WI China implements two-child policy

Personally I'd like China to implement a one-boy-as-many-girls-as-you-like policy. Could become a major export industry ;)
 
Personally I'd like China to implement a one-boy-as-many-girls-as-you-like policy. Could become a major export industry ;)

Actually, the gender ratio will remain the same, if couples stop having kids after they have a boy.

Assume 16 couples have kids. Half will be boys, half will be girls. The eight couples with girls will have a kid again. Half of those will be boys, half girls. The four couples have kids, 2 boys, 2 girls. The last two couples have kids, one each boy, girl.

So the kids are:
Code:
M M M M M M M M F F F F F F F F
                M M M M F F F F
                        M M F F
                            M F
                           (etc)

The gender ratio remains 50-50.

You do run into the problem where parents might not be able to support too many kids, and their legality to have more kids runs into the limit of cannot support them all. A wealthier person might be able to support more kids, but has already had a son. So the wealthier couple buys the 'token' from the poorer family, allowing them to have more kids, until they have a son.
 
Personally I'd like China to implement a one-boy-as-many-girls-as-you-like policy. Could become a major export industry ;)

I'm aware you weren't being 100% serious, but isn't that worse from a human rights point of view though, since you might end up with a lot of dead baby boys?
 
Would China in better shape economically and socially if two-child policy was the option instead of one-child? Would they reached 1.7 billion by now?

No. There would be 400 million extra mouths to feed with millions more unemployed. Economic growth of 10-12 % pa has been unprecedanted. It has brought jobs and money but is wrecking the environment. An extra 400 million people would be armageddon.

That was why the Chinese government opted for the one child policy. India should have tried the same. They will suffer terribly in the future I think.
 
No. There would be 400 million extra mouths to feed with millions more unemployed. Economic growth of 10-12 % pa has been unprecedanted. It has brought jobs and money but is wrecking the environment. An extra 400 million people would be armageddon.

Chinese population growth is now controlled and needs to scrap the one-child policy and shift to two-child policy or even let the parents to bear as many child as they can so that to avoid shortage of labor force and avoid burden on the underdeveloped Social Security. One-child policy is hindering the consumption to grow over investments in China. One-child policy is slowing the GDP growth in a long-run. China may be surpassed by India in 2084 if one-child policy insists.

That was why the Chinese government opted for the one child policy. India should have tried the same. They will suffer terribly in the future I think.

Actually, India's move not to have a one-child policy is better in a long-run. It avoids labor shortage that China is now starting to experience because of inflexibility and destructibility of the one-child policy. For China to grow at 8% for the next 50 to 100 years, scrap the one-child policy NOW!
 

loughery111

Banned
The best explanation for the One Child Policy is that is was a frantic, last-ditch attempt to salvage something from the ruins of the uncontrolled and often encouraged population growth of Mao's ruling period.

By 1979, had they not implemented the OCP, China's GDP growth would never have gotten significantly ahead of its population growth. India faces much the same problem today; for the majority of the population, a rise in incomes is eaten almost immediately by more children. It is finally starting to change there, as well, but much later than in the PRC.

I recall seeing figures that say China's GDP would barely have grown faster without the OCP (more of a labor force, but so thoroughly straining the infrastructure that most of it will never be employed productively and therefore contribute little to development), but the population would be closer to 1.8 billion... the agricultural base of China cannot support that many for long. Nor can the groundwater, especially in the north.

In dealing with population control measures, the number of people you end up at in the end often doesn't matter as much as how you get there. China's ideal scenario would have been the institution of a Two-Child policy in 1949 along with attempts to use the vast pool of cheap labor in economic reforms. Instead, we got Mao's idea that "people are strength" and the Great Leap Forward. In the long run, instead of the much slower growth and no forced demographic transition of a Two-Child Policy, the PRC's government was forced into a policy that they knew would have extremely difficult long-term effects, but would allow them to get a handle on the problem of overpopulation before people were starving to death for lack of agricultural land.

Implementing a Two-Child Policy couldn't realistically be done later than 1955 or 1960 to have a chance of controlling the population to a great enough degree. Come up with a POD that permanently takes Mao out of politics following the failure of the Great Leap Forward and brings the Moderates to power, and you can have this. Try to do a TCP when OTL's OCP was enacted and things will fall apart instead, almost guaranteed.

EDIT: As for the present, they can probably get away with doing this. As it stands, the countryside essentially has a "Two Children or a Boy" Policy, which seems to keep dissent down and work moderately well. It will probably just become "Two Children" soon, with the cities to follow inside a decade.

Joseph, as I said above, the OCP was a last-ditch effort to slap a Band-Aid on a gaping wound. The government knew when it did this that the demographic transition they were enforcing would be disastrous, but they had no better options left. Another 500 million mouths to feed and no way to feed them, let alone to let them participate in the ongoing economic boom, would have brought the country into open revolt. It may well have ended in another civil war.
 

Cook

Banned
India faces much the same problem today; for the majority of the population, a rise in incomes is eaten almost immediately by more children. It is finally starting to change there, as well, but much later than in the PRC.

That may have more to do with having a protectionist economic policy until recently than birth rates.
 

loughery111

Banned
That may have more to do with having a protectionist economic policy until recently than birth rates.

Entirely true, but even after the reforms of 1991, they've still been facing the same problem; their population growth is still too high by far. It's not nearly as bad, now that their economic growth has increased six- or even seven-fold. I probably chose the wrong phrasing there. Nonetheless, they'd be better off if they could get to an average of 2 or 3 kids per family.
 
Chinese population growth is now controlled and needs to scrap the one-child policy and shift to two-child policy or even let the parents to bear as many child as they can so that to avoid shortage of labor force and avoid burden on the underdeveloped Social Security. One-child policy is hindering the consumption to grow over investments in China. One-child policy is slowing the GDP growth in a long-run. China may be surpassed by India in 2084 if one-child policy insists.



Actually, India's move not to have a one-child policy is better in a long-run. It avoids labor shortage that China is now starting to experience because of inflexibility and destructibility of the one-child policy. For China to grow at 8% for the next 50 to 100 years, scrap the one-child policy NOW!

It is probably too Late for China to avoid a dramatic demographic transition. In the long term China may have damaged itself by it's drastic population policies but there are few countries in the world that are doing a perfect job. Some countries are worried about having too many people and some with having too few.

Also remember that strictly speaking China doesn't have a one child only policy, it's fertility rate was 1.7 children per woman until recently. This is higher than Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and most European countries so it is not simply a story of all Chinese families having one child.

One big problem is the 'missing girls' caused by the abortion and infanticide of females. There are major imbalances starting to appear. Unless the Chinese start importing girls (from where?) they will face a population collapse before 2050.

As for India I think that they will face economic, social and ecological disaster in the next 50 or so years. How will they feed a population that will be much larger than China's by the middle of the century? Where will these people live and where will they get their fuel?

The Chinese people will face a difficult problem soon but I would much rather be in China's position than India's.

Scrapping the one child program now would make only a small difference. Chinese people are increasing looking to better their own lives now, not breed like their ancestors did. In Hong Kong, Taiwan and in the diaspora, Chinese people are having very small families by their own choice. In China many couples are having no children at all.

One thing that will happen is that the dream that Mandarin will become a major world language that would challenge the global suprmacy of English is effectively over before it got started.
 
Top