I think you were joking, but totalitarian regimes have done this before (Romania's orphan crisis was the result of similar policies, iirc).
The poverty/immigration dance - if you reduce poverty, women have less children. Eventually you reach the point where you need to allow immigration to provide enough workers to keep your aging population from starving. Immigration is an existential threat if your country is based on a single ethnic identity (e.g. Han). Immigrants are poorer and therefore have more babies, and at some point will become the ethnic majority, or at least a sizable minority, large enough to cause problems (and economically vital so you can't just round them up and deport them).
Getting middle-class people to have more babies is difficult.
Edit: of course, this isn't a problem if you don't base your country's identity on an ethnic identity.
China is not a totalitarian regime - you shouldn't believe all the propaganda out there, you should actually go there yourself and you'll find that you can live your life quite normally and happily.
China's identity isn't based on a single ethnic identity - the various restrictions (such as the now-3-child-policy, and permanent immigration between cities) apply to everyone. In fact ethnic minorities generally get preferential treatment - e.g. looser restrictions, affirmative action in various places such as state examinations - because it's recognised that a majority ethnic groups have disproportionate power.
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Reply to the comment below:
> As long as you don't stick out, or criticize the government positively quite frequently.
The ways in which this statement is both true and false in its details, is not particularly different from the West.
In China, there are local protests quite regularly, and local governments respond.
In Hong Kong the protests were incredibly violent and disruptive. You cite the crackdowns by the government, but you don't cite the actions by the protestors and opposition legislators, that also attack innocents and filibuster the legislature for years, much more disruptively and disrespectfully than anything that's happened in the West, including shouting "Fuck China" during legislative oath-taking.
In China, mass organised protest against the national government is not tolerated, but nobody cares if you write some stuff on social media. In the West, in the rare case that actual mass protests ever get too rowdy they are shutdown quite brutally by the police. In China the government stops the situation before it gets to that point. In the West, anyone that sticks out enough to really be a bother, like Julian Assange, gets shut down very brutally too.
In both cases, these types of mass protests don't generally change anything in the political system. And in both cases, most ordinary people actually really just don't care to do these things, because the situation is fine in both China and the West - certainly not like the levels of the revolutions in the 1800s or the wars in the early 1900s. So when you criticise China for not allowing these things, this comes from a position of privilege, you have forgotten what it's like to be hungry. Not being hungry matters more, and China has found an efficient way to do that, so I am happy for them (and "us" as far as I can claim that). Maybe later things will become more relaxed, but it's not a particularly big priority.
> brutal suppression they do in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, or Inner Mongolia A-OK?
Most of the "evidence" regarding Xinjiang is fabricated, the Hong Kong stories are exaggerated and one-sided. I'd be against any actual specific cases of brutal suppression that's going on. But that still wouldn't make me "anti-China" in the same way you're not "anti-US" or "anti-West" presumably (I am not either). But that's what Western media portrayals seem to be trying to do - saying that, oh China is doing some bad things, they are evil, they need to be stopped. China is not evil, the world is a complex place.
> we all know it was would be like Putin and Medvedev, with Xi still controlling,
Nobody really knows the details of these things high up, it's all conjecture. It's sure convenient that Democrat and Republican policies, compared to the rest of the world, are very similar. How do you know they're not essentially in cahoots and just putting up a show of being "opposites" for the rest of the world?
I don’t really see this as a controversial statement. All countries are likely to face the issue of shrinking population this century, and they’re going to have to try all sorts of schemes to keep the wagon on the road.
When China faced a population explosion, it didn’t create a complex mix of incentives and marketing to nudge people into having smaller families: it outlawed larger families. It seems reasonable to suggest that is a policy lever they will reach for again in the face of another demographic crisis. What am I missing?
dang|4 years ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
marcus_holmes|4 years ago
The poverty/immigration dance - if you reduce poverty, women have less children. Eventually you reach the point where you need to allow immigration to provide enough workers to keep your aging population from starving. Immigration is an existential threat if your country is based on a single ethnic identity (e.g. Han). Immigrants are poorer and therefore have more babies, and at some point will become the ethnic majority, or at least a sizable minority, large enough to cause problems (and economically vital so you can't just round them up and deport them).
Getting middle-class people to have more babies is difficult.
Edit: of course, this isn't a problem if you don't base your country's identity on an ethnic identity.
adamors|4 years ago
Clewza313|4 years ago
And woe betide anyone who dares be less than harmonious about being ruled by their Han big brother.
infinity0|4 years ago
China's identity isn't based on a single ethnic identity - the various restrictions (such as the now-3-child-policy, and permanent immigration between cities) apply to everyone. In fact ethnic minorities generally get preferential treatment - e.g. looser restrictions, affirmative action in various places such as state examinations - because it's recognised that a majority ethnic groups have disproportionate power.
---
Reply to the comment below:
> As long as you don't stick out, or criticize the government positively quite frequently.
The ways in which this statement is both true and false in its details, is not particularly different from the West.
In China, there are local protests quite regularly, and local governments respond.
In Hong Kong the protests were incredibly violent and disruptive. You cite the crackdowns by the government, but you don't cite the actions by the protestors and opposition legislators, that also attack innocents and filibuster the legislature for years, much more disruptively and disrespectfully than anything that's happened in the West, including shouting "Fuck China" during legislative oath-taking.
In China, mass organised protest against the national government is not tolerated, but nobody cares if you write some stuff on social media. In the West, in the rare case that actual mass protests ever get too rowdy they are shutdown quite brutally by the police. In China the government stops the situation before it gets to that point. In the West, anyone that sticks out enough to really be a bother, like Julian Assange, gets shut down very brutally too.
In both cases, these types of mass protests don't generally change anything in the political system. And in both cases, most ordinary people actually really just don't care to do these things, because the situation is fine in both China and the West - certainly not like the levels of the revolutions in the 1800s or the wars in the early 1900s. So when you criticise China for not allowing these things, this comes from a position of privilege, you have forgotten what it's like to be hungry. Not being hungry matters more, and China has found an efficient way to do that, so I am happy for them (and "us" as far as I can claim that). Maybe later things will become more relaxed, but it's not a particularly big priority.
> brutal suppression they do in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, or Inner Mongolia A-OK?
Most of the "evidence" regarding Xinjiang is fabricated, the Hong Kong stories are exaggerated and one-sided. I'd be against any actual specific cases of brutal suppression that's going on. But that still wouldn't make me "anti-China" in the same way you're not "anti-US" or "anti-West" presumably (I am not either). But that's what Western media portrayals seem to be trying to do - saying that, oh China is doing some bad things, they are evil, they need to be stopped. China is not evil, the world is a complex place.
> we all know it was would be like Putin and Medvedev, with Xi still controlling,
Nobody really knows the details of these things high up, it's all conjecture. It's sure convenient that Democrat and Republican policies, compared to the rest of the world, are very similar. How do you know they're not essentially in cahoots and just putting up a show of being "opposites" for the rest of the world?
Clewza313|4 years ago
jokoon|4 years ago
Not sure you can really force people to have kids. I doubt that chinese women would accept this.
hyko|4 years ago
When China faced a population explosion, it didn’t create a complex mix of incentives and marketing to nudge people into having smaller families: it outlawed larger families. It seems reasonable to suggest that is a policy lever they will reach for again in the face of another demographic crisis. What am I missing?