China's moves to combat an ageing population by relaxing decades-old curbs on family size have hit an unexpected snag: many parents are no longer interested in having more babies. ...
The world's most populous country introduced its one-child policy in 1979 and last tweaked it in early 2016, raising the limit to two children as the nation scrambled to rejuvenate a greying population of some 1.4 billion.
But the pent-up demand for more children has ebbed, experts say. Couples have increasingly delayed having even one child as they devote more time to other goals, such as building their careers.
The skyrocketing cost of raising children in booming China has also given many prospective parents pause.
I have long been in the camp that felt the effort to increase births would fail. Chinese culture adapted to one-child families for nearly four decades, and changing that is difficult. Unless China starts requiring multiple children per woman (hey, and actual Handmaid's Tale!) just as they brutally enforced just one, modern China's reality does not encourage multiple children.
And honestly, where the relaxation will have an effect will be in the poorer and more rural interior provinces which China is trying to raise up to urbanized coastal standards of living (lest the disparity result in rebellion) through the Belt and Road Initiative (aka, the New Silk Road or OBOR). More children in those provinces will just dilute the effects of the massive Chinese infrastructure project. Are the Chinese sure they thought this through child birth policy?
Well, maybe the communist rulers will resort to mass cloning of people and test the theory that it takes a village of robots to raise a child loyal to the Chinese Communist Party:
Keeko robots have entered more than 600 kindergartens across the country with its makers hoping to expand into Greater China and Southeast Asia.
Beijing has invested money and manpower in developing artificial intelligence as part of its "Made in China 2025" plan, with a Chinese firm last year unveiling the country's first human-like robot that can hold simple conversations and make facial expressions.
Honestly, I suspect it won't be long before the rulers decide only they should have children and that trying to forge loyal workers from the unstable meat sacks they have to work with is a fool's game. Seriously, why wouldn't China's rulers decide robots would make better subjects than people?
UPDATE: Interesting that China's one-child policy wasn't nearly as extensive as I thought:
“One child” is a misnomer. For the 30-plus years the policy was in full effect, only about a third of Chinese households were subject to stringent one-child limits. The rest could have more children, conditional on where they lived, the kinds of jobs they had or their ethnic makeup.
I was aware of the ethnic minority exception. But not the rest. Yet still China's birth rate collapsed.
Which means that ending the one-child policy can hardly have the dramatic effects Chinese leaders apparently counted on.
Which means that communists being communists, the Chinese Communist Party may use its command of the powers of the state to compel Chinese women to have more children. I'm betting there will be few snarky "Handmaid's Tale" barbs directed at China for that.
