Ending 'one child' limits, China pushes women to have more babies

[DonViejo]

By Steven Lee Myers NEW YORK TIMES AUGUST 11, 2018

BEIJING — For decades, China harshly restricted the number of babies that women could have. Now it is encouraging them to have more. It is not going well.

Almost three years after easing its “one child” policy and allowing couples to have two children, the government has begun to acknowledge that its efforts to raise the country’s birthrate are faltering because parents are deciding against having more children.

Officials are now scrambling to devise ways to stimulate a baby boom, worried that a looming demographic crisis could imperil economic growth — and undercut the ruling Communist Party and its leader, Xi Jinping.

It is a startling reversal for the party, which only a short time ago imposed punishing fines on most couples who had more than one child and compelled hundreds of millions of Chinese women to have abortions or undergo sterilization operations. China is the world’s most populous nation, with more than 1.4 billion people.

more
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2018/08/11/ending-one-child-limits-china-pushes-women-have-more-babies/7UwrCXtejwZJFot69UnRPM/story.html

[MineralMan]

1. China's population is aging. Unintended consequences.

[smirkymonkey]

2. They still have too many people.

The last thing they need is a population boom.

[uponit7771]

3. +1, would like to know what behind China's logic

[braddy]

4. As the West disappears China will rule the world in time, they will need more Chinese.

[smirkymonkey]

7. Like over a billion people isn't enough?

China and the US are roughly the same size area-wise. They have about 1 billion more people than we do and most of them are concentrated in the cities. They do NOT need more people. They need population control.

[braddy]

9. For their long range goals they will need more of their own to rule over the planet and dominate

Europe, the Americas, and Africa and to stave off never-ending Islamic threats.

[Lee-Lee]

5. I've seen it said that they may be anticipating lots of deaths from war

China thinks way ahead. If their long term plans include war with the US or anyone else then they may be looking at making sure that the foundations of the next generation are there to offset the population decline from a large scale war.

[smirkymonkey]

6. World domination.

[Marengo]

10. From what I have learned from my Chinese family and friends, one of the reasons for relaxing...

The one child policy is to relieve the financial responsibility of a single child for the care of aging parents. As the cost of living and inflation continues to increase throughout China, this is becoming a serious problem. The Chinese state certainly doesn’t want to shoulder the primary responsibility.

[uponit7771]

12. Ah, makes sense ... they didn't build elder care into population control

[smirkymonkey]

13. They should come up with a state program for elder care.

And start changing the cultural mandate that the children must take care of their elders.

I have a Chinese-American friend who is taking care of her elderly, incontinent, senile mother while trying to work full time and it's killing her. She feels a cultural obligation even though we have tried to talk her into getting outside help or putting her into a home and she insists it is her responsibility. She cries all the time because of the strain of it. It's not right that adults with full time responsibilities should have to shoulder the burden of taking care of all the needs of their elders.

I am so grateful that my parents (who are almost 80) are healthy, self-sufficient and mentally competent. I have three other siblings and while we would never want to put them in a home, none of us live near them and it would be very difficult to up-end our lives to care for them full-time.

[Major Nikon]

8. The one-child policy created a culture that's going to be much harder to break

[braddy]

11. Why don't they just open China to mass immigration?