China may bring in 'two-child policy' to tackle demographic timebomb

[herding cats]

Source: The Guardian

Thirty-five years after enacting draconian birth control rules blamed for millions of forced abortions and the creation of a demographic “timebomb”, China could be on the verge of introducing a two-child policy. The new regulation, under which all Chinese couples would be allowed to have two children, could be implemented “as soon as the end of the year if everything goes well”, a government source was quoted as saying by the China Business News.

The highly controversial and often brutally enforced one-child policy was introduced by China’s Communist leaders in 1980 amid fears of a catastrophic population explosion. The government credits it with preventing 400 million births, but the human cost has been immense, with forced sterilisations and abortions, infanticide, and a dramatic gender imbalance that means millions of men will never find female partners.

In 2012 – in one of the most shocking recent cases of human rights abuses related to the policy – a 23-year-old woman from Shaanxi province in north-west China was abducted by family planning officials and forced to have an abortion seven months into the pregnancy.

Liang Zhongtang, a demographer from the Shanghai Academy of Social Science, said the policy should have been abolished long ago. “The core issue is not about one child or two children. It’s about reproductive freedom. It’s about basic human rights. In the past, the government failed to grasp the essence of the issue,” he said.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/23/china-may-adopt-two-child-policy-this-year-as-demographic-timebomb-looms

[DonCoquixote]

1. The real reason

Guess which parts of China never went along with the policy. The Xigurs, aka Islamic China. yes, the Yanks make great target form Islamic anger now, but China it knows it would be easy for them to become a target, so this is their way of tryiing to counterbalance a part of china that has NO demographic timebomb.

[McCamy Taylor]

2. Watch the two children all be boys. They will never end the gender problem they have begun.

[Nihil]

3. If they had a voice, yeast would make the same claim:

> The core issue is not about one child or two children. It’s about reproductive freedom.

The reproductive freedom of bacteria to fill a petri dish.


> one-child policy was introduced by China’s Communist leaders in 1980 amid fears
> of a catastrophic population explosion.

It's a shame that what was probably their only accurate prediction/fear is the one
for which they are most reviled.

It's more of a shame that people think that the freedom to spawn unlimited numbers
of offspring through as many "relationships" is somehow a "basic human right" ...


(But I have little doubt that such inconvenient truths will be appreciated by the PC
alert trolls.)

[christx30]

4. Well, they are killing babies

and forcing women to undergo abortions against their will. If the GOP is wrong for forcing women to have babies they don't want, then the Chinese are equally wrong.
If someone doesn't have the freedom to make decisions about their body and their family, they don't have any freedom at all.

[restorefreedom]

5. i also wonder about birth control

china has no excuse for not providing the most effective bc possible. and hey if they have all the world's money, why not offer $ incentive to families that keep it small? better than kidnappings and forced abortions/sterilizations.

the us gives tax breaks to people with kids. same idea.

[christx30]

6. Because as we've seen from

Tibet and tiananmen square and the one child policy and minders for foreign tourists, ect, the Chinese government isn't the "incentive and tax break" kind of people. They are more the "submit or die" type.

[restorefreedom]

7. yeah. and they want to be a first world power

seems they have some to go on that.....

[Gormy Cuss]

11. It's amazing to me that there hasn't been another revolution. n/t

[christx30]

12. I'm sure the reason there hasn't been is the

fist that the Chinese army can use to crush any resistance. And they have shown no qualms about using that fist. Peaceful protests bring lines of tanks. Dissidents get house arrest, (if they're lucky), long prison sentences, or execution. What would they do against actual armed resistance? Could anyone actually build up any kind of force of arms that could resist the People's Liberation Army?

[Sunlei]

10. China can sell the extra babies to the adoption market or give them to families as 2nd child.

horrible they forced millions of late term abortions on their people.

and what happened to all the 7 plus month term babies? they live for hours at that stage.

Chinas 'Doctors' kill them outright? or toss them into the trash alive? or pack them up/freeze them to death and give them to scientists? or do they let the mothers take home their dead infant?

[NickB79]

8. Because clearly we're just not cooking the planet fast enough, let's crank it up a notch

China already leads the world in absolute carbon emissions, having overtaken the US a few years ago, and have committed themselves to an economic future based upon US-styled middle class consumerism.

And while they make claims about attempting to limit carbon emissions some time in the future, their actions have not backed up those predictions.

[GliderGuider]

9. In every case I've seen, human rights are the enemy of the biosphere

But then, even societies without human rights have done an exceptional job of trashing the joint.

So maybe the question of "rights" is immaterial. Maybe it's humans - with or without rights - that are the enemies of the biosphere.

Fun times.