- cross-posted to:
- longreads@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- longreads@sh.itjust.works
Chinese women have had it. Their response to Beijing’s demands for more children? No.
Fed up with government harassment and wary of the sacrifices of child-rearing, many young women are putting themselves ahead of what Beijing and their families want. Their refusal has set off a crisis for the Communist Party, which desperately needs more babies to rejuvenate China’s aging population.
With the number of babies in free fall—fewer than 10 million were born in 2022, compared with around 16 million in 2012—China is headed toward a demographic collapse. China’s population, now around 1.4 billion, is likely to drop to just around half a billion by 2100, according to some projections. Women are taking the blame.
In October, Chinese Leader Xi Jinping urged the state-backed All-China Women’s Federation to “prevent and resolve risks in the women’s field,” according to an official account of the speech.
“It’s clear that he was not talking about risks faced by women but considering women as a major threat to social stability,” said Clyde Yicheng Wang, an assistant professor of politics at Washington and Lee University who studies Chinese government propaganda.
The State Council, China’s top government body, didn’t respond to questions about Beijing’s population policies.
Wrong? I see people deciding not to have kids as fundamentally a good thing. Coercion into having kids due to government pressure or social norms seems a whole lot more wrong to me. It’s ok to not want kids, it’s not some sort of disorder that needs fixing.
I would absolutely love to see the population go down, even for like a single day, within my lifetime. But considering we’ve added over 2 billion people to the population since I was a kid…I don’t have high hopes.
as someone who does not want kids and is constantly being pressured into it by inlaws, thank you for saying this. Every time i see my screaming, trantrum throwing nephews my belief is more reinforced.
Yes, I think the person you replied to meant exactly what you put in words- they just left it vague to accommodate for all the other factors involved not only in the Chinese case at hand, but worldwide. I don’t think they meant to say it’s not ok to not want to have kids.
Better for the environment for sure, but less people would leave many countries bankrupt because of high senior care costs. I mean, they could just allow immigration, but that’s not gonna happen. It’s funny how the US benefits so much from immigration and yet half the country doesn’t want it
Which is basically an accounting issue. We could produce all the stuff we need with a smaller workforce, but that would squeeze a lot of profit out of the production system. Simply put billionaires would suffer. Without an ever increasing consumer population there is the horror of degrowth.
I don’t think we can and I think the ongoing labor shortage is proof of it. At least not yet, but with advances in automation and robotics, then I think it’s likely. Also we totally need something like a UBI at that point because we would surely tip the scales towards labor surplus at that point. Which is where I would like to see municipal programs pop up around the country to employ people and pay them really well to clean up the environment. Plant trees, clean up rivers, basically rehab the planet. It’s all wishful thinking but I like talking about it lol
I hope when I’m old they just decide to let my generation suffer to correct this fundamentally flawed system that will inevitably collapse at some point. It’s based upon the impossible notion of infinite growth.
I totally agree with you about immigration, but I tend to look at the population issue from a world wide perspective. And from that perspective the population goes up every single year without fail, which to me is a major problem that I hope our species will find a way to overcome.
They’ve been telling Gen X and younger that we’re going to suffer when old since we were kids.