will new types of un-orthodox relationships become more common? Will marriage/divorce rates increase/decrease? Will men leave for other nearby countries for a better chance at finding a spouse?
- dharmach 13y ago
  There is a simple solution: polygamy
  - lmg643 13y ago
    i think you mean polyandry. polygamy would make the problem worse. most likely, the men will leave in search of a better life. or stay at home and cause trouble. or the government can organize them in some fashion - military would be an obvious one.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      Polygamy means marriages with more than two people. Polygyny means multiple wives, polyandry means multiple husbands.
- tokenizer 13y ago
  It's pretty unprecedented (as far as I know). I'm assuming they can just live normal lives? We have millions of males/females who choose to be single, so I don't see the entirety of this group being upset.
  - CmonDev 13y ago
    There is a difference between dating single and non-dating single.
joshuacc 13y ago
The headline here should be edited to reflect the BBC original. China is only "relaxing" the policy, not ending it.
cm2012 13y ago
The Chinese population birth rate is currently far below replacement, so that makes sense. : https://www.google.com/search?q=china+fertility&oq=china+fertility&aqs=chrome..69i57.3233j0j1&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#es_sm=93&espv=210&q=china+fertility+rate https://www.google.com/search?q=china+fertility&oq=china+fer...
- eliben 13y ago
  Interesting... based on that graph the US is borderline below too (isn't the replacement rate something like 2.1 or close to it)?
  - cm2012 13y ago
    Yes, replacement rate is about 2.2 per woman in my memory. The only reason its as high as it is is because of our relatively open immigration policy.
- OneOneOneOne 13y ago
  I wonder how countries such as China will adapt to an aging population? http://www.indexmundi.com/graphs/population-pyramids/china-population-pyramid-2012.gif http://www.indexmundi.com/graphs/population-pyramids/china-p... It looks like they will be in a difficult position 30-40 years out once the proportion of elderly grows.
ddoolin 13y ago
By the article and Wikipedia entry, it sounds like this has been relaxed for most people around China already anyway (since it's handled by the provincial governments).
bane 13y ago
It's not well followed in the countryside as-is, and a quickly modernizing urban lifestyle tends to self-regulate to low birthrates anyway. The real story is the end of (or reformation of) the re-education camps.

40 points by ck2 13y ago

toyg 13y ago

Duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6738881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6738881

tokenadult 13y ago
Not a duplicate submission, but rather a story from a different source about the same news of the day.

ck2 13y ago

While it is the moral thing to do, it doesn't bode well for their already horrible pollution problems.

jrs99 13y ago
what's the moral thing to do if the world's population was 250 billion?
- twerquie 13y ago
  Scientists centuries ago could not imagine our modern world, with people living vertically in the sky, in dense urban metropolises, eating frozen food, enjoying vaccines and generally having an awesome quality of life. Just as we cannot imagine advancements that have not yet come, and are led to believe we are doomed to starvation by our current mental constraints. Acting politically on this belief is incredibly dangerous and has contributed to many human atrocities over the years, including the Jewish holocaust, English subjugation and starvation of Irish potato farmers, China's misguided one child policy, and many more. Be careful of this mental trap. If you'd like to see fewer babies, educate women and give them equality in the workplace and in political power.
  - bencollier49 13y ago
    I think you need to back up with evidence that assertion that Malthusianism was the reason for the holocaust. Or the potato famine, for that matter.
    - twerquie 13y ago
      I never said Malthusian theories were _the reason_, only that they contributed significantly. I'm not a PHD in this or anything, your google search result is as good as mine.
  - pvnick 13y ago
    Your comment deserves so much attention and praise, it's difficult to put into words. It never ceases to amaze me when I look around and see psuedointellectual arguments for shrinking the population (read: genocide), mandatory birth control, totalitarian systems of government. All to protect against some theoretical future event - global warming, running out of space, not having enough meat to put on our cheeseburgers. Technological advancement and human good-will has historically been way more than enough to thwart these dangers. Look around. We're living in a world in which smallpox has been completely eradicated. Amazing! And peak oil? With all the advancements in solar energy coming out of our ivy league universities that seams so silly now. And yet we frequently hear so-called "enlightened" individuals calling for policies that immediately lead to suffering and death out of fear that the future holds certain doom.
    - jrs99 13y ago
      I'm not saying that it's a good policy to limit children. But more to spark dialogue. It's an interesting question. What happens when there are 100 billion people on this planet, and if possible, what happens if one day there are 1 trillion people. Does it one day make sense to say you can't have more than 1 kid? Is it amoral?
      - twerquie 13y ago
        > Is it amoral? Yes for two reasons. A) You're telling other people what they can do with their own bodies, and that is fundamentally wrong (see the ridiculous abortion debate in the USA). B) It's impossible to apply the rules evenly and fairly, creating (at best) destructive social imbalance and (at worst) an opportunity for slippery-slope eugenics.
- ck2 13y ago
  Force catholics to start using birth control?
api 13y ago
The best way to reduce human fertility (without child abandonment and forced abortions and other human rights horrors) is to educate the population and make them wealthy... at least to somewhat middle class standards. Then fertility drops to replacement level or near it, sometimes even below. This has been validated countless times in many cultures and seems to be a general pattern in human behavior. China is slowly doing this, and will do so better if it can get its political corruption issues under control. China's pollution is definitely a problem, but that stems mostly from corruption, lack of concern, and heavy industry that is largely done in service to customers not in China. The one child policy would not impact this much.
- toyg 13y ago
  The problem with the "natural" approach is that then you have to deal with 1) natural increase in life expectancy, and 2) immigration. Because of this, most European countries are still growing, albeit slowly. Japan has all but removed factor 2 and so its population is overall stable, but they're experiencing a slow shrinking of their working population (which brings a lot of economic problems).
- cm2012 13y ago
  China is currently far below replacement rate: https://www.google.com/search?q=china+fertility&oq=china+fertility&aqs=chrome..69i57.3233j0j1&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#es_sm=93&espv=210&q=china+fertility+rate https://www.google.com/search?q=china+fertility&oq=china+fer...
  - kalleboo 13y ago
    They're slowly educating the population and making them wealthy, not slowly lowering the reproduction rate. The reproduction rate is low due to the one child policy. I imagine when the policy is dropped it may spike.
- ck2 13y ago
  The Romneys are some of the wealthiest people in the US and fairly well educated and their immediate family has something close to 20 children total.
rayiner 13y ago
Poorly-regulated economic development is a much bigger problem for China's environment than population growth. Their fertility rate is around 1.5 and their population will peak in the next decade: http://www.economist.com/node/21553056 http://www.economist.com/node/21553056. By 2050, China will be smaller than it is today, but if economic development continues will generate a lot more pollution and use a lot more energy. In any case, India has managed to bring its population growth under control without resorting to such barbarism. Indeed, by 2050, India will only grow moderately more than the U.S. if current fertility trends hold. What's far more concerning is increases in India and China's per-capita resource and energy use, which could easily triple or quadruple their total numbers even with zero population growth.

odoren 13y ago

Does anyone know why ethnic minorities are exempt from the one-child policy? Considering all the ethnic-based political tensions in Western China, I don't see how this would be beneficial from the point of view of the Han-dominated government.

azernik 13y ago
Most of the ethnic minorities are so small that their numbers are not threatening to the Han majority. On the other hand, forcing population control on ethnic minorities tends to make them really angry (even more than they already are) really fast. This is part of a wider policy in which, while the government is Han-dominated, its official policy is of neutrality in ethnic disputes, and it even professes a commitment to preserving minority ethnic culture and traditions.

maaku 13y ago

This is great news. One-child has huge negative social implications. When a family has only one child, that child gets showered with attention. In a society where this is nearly universally the case, effects of that develop into social norms. This includes selfishness, egoism, and a lack of sibling-like lifetime relationships.

VladRussian2 13y ago
>that child gets showered with attention. and all the other resources are poured into one child instead of being spread around several children. Thus only child has higher IQ and development level than when there are several of them. http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mckibben-one.html http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mckibben-one.html "A twenty-year tracking study of 3,000 high school students demonstrated that only children have higher IQs than their peers with one sibling -- in fact, "there are marked negative effects on IQ of increasing sib size." --- end of citation -- There are also similar results of first child having higher IQ than second - as all the attention goes to him/her during the critical first years of brain development while second child doesn't have such undivided attention.
- eddieplan9 13y ago
  As if IQ is the only or the most important factor that can dictate whether someone will have a happy and prosperous life.
  - VladRussian2 13y ago
    >someone will have a happy and prosperous life. the driver of adaptation, survival and progressive development of the species [and its civilization if any] are not necessarily the ones who live happy and prosperous life. 30+ years ago China made a choice between 2 alternatives - "1B population with IQ 135" or "2B population where 1B has IQ 130 and 1B has IQ 120" (the specific values 135/130/120 are just for illustration)
- subsection1h 13y ago
  > "A twenty-year tracking study of 3,000 high school students demonstrated that only children have higher IQs than their peers with one sibling -- in fact, "there are marked negative effects on IQ of increasing sib size." I didn't see any mention of household income in the NYT article. I'm interested to know if the researchers factored in household income because from what I've read, people with higher incomes tend to have higher IQs and fewer children, and intelligence is heritable.

wavesounds 13y ago

"By the end of the decade, demographers say China will have 24 million "leftover men" who, because of China's gender imbalance, will not be able to find a wife" This will be an interesting thing to watch what will happen. Will women receive more power in society because they are more sought after? Will societies 'losers' unable to find wives become resentful and prone to violence or substance abuse? Will new types of un-orthodox relationships become more common? Will marriage/divorce rates increase/decrease? Will men leave for other nearby countries for a better chance at finding a spouse?

dharmach 13y ago
There is a simple solution: polygamy
- lmg643 13y ago
  i think you mean polyandry. polygamy would make the problem worse. most likely, the men will leave in search of a better life. or stay at home and cause trouble. or the government can organize them in some fashion - military would be an obvious one.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Polygamy means marriages with more than two people. Polygyny means multiple wives, polyandry means multiple husbands.
tokenizer 13y ago
It's pretty unprecedented (as far as I know). I'm assuming they can just live normal lives? We have millions of males/females who choose to be single, so I don't see the entirety of this group being upset.
- CmonDev 13y ago
  There is a difference between dating single and non-dating single.

joshuacc 13y ago

The headline here should be edited to reflect the BBC original. China is only "relaxing" the policy, not ending it.

cm2012 13y ago

The Chinese population birth rate is currently far below replacement, so that makes sense. : https://www.google.com/search?q=china+fertility&oq=china+fertility&aqs=chrome..69i57.3233j0j1&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#es_sm=93&espv=210&q=china+fertility+rate https://www.google.com/search?q=china+fertility&oq=china+fer...

eliben 13y ago
Interesting... based on that graph the US is borderline below too (isn't the replacement rate something like 2.1 or close to it)?
- cm2012 13y ago
  Yes, replacement rate is about 2.2 per woman in my memory. The only reason its as high as it is is because of our relatively open immigration policy.
OneOneOneOne 13y ago
I wonder how countries such as China will adapt to an aging population? http://www.indexmundi.com/graphs/population-pyramids/china-population-pyramid-2012.gif http://www.indexmundi.com/graphs/population-pyramids/china-p... It looks like they will be in a difficult position 30-40 years out once the proportion of elderly grows.

ddoolin 13y ago

By the article and Wikipedia entry, it sounds like this has been relaxed for most people around China already anyway (since it's handled by the provincial governments).

bane 13y ago

It's not well followed in the countryside as-is, and a quickly modernizing urban lifestyle tends to self-regulate to low birthrates anyway. The real story is the end of (or reformation of) the re-education camps.