{"id":267498,"date":"2021-06-05T16:55:07","date_gmt":"2021-06-05T13:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/why-chinas-new-three-child-plan-is-doomed-and-dangerous\/"},"modified":"2021-06-05T16:55:07","modified_gmt":"2021-06-05T13:55:07","slug":"why-chinas-new-three-child-plan-is-doomed-and-dangerous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/why-chinas-new-three-child-plan-is-doomed-and-dangerous\/","title":{"rendered":"#Why China\u2019s new three-child plan is doomed \u2014 and dangerous"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Why China\u2019s new three-child plan is doomed \u2014 and dangerous<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Last Monday, the handful of old men who run China decided to allow Chinese couples to have three children<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The surprise move, made by communist dictator Xi Jinping and his Politburo colleagues, marks a stunning reversal of the infamous one-child policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That decades-long effort to limit couples to one child led to hundreds of millions of forced abortions and sterilizations, crushing the birth rate in the world\u2019s most populous country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By 2015, China\u2019s National Bureau of Statistics was reporting that Chinese women were averaging only 1.05 children<\/a>. This was the second lowest fertility rate in the world \u2014 only tiny Singapore was lower \u2014 and a recipe for demographic suicide.\u00a0<\/p>\n

China began haltingly encouraging more births in 2016, when it first relaxed its one-child policy<\/a>, but the years since have seen the number of births continue to fall.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Only 12 million babies were born in 2020, down from 14.65 million the year before. This is the lowest number of births since China\u2019s great famine of 1961 when, coincidentally, some 42.5 million people starved to death.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The new three-child policy was necessary, China state media<\/a> Xinhua brusquely explained<\/a>, \u201cto actively respond to the aging of the population.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s putting it mildly. China today is literally dying, filling more coffins than cradles each year. Chinese Communist leaders are increasingly worried about having enough workers and soldiers for the factories and armies of the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it is doubtful that the three-child policy will succeed \u2014 at least as long as it remains voluntary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The problem is that the ranks of young women were decimated during the decades of the one-child policy. Baby girls were aborted and abandoned to die by the millions by Chinese parents who were desperate for a son.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are simply too few young women of childbearing age remaining to offset the coming population crash \u2014 unless every single one marries and has three children.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t imagine any combination of carrots that would induce China\u2019s young, urban, working women to devote themselves to motherhood in this way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In fact, some responded to the new proposal with mockery \u2014 or at least the closest thing to mockery that the communist censors will allow. \u201cDon\u2019t make me laugh,\u201d one commenter posted on Weibo<\/a> about the new policy. \u201cMarried only children have four elderly parents to care for. If you add three children as well you won\u2019t have a life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, if persuasion doesn\u2019t work, I can easily imagine that China\u2019s leaders might resort to compulsion. In fact, local party officials are already suggesting that people need to be strong-armed into the
baby-making business.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOnly the strong leadership of the Party can solve this problem .\u2009.\u2009. of a catastrophic population decline,\u201d wrote<\/a> professor Nie Shengzhe in 2018. His proposals, which have since been echoed by others, include:\u00a0<\/p>\n