China's Population Gap

For John, BLUF:  China isn't the only nation with a non-sustainable birth rate.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Beijing’s one-child policy is gone. But many Chinese are still reluctant to have more.

From The Washington Post, by Reporter Anna Fifield, 4 May 2019.

Here is the lede plus four:

NANCHUAN, China — When she started her job nine years ago, Liu Fang’s work involved making sure the women from her village did not have unauthorized babies.

If they had a girl or a disabled child, they were allowed another chance.  If they already had two children or a boy, Liu handed out condoms and urged the women to get an intrauterine device.  If they got pregnant again, she would encourage them to have an abortion.

As the representative of All-China Women’s Federation for Nanchuan — a township of 6,000 people on the outskirts of a small village, on the outskirts of a small city, on the outskirts of a provincial capital in central China — Liu was entrusted with keeping down the population in her little patch of a country with 1.4 billion people.

Her job performance was evaluated by the number of births in her district — the fewer, the better.

Today, her job could hardly be more different.  After the Chinese government abandoned its one-child policy three years ago, Liu’s mandate has changed from making sure local women don’t have too many babies to actively encouraging them to have more.

There are consequences for meddling in how the family operates, and turning it back isn't always easy.  China may find it difficult to reverse the social engineering.  It is one thing to discourage pregnancy, but another to encourage more of it.

The significance of a Chinese population that has started to decline and is rapidly aging cannot be overestimated, said Yi Fuxian, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

“A great nation with thousands of years of history and a brilliant civilization is rapidly degenerating into a small group of the old and the weak thanks to these wrongheaded population-control policies,” he said.

Aside from the sometimes ignored fact that we exist to know, love and obey God, our other reason for existing is procreation.  If we have fallen off the procreation path we are thwarting Mother Nature's path.  Our line will end and we will be replaced by another line, another species, and no one will be left to care, to carry on what we have learned.

Zeng’s husband, who works in the construction business, wants more children, but she told him he doesn’t earn enough.

I like her job oriented attitude, but, in forty-five years it will bite, when the working age population isn't big enough to support those who wish to be retired.

Hat tip to Mr John McDonough.

Regards  —  Cliff