Last week, while Americans were watching the World Series and John Harwood’s presidential debate buffoonery, the Chinese government did something interesting: It killed the one-child policy.
First formulated in 1979, one-child was a brutal but effective regime. Through a combination of propaganda, intimidation, fines, forced sterilizations, and forced abortions, the Chinese government was remarkably successful in lowering the country’s fertility rate. In 1980, the average Chinese woman had 2.7 children over the course of her lifetime. In its first -iteration, one-child forced all couples to apply for state permission before having a baby. Urban residents and government employees were then capped at one; in rural provinces, couples were often allowed to have a second child if they so desired (the state approved of more agricultural laborers). By 2000, the average Chinese woman was having somewhere between 1.3 and 1.9 children. (Health statistics in China aren’t as reliable as you might imagine.)
But China found that the economics of subreplacement fertility eventually become challenging. When a country has been below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1 births per woman for long enough, the age structure of the population inverts, giving you many more old people than young. Which leads to all sorts of problems.
In 2002, they eliminated the need for couples to ask permission before having a first child. That didn’t raise the fertility rate enough, so in 2013, the Communist government declared that in any family where one of the parents was an only child, permission would be granted by the state to have a second child.
The early returns suggest that this move is also not having enough of an effect—only about 12 percent of eligible couples applied for permission. So now one-child has been replaced by a policy under which anyone in China who desires two kids can have them.
Why does China want more babies? Because today 10 percent of its population is over the age of 65. In 20 years that percentage will double. By 2050, one out of every four Chinese will be over 65. With the attendant weakness in the labor pool and financial drain of supporting so many elderly, the Chinese economy will be hardpressed to cope.
For the few remaining ideologues who deny the social and economic costs of low fertility, China’s reversal is a striking piece of contradictory evidence. In the West, environmentalist dogma long championed China’s one-child as a brave move to spare Mother Gaia the horrors of overpopulation. But whatever else you want to say about them, the ChiComs are ruthless in maximizing their strategic advantages and remarkably impervious to Western cant.
Whatever its effect on fertility rates, the loosening should be cheered by everyone who cares for freedom.
