Posted on 09/23/2007 8:06:11 PM PDT by monomaniac
Top Scholar Predicts “Slow Motion Humanitarian Tragedy” in China
Stinging rebuke delivered during address to World Economic Forum in Dalian, China
By Samantha Singson
NEW YORK, September 21, 2007 (CFAM.org) - Likening the Chinese one-child policy to a “slow-motion humanitarian tragedy,” prominent demographer Nicholas Eberstadt urged the Chinese government to “immediately and without reservation” scrap the coercive population control program that has been “a tragic and historic mistake.” Eberstadt delivered the stinging rebuke during an address to the World Economic Forum held in Dalian, China earlier this month.
Eberstadt told officials that while the population control program has achieved its objective of lowering the number of births in China, it “directly undermine[s] the country’s future development potential.”
According to Eberstadt’s research, by 2015 China’s working-age population of 15-64 year olds will be in a prolonged decline and in a generation, China’s labor force will likely be smaller than it is today. Between 2005 and 2030, China’s 15-24 year old population will decrease and face a projected 20 percent decline. Eberstadt emphasizes “the only part of working age population that stands to increase in size between now and 2030 is the over-50 group.” China’s aging population will experience a never-before-seen boom. By 2030, China’s 65-plus cohort could more than double and top 235 million.
Another startling outcome will be the undoing of 2500 years of Chinese cultural tradition, he projected. That is because the new face of Chinese culture would have a “4-2-1” composition: four grandparents, two parents and one child. The new equation will hamper economic development as it puts greater strains on the dwindling youth population. Unlike the situation in Japan, where a national pension system was already in place before the aging population began to rise, China has no such pension system. Elderly have depended on sons to provide for them in old age and with the rapid fertility decline, those sons will not exist. “How will the elderly in China get by in the world they will so soon be facing?” he asked.
Another consequence of China’s population policy has been the increasingly skewed gender imbalance. Naturally, about 105 baby boys are born for every 100 baby girls. Eberstadt reports that shortly after the advent of the one-child policy, China began to report biologically impossible disparities. Currently, the sex ratio at birth in China is 123 baby boys for every 100 girls. In a generation or less, China will have to deal with the problem of tens of millions of unmarriageable young men.
Eberstadt urged the Chinese government to abandon their population control policy as a means of easing “China’s incipient aging crisis, its looming family structure problems, and its worrisome gender imbalances” and encouraged the government to embrace human resources as a blessing which could “be the key to whether China succeeds in abolishing poverty and attaining mass affluence in the decades and generations ahead.”
Eberstadt said he could not be sure, but felt this could have been the first time such a presentation had been made in China. Though many Chinese demographers might agree with Eberstadt analysis, they have been reluctant to openly criticize the policy.
why should we be concerned about our enemies’ demise?
The tragedy may not occur “in China” per se. All those extra young men with no marriage/family/legacy prospects may have to be sent off to die in war somewhere. Another likely solution will involve importing a lot of foreign women. Perhaps both solutions will work in conjunction.
Because those millions of desperate Chinese boys are going to want to find a girl ... somewhere....
I believe that this policy will make that country more militant. The extra males means they can afford to waste cannon fodder.
dunno.
about asymmetrical gender populations.
seems that i recall that the japanese in about 1920 had a population boom.
and, this along with cultural and religious momentum translated into an aggressive pacific war.
Don;t listen to this guy oh noble and brave Chinese. Immediately adopt a "NO BIRTHS" policy and stick with it for the next 50 years!
Theres not too many people, just too many Chinese men . Thats a problem future generations of Americans will have to worry about. (no wife, more mayhem)
One child policy gives birth to more boys and criminals
Posted by Kevin OMalley to nickcarraway
On News/Activism 01/12/2005 12:07:37 PM PST · 17 of 25
Here is my swag on what is going to happen in Taiwan, posted on an earlier thread, “China Rapidly Modernizes for War With U.S.”.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1285398/posts
1) The one-child policy has created a testosterone-rich generation the likes of which no one on earth has ever seen. China will have an entire army of what they call “little dictators” who have few prospects of finding women, and they will be very aggressively pushing their old-guard superiors for action on the Taiwan issue. The final straw will be that they’ll be promised wives when they invade Taiwan.
2) Their army is as much as 200 Million strong, which was the size predicted in Revelation in the Bible, called “The Kings of the East.” They can afford casualties in the range of 10 million, which is 5 times bigger than our army ever was. China has some unfinished business with Vietnam, having fought to a standoff in 1979. They might do a run through Vietnam first so that their troups are more battle-hardened and arrogant, knowing that the US didn’t exactly win there. The added bonus is they get one of the largest warm water ports in the world.
3) Taiwan has never declared independence. It’s not like the brave Estonians standing up to Russia when communism fell. They’re like an impudent child claiming to have sovereignty over China. Their fatal miscalculation is that they know they’ll need Americans to fight for them if they are in a war, but Americans will be reluctant to shed blood for an ally that didn’t have the courage to declare independence until they were invaded on an “internal dispute”. The chinese will hammer away at this in the press.
4) Chinese weapons policy has been to cycle through older generations of weaponry and stay about one generation behind the latest stuff. They sold their old silkworm missiles to the Iranians and used that money to upgrade their newer missiles, which are inferior to US missiles but they only need to be functional. The plan is to overwhelm defenses with superior numbers. No ship can stand up to 50 supersonic silkworm missiles aimed at it. They have similar tactics for other systems, such as anti aircraft missiles.
5) The chinese went up against Americans in Korea. They sent in 300 thousand infantry up against a much smaller American force. The key was that they only had rifles for about 1 in 5 personnel. So they would tell one to go as far as he could till he got shot, then the 2nd one would pick up the rifle & keep charging, and so on. Today, every one of those infantrymen has an automatic rifle. They are not as well equipped as their US counterparts but they can afford a lot of casualties. Vietnam, Iraq, Somalia and other engagements proved that you can’t replace feet on the ground with air superiority. No matter how advanced the air force is nor how many smart bombs get dropped, the US won’t be able to dislodge a standing army without sending in massive troup numbers and experiencing casualties. If our press made a big deal about losing 1000 US soldiers in Iraq, they’ll have a heydey with 500 thousand casualties. Seeing the press reaction emboldens the Chinese.
6) China is building a blue-water navy including submarines. They might be able to achieve a standoff in the surrounding ocean, limiting the ability to resupply american troups while the chinese troups will pillage Taiwan. Once America loses 2 nuclear powered aircraft carriers (with the resulting radioactive plumes), the calculation is that the U.S. will lose stomach for more fighting.
7) The trick to defeating these strategies with minimal casualties will be special forces operating in Taiwan. They will need to have the ability to direct standoff weapons fire onto individual tanks and squad units in order to be effective.
8) The most likely outcome will be that Taiwan will be a giant pile of rubble. Casualties could run as high as WWII.
If China wins, it could be a Pyrrhic victory. If the US wins, it will take a whole generation to repair and rebuild.
I think the Chinese view towards weakness or perceived weakness is a little bit like how Germany viewed the U.S. after we sent 10,000 men wandering in the hills to find Pancho Villa, to no avail. The Germans perceived it as weakness and went ahead with their war plans.
India, Indonesia?
That was just one of the minor factors in the Japanese Imperialism of the 30/40s. A more compelling reason was when they beat the Russians in the Russo/Japanese war, they were convinced that they were just so far superior to the rest of the world that they could not fail in anything they undertook against the west.
The key word here is aimed. Providing targeting info is harder than it seems. Add to that the fact that the Silkworm is based on a 50's design (Russian SS-N-2 Styx) and has been obsolete from an EW standpoint for over 30 years.
MI Ping?
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
It appears that he is shown the door as far as policy on N. Korea is concerned.
FYI: Most children in China consider it one of their most important obligations to care for their parents. Even my most successful attorney friends there have their parents live with them in what we would consider to be a small apartment. (My suggestions about getting a separate apartment for them, even one nearby, are generally met with polite laughter.)
By the way, if every family has only one child... and that child cares for the two parents who raised them... where is the crisis?
Now, as their earning potential explodes, it becomes far easier to care for one's parents... but only if you provide the standard of care available today. 20 years from now, China will have a new face in modern medicine... and with their impending inflation rates, it'll be a bit tougher to provide a more modern kind of service for the elderly.
Irrelevant for China. The basic valuation of individual human life is already significantly lower there than here. They don't have too many qualms about people as cannon fodder as it is. It's simply cultural. Losing a few thousand people in an industrial accident is seemingly met with reactions that show that it's "merely the cost of doing business"... unless and until it hits the western news wires, and then they have to go through the motions.
Maybe he will be buried in the beltway society unless he changes his tune. Globalists hard at work?
Well, I'm not sure it should bother us that they're going to have a rough time, but we might consider how they plan to deal with it.... treasure is obtained in many different ways.
This is the part I'd be concerned with.. "...In a generation or less, China will have to deal with the problem of tens of millions of unmarriageable young men."
What to do with tens of millions of unmarriageable young men.... oh what to do......
What do you think is coming? just consider the potential threat of having tens of millions of disposable soldiers to throw at the front lines...
The chinese have been steadily updating their anti-ship missile capability, along with their other military capabilities.
The combination could prove tough for us: They have long range (even ICBM capable) missiles which could be loaded with incendiaries; they have lotsa cheap antiship missiles; they have a sampan navy, which would probably carry a few men (plenty of those for cannon fodder) armed with anti-ship missiles + shoulder launched stinger-type antiaircraft + cheap video cameras so they can show CNN how the nasty Americans are killing thousands of “innocent” civilians in the middle of a mass migration to an internal province.
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