8mm
Posted on 08/13/2007 6:43:54 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
According to its Academy of Social Sciences, China “suffers from the world’s most severe brain drain.” Approximately two-thirds of the Chinese who have studied abroad in the past two decades did not return home.
The BBC offered many possible explanations for this drain: the lack of opportunities at home; a lack of freedom, especially after Tiananmen Square, and a preference for the Western “lifestyle.”
One factor that was not mentioned but should have been was a concern about spending the rest of your life alone.
According to China’s State Population and Family Planning Commission, “by 2020 some 30 million Chinese men will not be able to find wives.” If these thirty million men were a country, they would be one of the forty most-populous countries in the world.
This inability to find wives, in the commission’s words, “may lead to social instability.” I guess it will. According to Constance Kong, a consultant in Shanghai, “given that understatement is a characteristic of the Chinese Government when it discusses national problems, this means that it is [really] alarmed.”
The government has only itself to blame. The looming imbalance between men and women of marriageable age is the completely foreseeable result of China’s “one-child” policy. Limited to one child in “a country where daughters are unwanted,” many Chinese families, especially in rural areas, made sure—even by infanticide—that the one child born was a boy.
As a result, in parts of China, there are 130 males for every 100 females. Government attempts to end sex selection, such as prohibiting doctors from revealing the sex of unborn children, have failed: Families regularly bribe doctors.
This demographic imbalance has created a new market: kidnapping young girls from other parts Asia, not for the sex trade, but to provide wives.
Given the role that marriage and family plays in socializing males and the trouble that young unmarried men have historically created, it is little wonder that Beijing is alarmed. But that’s not the only problem caused by the “one-child” policy.
It “has also created the world’s fastest aging population.” China’s population is stabilizing, but, thanks to the “one-child” policy, it is replacing working-age adults with those over sixty. The result: a demographic “Titanic gunning for the iceberg,” according to Kong.
This iceberg has raised many concerns among foreign investors. They are no longer putting all their eggs in the Chinese basket. As Kong puts it, it is no longer “China or bust,” but “if only China, bust.” This diversion of funds threatens China’s ability to provide jobs for the tens of millions moving into its cities in search of work.
Given China’s history, its leaders are right to be alarmed about the possible impact its demographics will have on “social stability.”
China is not the only place where demographic trends are frightening: 3,500 miles away in Tehran, demographics have officials worried, and because they are worried, we need to be worried, as well. I will tell you more about this tomorrow.
China, having chosen “lifestyle” over life itself, is going to find out how costly that preference really was—and provide an object lesson to those of us in the West who are facing birthrate declines of our own.
(This commentary first aired on March 7, 2007, and is part one in a three-part series.)
Take your own advice.
Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.
The particular "market" force being one that the government neither wants to nor is in a particularly good position to oppose, I don't think that is a problem.Limited to one child in “a country where daughters are unwanted,” many Chinese families, especially in rural areas, made sure—even by infanticide—that the one child born was a boy.In reality, the "market force" must manifest itself in the enhancement of the status of women.
One possible approach would be an institution of polyandry . . . another would be for the government to relax their one-child policy to a "one boy" policy, which would transform the preferences for the first child; couples could have two or even three children if the first one, and the second, were both girls . . . any inversion in the ratio of girls would lead to the girls marrying older men. In fact, that is baked in the cake right now as a short-term band aid. Girls have not only their same age cohort but the previous one from which to find a husband, and can marry someone with more status, however they define it.China “suffers from the world’s most severe brain drain.” Approximately two-thirds of the Chinese who have studied abroad in the past two decades did not return home.Obviously the "one child" policy, if continued indefinitely, would cause a geometric decline in population.
The BBC offered many possible explanations for this drain: the lack of opportunities at home; a lack of freedom, especially after Tiananmen Square, and a preference for the Western “lifestyle.”
One factor that was not mentioned but should have been was a concern about spending the rest of your life alone.
. . . and as the above indicates, sex selection only exacerbates that inexorable logic. The "one child" policy must change at some point. It is only a question of when.Thing is, via the "brain drain" China is exporting good prospective husbands. Maybe it's not so bad that my four grandchildren are all girls . . .
The Constitution was designed to make the US a great place to be. "Malignant Narcissist" governments such as Communist ones make their countries great places to be as far as possible from.
Part of the problem is that this has not made girls “very desirable” in the sense one would wish: by raising girls’ and womens’ status in society. Instead, it hs made women very desirable as property. I read on another website of the phenomenon of two brothers in rural China kidnapping one woman in order to take turns sleeping with and keeping house for them both.
If they have a population “bust” for a few decades, as you say, they end up with less people, sure: less young workers and taxpayers, less young risk-taking investors and entrepreneurs, less innovation and creativity in technology (these qualitieis are most amply represented in the disappearing young sector) and proportionately more pervasive stagnation, sick aging workers and retirees.
In a one-child society, in a few decades each and every worker has 4 grandparents to support, directly or through taxes.
Then what? Is that one worker going to want to start his own family and support them, too? Hardly.
Thus the whole thing comes crashing down.
Here’s a Population Control and Eugenics reminder:
To further Population Control in Africa, without having to expend or distribute resources, the WHO promoted anal sex.
Seen any consequences of that campain?
the whole point of the one child policy was to reduce population growth and so there is no way they will allow more than one child with that mentality.
There are two faulty premises: 1) that pop growth is bad even for china
2) it should be controlled by fiat
Premise 1 could perhaps be challenged by pointing out the real problem is misallocation of resources by the government. There is no reason why most of the population should be concentrated in a few big cities.
Premise 2 could be challenged by pointing out that as people get wealthier through capitalism they tend to have fewer children
A communist government would reject the challenges because they want control over people and the chinese are paying the price.
“Where will all those “extra” men find women open to marriage via forced rape and pillage, nowadays?”
Why do you think these women get a choice?
I’m sure that the women Genghis Kahn kidnapped/raped/enslaved had been pretty happy with their men.
Somehow I don’t think ol’ Genghis asked them their opinions.
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Can you hear me now? LOL!
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