Momentous Chinese
decision supports family values
Perceptions by
Gerry Warner
Good-bye
Little Emperor!
That’s what male babies have been called in China for
years ever since Chairman Mao brought in China’s one-child per family policy in
1972 and set off a biological rush of baby
boys because of the Chinese preference for male babies to carry on the family
name and lineage.
Mao’s reason for bringing in the policy almost 40 years
ago was simple. People were starving. So in true Chinese fashion, the wily old
Chairman came up with a simple, but draconian, solution. Cut the birth rate.
And for a while it worked quite effectively. China’s crude birth rate fell from
37 per thousand people to 20 and China’s overall population growth fell
dramatically too. But after the Chairman’s death in 1976 it became slowly
apparent that tinkering with one aspect of demographic growth created new
problems that weren’t apparent at the time the one-child policy was introduced.
People that are well fed live longer, much longer than
if they were mal-nourished. So the male birth rate in China soared while the
female birth rate declined dramatically until the situation today where 120
male babies are born for every 100 females with millions of Chinese female
babies callously aborted. But this demographic imbalance became a plague of its
own as the Chinese life span increased it soon became apparent that
three-person Chinese families were too small to support the country’s
burgeoning population of elders.
This was something Chairman Mao and China’s Communist
government didn’t think about at the time they introduced the mandatory
one-child policy. But they’re thinking about it now as China faces a
demographic time bomb.
The statement this week from China’s Communist Party
Central Committee said the decision was made “to improve the balanced
development of population” and stem development of a rapidly aging work force.
Sound familiar? Yes, indeed, we have the same problem here where Statistics
Canada issued a report in September that today there are more people aged 65
and over in Canada than children under 15. The implications of this are enormous for both
Canada and China.
In Canada’s case it means that if it wasn’t for the
250,000 or so immigrants that Canada admits every year we’d be close to losing
population as well as critically needed new workers. In China’s case the
problem is even more dramatic because support of the venerated elderly is
absolutely integral in a country where the primary social institution remains
the family in spite of communism.
So how long is it going to take China to get its
population back in balance? Answer this and Chinese authorities might give you
a piece of the Great Wall, but most demographers think it will take at least
two generations.
And this is where the real crunch comes in because
Chinese authorities fear having
millions of young men lounging around unable to find wives or even girlfriends
is a recipe for social unrest or even revolution. The problem is especially
acute in rural China where up to 60 per cent of local farmers are unable to
find wives, according to a Han government report quoted in the Globe and Mail. “These villages are corners forgotten by love,"
the report said. "Because of the poor economic conditions in the villages,
the single men have nothing to do except drinking and gambling together for the
whole day, becoming a source of instability in rural society."
There is nothing a
Chinese government apparatchik fears more than “instability.” And what’s more
unstable than millions of single, young men with raging hormones and nothing to
do? In China, such men are called “bare branches” prone to drinking, gambling
and violence – but worst of all – political revolt. Hence the momentous
decision this week to end the single-child policy in China. But will it be
enough?
We better hope so because
an unstable China, soon to become the biggest economy on earth, has the
potential to destabilize the entire world.
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