China’s population time-bombs
On Thurdsay and Friday of last week the BBC broadcast two separate news items presented by Damian Grammaticas, both of which are very worrying. Here below, after a summary of what each video shows, I have provided a link to the BBC’s website (which includes links to more information on each story) and embedded the same video (as posted on You Tube by a third party).
As China’s ruling communist party prepares for December’s handover of power to a new generation of leaders, the main challenge they face is the rapidly ageing population: In the next 20 years the number of people over the age of 60 will double, leading to a situation where the number of retired Chinese people will be greater than the entire population of western Europe. At the moment there are six workers for every pensioner in China, but the country’s one child policy means that China is heading towards a situation where there will be only two workers for every pensioner…
China seeks ways to manage ageing population crisis (BBC website – video may only work if you’re in the UK)
China’s one child policy is unpopular; and it is having some unpleasant unintended consequences that threaten to completely destabilise the entire population distribution: In cities, the one child policy is strictly enforced and many parents would prefer to have a boy, so many want to know the sex of their babies before they are born. Sadly, despite it being illegal for medical staff to tell them, many pregnant mothers do find out and, if it will be female, many chose to have an abortion. As a result of all this, girls are already significantly out numbered at school, which is going to make it very hard for the next generation of Chinese to reproduce.
Chinese leaders facing one child policy dilemma (BBC website – video may only work if you’re in the UK)
Disappointing spin on a critical issue. The entire world is overpopulated and becoming more so each day. Any short-term problems a given society faces regarding pension programs is ultimately trivial compared to the impact too many people are having on food supplies and the overall environment.
Barbra & Jack Donachy
26 September 2012 at 00:36
Thanks for taking the time to comment. However, before criticising this piece in isolation, I really do think you should have researched what else I have had to say about population in the past: e.g. http://lackofenvironment.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/fables-about-population-and-food/
Martin Lack
26 September 2012 at 10:38
I would opine, in all humbleness – how is that for hypocrisy? – that, with a population of well over 1200 million, the Chinese have only one problem; and that is how to feed them all in a world of diminishing resources. In fact, despite what our “leaders” would have us believe, swallow, and react upon; the only true problem is that of overpopulation. The UK is enormously crowded and yet, for the sake of being PC, millions are allowed in to the country, thus intensifying the pressures upon all our natural resources. The mathematical prognoses of whole populations dying out due to declining births do not convince me. Nevertheless, this imbalance in the Chinese population must be worrying for a government/party which has, for the past fifty years, always known what is right…
Duncan
26 September 2012 at 12:23
Thanks Duncan. The Communist Party of China must have known that interfering with a natural system such as reproduction would have severe long-term consequences. However, if they did not foresee these problems then, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that they are even more stupid than they now look. What I find most alarming, however, is the level of brainwashing that appears to have occurred in China such that a personality cult (that would be more at home in North Korea) still appears to surround the memory of Chairman Mao. This is desperately sad because Mao was spectacularly successful in one thing only – ensuring that widespread poverty was his most intractable legacy. This popular admiration is doubly-misplaced because any prosperity there is in China today is thanks only to the more open-minded nature of the leaders that have followed him. Furthermore, Mao would not be impressed by the fact that, in opening up China to the worst excesses of free-market Capitalism, those that have come after him have completely betrayed the supposed principles of Marxism: Just as has happened in Russia, they have created a new elite within their society who are every bit as corrupt as the Imperialist regimes their revolutionary forebears swept aside.
Martin Lack
26 September 2012 at 16:10
[...] 2012/09/26: LoE: China’s population time-bombs [...]
Another Week of GW News, September 30, 2012 – A Few Things Ill Considered
1 October 2012 at 15:06
I suspect that China foresaw these consequences of the one child policy and decided that they were less problematic than the problems resulting from endless population growth. Every policy has pros and cons. I’d be interested in your comparison of the negatives of the one child policy versus the negatives of continued population growth in a resource constrained world.
Gillian King
10 October 2012 at 00:18
You might well think the situation would be much worse. However, it is equally possible that China would have had to confront the unsustainable nature of its growth much sooner; and Communism might by now be a distant memory… After all, Maoist ideology was – until Deng Xiaoping came along – industrial growthmania without added Capitalism.
Martin Lack
10 October 2012 at 09:26