- 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.
I’ve seen a bunch of comments expressing interest in the population declining. Since I don’t really want the Thanos approach, lowering the birth rate is great.
I propose sterilization for cash, like cash for clunkers. You get a bunch of free money if you decide you want fixed.
Think of the amount of people who’d take that deal. Long term, lower population, less social program spending, hopefully less people’s wanting abortions, win win. It goes against the rich people need for more workers, but you can dangle the lower welfare receipts, they’ll be all about that. 😋
Sorry, morbid humor among actual socioeconomic conversation.
I’m first in line for the nuts for bucks program!
Decreasing population hurts the economy beyond rich people’s needs
As a dude planning to get a vasectomy this year, I am all for this plan, so long as it includes people who already have children.
I honestly feel we need to set a limit to human lifespan. Healthcare is advancing too fast for this to be sustainable.
Bro, you lived 75 years, please die already so new generations can have some resources for themselves, stop hogging everything, you… hogger. Lower the retirement age to 55 and let people enjoy their last 20 years with decent retirement money because there’s less old people to maintain.
This is the only solution I can think of. If the population keeps growing at this rate and we don’t start culling ourselves, we’ll make the planet inhabitable.
Young people are necessary for the economy to bloom and to sustain old people after retirement. I don’t think sterilization is an option.
No one wants to die at 75 - that’s a single decade (in old age, mind you, with limited options) to enjoy retirement. IF you managed to retire. There’s a lot of older people now that I work with that simply can’t retire, because they can’t afford it. That’s only going to get worse as we grow old and need to retire.
We can’t enact Logan’s Run at 75 and assume it’ll fix anything. We’ll all work till we drop, which I don’t want for my children. Hell, my parents don’t want that for me now!
I feel like they’d have a point if we could reduce the standard retirement age. Theoretically, a world pushing increased automation should be able to achieve that - assuming the value generated from automation isn’t going into about 5 or 6 individual bank accounts.
Their retirement money sucks because there are too many of them. Because there are too many of them, young people have no resources. Because young people have no resources, people don’t want to have kids. Because they don’t have kids, there aren’t enough young workers to generate decent retirement money for old people.
It’s a cycle.
It’s really the best solution…
Seriously, I can only see positives. The only problem is that people are too attached to life. Humans are too self-centered for something like this. 75 years is enough to experience whatever. You’ll retire younger and have actual money to enjoy your last 20 years.
This is a temporary solution though. The population would still grow, but at least it would be mostly workers that are probably figuring out how to solve the issues permanently.
I’d go further. Imagine if we extended the purge to the young population as well. They’d no longer need to work hard to give their children stability and a chance to succeed. No wars, no famine, no sickens… no suffering. All that, achievable right now! All it takes is to kill ourselves!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4146128/
One day we’ll look back and wonder “why did we even think it was possible for human population to keep growing without limits in a limited space with limited resources?”
Wait, that day already happened years ago.
The 1 child policy already proved to be the wrong solution. Do you have any other ideas on how to stop the population growth while keeping the population young?
We have tripled our population in 50 years. Life expectancy is higher than ever and will keep getting higher.
Solutions? Or do we just sit down mocking reality until we die?
Or just take residential property away from companies and sell it back way cheaper to first time buyers. I bet lots of people would like a kid or two but just can’t afford it because of all the money spent on rent/mortgages.