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China Allows Couples To Have Three Children (bbc.com) 276

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
China has announced that it will allow couples to have up to three children, after census data showed a steep decline in birth rates. From a report: China scrapped its decades-old one-child policy in 2016, replacing it with a two-child limit which has failed to lead to a sustained upsurge in births. The cost of raising children in cities has deterred many Chinese couples. The latest move was approved by President Xi Jinping at a meeting of top Communist Party officials. It will come with "supportive measures, which will be conducive to improving our country's population structure, fulfilling the country's strategy of actively coping with an ageing population and maintaining the advantage, endowment of human resources," according to Xinhua news agency.
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China Allows Couples To Have Three Children More

China Allows Couples To Have Three Children

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  • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Decades late. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday May 31, 2021 @09:20AM (#61439500) Homepage Journal

      They're going to have a bunch of problems to solve because of it, but the problems can be solved one way or another, and they will be.

      They can sustain a significant loss in population before they have show-stopping problems because of it. They're not short on people overall.

      • Just on sex. Good thing this story was posted to the right forum.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Except that shortage of people in China started about a decade ago. You can track this from salaries in their industries. For example, weaving and sewing industry has largely left China about five years ago because of this, and they're usually the first ones to react to higher worker salaries, as much of their labour is simple manual labour. They're now mainly in Vietnam and Thailand.

        And it's been getting worse ever since. Worst part is, there's also a large amount of people who have no prospects and live i

        • Re: Decades late. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday May 31, 2021 @11:21AM (#61439824)

          Way to go exaggeration. I asked some friends recently from China if the thing you said about street beatings being true. They laughed and said it is false, they have NEVER seen that. Of course there are a couple of viral videos (none of which had police not intervening, but ok.) China has 1.3 billion people of course you can find videos of violence like that. There are PLENTY of viral videos in the US of women beating other women with other people egging it on. Are you going to paint a narrative that it is the norm? Also, in the viral videos you can find filmed in the US it looks like the women are trying to kill each other whereas the video I found occurring in China the women seemed like they just wanted to inflict some pain temporarily.

          • It may be true, it may be not... but after talking to chinese people about Beijing, I can tell you they are far out of touch with reality.
            At least as bad as trump supporters, anti-vaxxers, and anti-maskers.

            Being able to believe what the strong man leader says is true is a strong survival trait and results in the "authoritarian personality type" which was identified in studies after world war 2.

            China has a massive racial superiority complex which overlays a deep foundation of racial inferiority complex (due

          • I don't know how much of it is exaggerated fake news.

            My direct report is Chinese, emigrated way back after a few years of college. F1 to USA, PhD and a job here. Goes back once in a couple of years. After one trip he said, they had a class reunion and many of his class mates are remarried and the wives were all very young and very pretty. He was a little shocked and outraged. Some of them were as young as his daughters.

            Were they really new wives, or mistresses, or hired to play the role of trophy wives

        • And it's been getting worse ever since.

          The falling birth rate is worse for China's overall economy, but it is not worse for individuals. As low-value jobs move away, growth is slowing, but wages are rising.

          You can't get any social services without a local residence permit

          The Hukou [wikipedia.org] system is profoundly unjust, but falling birth rates will ameliorate that problem. It is easy to mistreat rural migrants when there are plenty of them. As the labor shortage bites, Chinese urban areas will need to compete for workers and offer them a better deal.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            In China it's expected that you look after your parents when they get old. If you don't have many siblings it creates more of a burden for you.

            Maybe they plan on everyone getting a decent pension and affording social care.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            And as wages are rising, jobs are leaving, because jobs were only there for cheap labour. There's plenty of cheaper labour nearby in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Bangladesh etc.

            For a nation that is still as poor and undeveloped as China today, the likelihood that they'll get old before they get rich enough to be able to deal with the problem in a non-Communist manner is going down to zero fast. And that means that those wonderful jobs are going to simply leave as textile industry jobs already did.

      • They can sustain a significant loss in population before they have show-stopping problems because of it. They're not short on people overall.

        Actually they can't sustain any loss of population. China's economic system is no different from our own, it depends on the future generation to pay for the care and life of the previous generation.

        For China this problem is compounded by an incredible rise in life expectancy in the past 50 years bringing their median age from the low 20s to just shy of 40. The percentage of people above 60 has risen from 7.5% to just shy of 20% in that same timeframe.

        They one child policied themselves in the foot.

        • China's economic system is no different from our own, it depends on the future generation to pay for the care and life of the previous generation.

          So either they'll kill off a bunch of old people, or they'll come up with some new way to manage elder care. History says the first one is more likely though

      • They're not short on people overall.

        But they are overall short people [instantrimshot.com]. (SFW)

    • Because they now have a bit of a population crunch in the short term? And it's better to grow their already huge population indefinitely until something much worse likely happens at a later date, just to prop up the intergenerational ponzi scheme of a retirement system?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gmack ( 197796 )

        No matter the system, you need a certain amount of working people to sustain the elderly when they are not able to work anymore. A slow drop can be worked around, a large drop means the elderly end up dying when they are too old to work.

        • Re:Decades late. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Monday May 31, 2021 @01:04PM (#61440054)

          I regularly see two types of gloom-and-doom articles:

          1. Birth rates are falling and we will soon run out of workers. Civilization will collapse.

          2. Robots are taking all the jobs, and soon no one will have any income. Civilization will collapse.

          These can't both be true.

      • Or maybe with their HUGE military buildup they realized that the next step they take in that progression will result in a need for replacements.
        May sound harsh to some of you but since they can't feed the population on hand there has to be some clear need they are looking to fill.
        Going from JIT manufacturing to JIT cannon fodder production is not out of line in their reasoning.
        Maybe Today being Memorial Day and missing my brothers has made me see things a bit bleaker than usual.
        Time will tell.

    • It's almost a universal rule, the more prosperous a society is, the more wealth is in the hands of the average person, the less kids people have. China still has a significant rural demographic still clawing its way out of poverty, but even that group is slowly moving upwards. China's industrialization on overdrive has simply lead it to the same mid-point that the developed world has been facing for a few decades now, and it's going to find that trying to incentivize reproduction isn't going to deliver the

      • China still has a significant rural demographic still clawing its way out of poverty, but even that group is slowly moving upwards.

        I read somewhere that part of China's growth strategy has been tapping rural populations for economic growth. As explained, China moves literally tens of millions of people into industrial centers to provide competition for existing jobs. This helps keep wages low, reducing business costs and keeping products competitive while also improving the standard of living for these peop

    • The big problem caused by the one-child-policy isn't a "demographic collapse", it's that the population is gender-skewed. Many more girls than boys have been aborted, Parents didn't want to "waste" their one opportunity for offspring on a girl.

      I don't quite understand the recent panic about shrinking populations. It's the opposite of a problem. Many of the hardest problems we face as a species are a result of too many people. On the negative side of a shrinking population, we need to spend relatively mor

      • I don't quite understand the recent panic about shrinking populations.
        Demographics ...

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Arnonyrnous Covvard ( 7286638 )
          Bullshit. I already noted that the downside of shrinking populations is that we need to spend relatively more on the elderly. That's what people ominously allude to when they say "demographics" or "pension collapse" or whatever the phrase of the day is for scaring gullible people. Elderly will find that the money they saved or the pension they expected won't go as far as they had planned and won't allow them the luxuries they hoped for. More people will find out that they will have to depend on society's he

          • Quite a lot of people work in "service industries" now, which is code for "if nobody did these jobs, it would be a minor inconvenience".

            You might want to take a look at the economic impact of a dearth of workers available for those jobs today. The economy is linked to so many different things working that you cannot just taper off certain things and expect to be fine.

            • Things inevitably change. Buggy whips went out of style, fabric weaving went overseas, coal mining is going up in smoke. Entire regions lost the industries which had made them prosperous. Jobs will keep going away and other jobs will keep emerging. If you're trying to prevent change, especially necessary change, you're fighting a losing battle.

          • If people realized what naturally happens to boundlessly growing populations, they'd punch anyone peddling "demographic collapse" in the face.

            And they would deserve to be punched in return. The problem here isn't one or the other. The problem is that we need to restructure society to make both problems go away, but you can't do so within a generation. Many of the people using the term demographic collapse know full well what boundlessly growing populations means and also don't consider that and end game.

            Rather they are trying to prevent people ripping off the bandaid from the very much gushing wound.

            Society needs to be restructured *first*, and t

            • Many of the aging populations are long past the point of no return for the demographic development that China appears to want to prevent with this policy change. The aging populations in Europe for example won't be aging populations anymore in about 30 years. From the 1970s on, birth rates have been mostly stable. Half the baby boomer generation (born 1946 to 1964) is already retired now. Whatever problem you expect is already here and becoming less of a problem as the baby boomers reach the end. It's not a

      • I don't quite understand the recent panic about shrinking populations. It's the opposite of a problem. Many of the hardest problems we face as a species are a result of too many people. On the negative side of a shrinking population, we need to spend relatively more on caring for the elderly. Big whoop.

        Economic growth for centuries has been built on access to more customers. In simple terms, if you can sell X widgets to Y people, you can sell 2X widgets to 2Y people. But if there are only 0.5Y people, you s

      • The problem with a shrinking population is that each elderly needs a certain amount of care. Now, there's a question of how much support each elderly needs, but the generation of the One Child Per Family years implies there's going to be a period, possibly several decades long, in which the number of "elderly" is 2/3 of the total population of China.

        This is potentially catastrophic for China. 30 years of 2/3 elderly, 1/3 working people & their children isn't something that ANY society has had to deal

    • Actually, they are doing better than many of their neighbors:

      Vietnam 2.05
      North Korea 1.90
      China 1.70
      Japan 1.36
      Taiwan 1.2
      Hong Kong 1.07
      South Korea 0.92

      (source [wikipedia.org])

      Admittedly China has more room to get richer than the countries below them, and thus more room to fall - but they're currently nearly double South Korea and that says something.

    • They probably fucked up because they have too many men compared to women (unless a lot of them ends up homosexual), but having a reduced population is not fucking up. It's even a good thing for the planet (biodiversity and climate) and mankind.

      If China runs into labor shortage when they have too much old people to take care of, they can always recruit immigrants. A lot of countries in Africa and places with high birth rate would also be better off with less people.

      One thing is certain, there won't be a glob

  • How sweet (Score:4, Funny)

    by GimpOnTheGo ( 6567570 ) on Monday May 31, 2021 @09:09AM (#61439466)

    If you get pregnant again after your first one, they won't kill it.

    Warms the cockles of my heart.

    And to think people say the CCP is uncaring !

  • Easier to reduce than increase (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Falco54 ( 2613309 ) on Monday May 31, 2021 @09:12AM (#61439472)
    A few years ago I read the book "What To Expect When No One's Expecting" and one of the key findings of the author was that it was relatively easy for a government to reduce fertility of its population but it was much more difficult to increase it. Russia has had some moderate success in this area but is still in a demographic hole. China was late in recognizing this and is going to have a much more difficult task. However, given how much control the CCP exerts over the lives of its citizens, they have more levers to pull than most other countries. It will be interesting to watch the measures they take going forward.

    • Mandatory sex ed. It's like phys ed. But with sex.

    • Re:Easier to reduce than increase (Score:4, Funny)

      by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Monday May 31, 2021 @10:01AM (#61439628)

      A few years ago I read the book "What To Expect When No One's Expecting" ...

      Is that the one about The Spanish Inquisition? Because it seemed a little paradoxical.

    • My wife lived in Singapore for a few years and had all the usual "fish out of water" stories you'd expect from someone living in a country other than their own, but the thing that most stuck out to me was when she shared this ad that Mentos ran [youtube.com] for National Day (Singapore's independence day). Apparently Singapore's birth rate is abysmal, so it's been encouraging its citizens to do their civic duty of "doing it", with an extra emphasis around National Day each year. Well, Mentos took it a step further with t

  • Is it really cost? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by scamper_22 ( 1073470 ) on Monday May 31, 2021 @09:23AM (#61439504)

    Is cost really the issue? This is a problem through the developed world as well.

    If cost was the issue, wouldn't rich people be having the most kids and poor people the least kids? We immigrated to Canada in the 90s. We were probably technically classified as in poverty. Parents raised 3 kids reasonably well. As I reflect, whatever problems we may have had were not really money related. Don't get me wrong, life without a lot of money is a struggle. I'm not diminishing that struggle. The point I'm making is that money is not *THE ISSUE* for people not having kids.

    Even today. I'm married. My wife and I both work. We have 2 kids. We're not going for more. The reason is not money. In our case, it's time.

    We got married in our late 20s. Little bit of time to enjoy married life without kids. Pop out 2 kids... we're close to 40. There's no time to time to really have more kids. Maybe we'd have had 3 or more if our fertility was perfect or we popped out a set of twins or something. Technically it's probably possible, but I'm also looking at how old I will be to actually enjoy my kids. I'm not having kids for the purpose of government resource allocation.

    I don't propose any solutions here or even that it's bad to be single or have fewer kids. Consider this judgment free social commentary. The social factors that contribute to this are vast and money ranks pretty low on the list in my view.

    People marrying later in life for all sorts of reasons (education, finding yourself, finding the right one...)

    Some people not marrying at all due to individualist lifestyle

    Higher life style expectations. Just a simple one, my older brother and I shared a room for most of our early childhood. Today, too many people assume every kid needs their own room.

    Perception of higher child needs. Let me talk of the old days. I've walked to school even in grade 1. My parents didn't really have money for sports, camps... It was just go play and be home before dinner. Ditto for things that simply cost more today. Children gifts are just silly... people seem to get them and the kids barely play with things, but it's a social duty...

    Risk of divorce. Everyone protects themselves in one way or another (men and women). I wasn't willing to go all in with family myself putting myself on the line with the risk of all my work being for naught in a divorce. I made sure to protect myself. Gone are the days of let's get married asap cause we're in it for the long haul and we can get through things in thick and thin for the sake of our family and children. I married someone who makes good money as well (not going to lose half my shit) and I make sure I have good savings in case shit. My wife, despite romantic words, pretty much protected herself too.

    Lack of religion/culture. These 'force' a certain way of life on you. Maybe for good. Maybe for ill. But most emphasize family life as a way of life for you to be. Comes with a lot of bad. But nothing is perfect. You take the good with the bad and the bad with the good.

  • After all, we hear about the media reporting on...uhh...wait, how are the naysayers supposed to spin this to say that the US is just as bad as China?

    I mean, pretty much any reasonable person will accept that a Floridian whistleblower getting their day in court after having their home raided by the police is just as terrible as secret police regularly "disappearing" political dissidents who are never seen or heard from again. You'd be hard-pressed to tell the situations apart. Likewise, anyone of intelligenc

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Your argument: the other side is worse than ours, so therefore we're good.

      • Your argument: the other side is worse than ours, so therefore we're good.

        He's not saying China is 'just as bad' as the the US, and therefore trying to excuse the US, he's saying China is far worse by nearly any human rights measure.

        • Sorry to clarify: He's not trying to make the US look good, he's saying that China's wrongs are routinely minimized by people TRYING to make the US look worse than they are. China being awful doesn't make the US look better, but it makes people ignoring that awfulness look worse.

      • Your argument: the other side is worse than ours, so therefore we're good.

        Your argument: I hope no one reads the part where he wrote, "The US has no lack of issues of its own and we absolutely need to fix them", because that blows a hole in what I just said and makes it clear I'm shoving words into his mouth because I'm nothing more than a shill for an authoritarian regime.

        The other side is worse than us, and needs to be called out as such so that we can put an end to the laundry list of atrocities they are perpetuating, but I made it abundantly clear that we still need to fix ou

    • Likewise, anyone of intelligence will understand that [...] organ harvesting of an ethnic minority
      Is nonsense, as the organs of that ethnic minority most likely are never compatible with the completely different genetic make up of the majourity of the population. Ooops ...

      • Likewise, anyone of intelligence will understand that [...] organ harvesting of an ethnic minority
        Is nonsense, as the organs of that ethnic minority most likely are never compatible with the completely different genetic make up of the majourity of the population. Ooops ...

        Depending on the organ, compatibility may be as simple as a size and blood type match or may involve far more complicated tissue and antigen matching, among other factors, but suggesting that they "most likely are never compatible" because of "completely different genetic make up" is the only thing nonsensical that's been said here (not to mention seems to be implying these people are subhuman).

        Given that it isn't uncommon to hear about organs being transplanted between races within countries that have dive

    • On the topic of "disappearing" people, I just went and dug up a post of mine from over two years ago where I recounted a story I heard from a friend of mine who was living in China at the time. They've long-since left the country because of this stuff and have no plans to ever return, but they personally know a German man who was disappeared (then later returned) and had heard secondhand stories from a number of other people in their circles of friends. Mind you, these are foreign nationals being disappeare

  • The funny thing is people in China don't want three kids.
  • If China was a real communist state, they would make a 2 child LOWER limit
  • of the creation and termination of life. What could go wrong.

  • The reset is good because the global population is grotesquely high such that it threatens the survival of our species.

    It will also reduce pressure on China to go on military adventures among its neighbors.

  • If they have a goal of a stable population and a 1-child or 2-child policy, if the law is obeyed then they are guaranteed to fail their goal. Because some people do not have children, through choice or necessity. Laws should be such that if the laws are actually followed, the desired outcomes are theoretically possible. That would allow 1-child or 2-child policies temporarily (for that particular goal), but not permanently.

    I like the goal that if the parents had n children, their children should have a t

  • When people become more affluent, they prefer fewer children, and take care of them better, enjoy time with them better and generally go for quality over quantity. Happens to all affluent societies. China throttled down population using authoritarian methods during poverty years and when it started getting affluent, it got knocked by a double whammy. Smaller base and population disinclined to grow.

    May be they will force people to have more children, may be they will give awards like they did in USSR for w

  • They were able to shut whole towns down, confine people to their home., mandate contract tracing apps and control the pandemic.

    The democracies are struggling to with demo-crazies. Same way, they can issue orders saying, all people born before 2000 must have two children, gradually increasing to 3 for people born on or after 2015 and then reducing back to 2 gradually.

    The people are willing to obey their government, so who are we to say they are wrong?

  • One thing I wonder is if Chinese families actually want more children. Here in the US, we've become a lot less religious, some have become better educated, and some of us have become more affluent. All these factors translate to fewer children (also, same goes for the more educated and less religious poor -- kids are expensive.) I imagine China's population has also experienced a massive increase in overall wealth given their economic expansion, so it's possible they have the same probkem.

    Either way, it's p

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Capital gains/inheritance taxes. What are they like in China? Can you leave your accumulated wealth to your kids? Socialism has already removed the motivation to have a safety net for your old age. The state will care for you.

  • Sorry, but that's what it is. You can't have a sustainable social security system, unless there are more people under you.

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