Why experts question whether China's one-child policy was necessary in the first place [View all]

[Jilly_in_VA]

China’s one-child policy, one of the harshest attempts at population control the world has seen, forced abortions on women, made sterilization widespread and led to baby daughters being sold or even killed, because parents wanted their only child to be a male.

Now, experts say, the question is whether it was all necessary. China’s birth rate fell to record lows last year and its population has fallen for four years in a row, official statistics showed this week. Authorities, alarmed by the prospect of a shrinking workforce and an aging population, scrapped the policy in 2015.

“It’s hard to escape the fact that China demographically shot itself in the foot,” said Mei Fong, the author of the 2016 book, “One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment.”

China’s leaders saw unbridled population growth as a potential threat in 1980 — to both economic development and its ability to feed what had grown into a nation of 1 billion people.
(snip)

The birth rate had begun to fall in the 1970s after the government began encouraging people to have fewer children. It’s unclear how much its fall since then resulted from the one-child policy and to what degree it would have happened anyway because of the tremendous economic and societal changes over the last four decades

https://apnews.com/article/china-one-child-policy-population-birth-rate-a4ca6cee5b50c9f95dc6d809587c17cc

Second thoughts, anyone?