China has had a lot going for it for many years now. Its newly dynamic economy is entering tough times, but so far it has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and into the middle class.
But China also has a lot of deep-rooted problems, not the least of which is a demographic crisis that threatens its economic sustainability and perhaps even its stability. Today, men approaching adulthood in China vastly outnumber women, by about 30 million. Moreover, there are too few young workers to pay to sustain a growing population of retirees. In fact, if China’s 60-and-older population formed their own country, it would be the world’s third largest.
China’s population problems are a result of its brutal one-child policy. Women daring to become pregnant after giving birth once are legally required to abort their babies — and sometimes physically forced to do so, and sterilized against their consent. One consequence has been a huge number of sex-selection abortions. In traditional Chinese culture, boys are prized more the girls, so many couples tried to ensure that their one child was a boy, leading to the abortion of an estimated 100 million baby girls.
The Communist government introduced this cruel policy in the late 1970s, at the height of the world overpopulation craze. The policy was based on the discredited Malthusian notion that too many people merely strain a country’s resources rather than contributing to its economy. But in attempting to avert one demographics crisis, the regime created another. Within a few years, China’s streets will teem with restless young men who can neither find mates nor scrape together enough income to support the older generations. Will they meekly submit to a bleak future? Will they emigrate? Will they commit crimes or foment political unrest? China is already experiencing alarming increases in sex trafficking, prostitution, suicide and general crime as a result of its government’s policy.
On October 29, the Communist Party leadership announced that it will loosen the one-child policy. From now on, couples will be allowed to have as many as two children. This comes after the government began allowing parents who had no siblings to have more than one child starting in 2013.
For the West, the biggest scandal of China’s one-child policy has not been the Communist government’s horrific conduct but rather its own complicity in it. For decades, the United States underwrote the United Nations Population Fund, which worked with China’s population control programs. Under President George W. Bush, the U.S. pulled out of the UNFPA. President Obama resumed financial assistance to the UN body, despite his rhetoric about “reproductive freedom” and “choice.”
China says the new two-child policy will allow the country to address an aging population and citizens to balance their families. But it may be too late. Altering a nation’s demographic trajectory is like changing the direction of an ocean liner. Policy changes enacted now won’t produce results for decades. In the meantime, China is losing 3 million workers a year, exacerbating the old-age crisis.
By relaxing its child quota, the Chinese government hasn’t abandoned its reliance on force to ruthlessly control its citizens’ reproduction. Women who wish to have three or more children will presumably face the same brutal consequences if they attempt to do so.
It’s unlikely that much will improve until the Chinese government acknowledges that its crisis is not one of flawed actuarial tables, but rather a flawed ideology in which utility and efficiency predominate, and human beings are treated merely as means of production instead of the end purpose of development.
