China’s population numbers are almost certainly inflated to hide the harmful legacy of its family

South China Morning Post ^ | Published: 2:00pm, 20 Jul, 2019 | Yi Fuxian

[nathanbedford]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3764031/posts?page=23#23

[exDemMom]

By big families I mean 3+ children.

I’m curious how they avoided the enforcement mechanisms, such as mandatory menstrual cycle charting and the roving abortuaries that forcefully abort unauthorized babies. I’ve read about very heavy handed policies used to enforce the one-child rule.

[NorseViking]

I suspect NK doesn’t execute people by mortar too.

[Georgia Girl 2]

The Chinese never had an original thought. They have stolen our intellectual properties, manipulated their currency and managed to negotiate trade deals to their extreme benefit and our detriment.

The Chinese are so stupid they have used their own crappy steel to build their new aircraft carrier. After three sea trials its still leaking at the seams.I

The Chinese make cheap, crappy knock off products. In a head to head contest they cannot compete with the US economically. Trump is doing to China what Reagan did to Russia.

Robotics and AI are never going to replace people anymore than self driving cars are. They will not save China.

[PGR88]

The provinces lie about everything else. In the old days it was about rice production, now its about economic growth and debt. Why wouldn’t they lie about births and population?

[nathanbedford]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3764031/posts?page=10#10

[SunkenCiv]

One incentive to inflate population size is that China’s family planning authority needs to present a picture of a “rapidly growing population” to justify the country’s brutal family control policies and even the very existence of the birth control apparatus.

Thanks Zhang Fei.

[PapaBear3625]

One child policy was always mostly a sham. I engaged in trade with some family-owned businesses in late 1990s and mentioned that big families at least in northern China were a norm. By big families I mean 3+ children. They usually had older male kid officially and the rest undocumented.

I don't think the "one child" policy was ever intended to apply to the wealthy, but rather to be a eugenics policy to limit the peasant class. Did you notice any poorer families with large numbers of kids?

[NorseViking]

That might be the case. But I wouldn’t describe people I worked with as rich. More like middle to upper middle class. Haven’t interacted with poor people though so I can’t both prove or disprove your theory.

[bIlluminati]

True about secondhand mortality. Secondhand morbidity (sickness, lost time at work, etc.) was a real issue, costing tens of billions USD per year over decades. Serious health issues with second hand smoke have plummeted in the last 20 years, although spme of that is due to clear air and water and the recent slowdown in coal. Absolutely true that the stats were abused on secondahand smoke mortality.