| "Wealthy and Happy Baby", Artist: Zhang Guiying, 1982, (British Library) |
CHINA IS EXPERIENCING A SORT OF "BABY BOOM" , BUT IS IT TOO LITTLE TOO LATE?
According to China's official Xinhua News Agency, obstetric and pediatric wards in Beijing are filled to capacity. Beijing alone is reported to be expecting over 300,000 births this year. But decades of the strict government enforced limits on family size have taken a toll. This year's 300,000 births mark an increase of roughly 20 percent over previous years since family size became formally regulated. Official estimates are that about 22 million babies will be born nationwide in China during 2016. But it still may be too little too late to avert a population crash.
The new year of 2016 started with a relaxation of China's national regulation of one child per family. The Dragon now allows two children per family. The Commie government touts the easing of the rule as a key to a nationwide increase in the birth rate. Unfortunately not many serious thinkers outside of official Commie circles think this is going to be enough of a policy change to actually increase the birth rate sufficiently to halt a now manifest rapid decline in the population. Try to imagine a China which is not the world's most populous nation and largest market. A lot their economic power and other "soft power" goes down the drain. This is one of those unintended consequences of central planning and loss of individual freedom that goes with it.
Most experts on demographics believe that China's population is aging rapidly and will soon start to shrink. The statisticians of the United Nations predict that China's population will max out around 2028 at about 1.42 billion people. Some Chinese demographers estimate the peak population to occur as soon as 2020. All seem to agree that by 2200 China's population will be just over one billion at best.
China is finding it difficult to increase the fertility rate. The zero population growth propaganda has taken hold of China's society. While quite a few families found the one child policy invasive, intrusive, and offensive, the society as a whole has enjoyed higher standards of living per family with smaller families. China's child bearing population has not exactly been running out conceiving that second baby. It is thought that subsidies when offered only accelerate births that were already planned and hoped for. A shrinking and aging population comes with many effects, few are good for a growing economy and society.
If the visibly approaching population bust occurs, China will be surpassed by India as the World's most populous state. The hope and belief of many Chinese Commie officials that China will become the world's largest economy will be dashed on the harsh rocks of low fertility. The conventional wisdom has been for decades that China would soon over take America as the world's largest economy, probably by a factor of more than double the U.S. gross national product. Privately some Chinese economists factoring in the "baby bust" no longer believe that China will ever match the economy of the United States. At the moment China has an aging population but that population is four and half time that of America. If the "baby bust " isn't reversed soon, by the end of this century China will only be about twice the population of the United States.
Before China reaches that particular low point in population the United Nations demographers assert that India will surpass China in population as early as 2022. If this occurs as predicted, it will mark the first time in three centuries, and probably in all recorded history that China was not the world's most populous nation. The coming population crash in China is just one of the unintended consequences of China's Communist penchant for central planning and aversion to basic human freedoms. As we approach the election of a new chief executive here in America the words of central planner Hillary Clinton should be kept in mind by every voter:
"We are going to take some things from you for your own good "
Well don't be surprised, she and her husband Bill have both received funds from the Chinese and are quite enamored of their system as is the present occupant of the white House. A Hillary electoral victory would bring us into the 9th year of a series of looming demographic disasters that are a direct result of Democratic party policies and the personal visions of such globalists as the Clintons.
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