American media freaks out over China's rational reduced birthrate
The People’s Republic of China recognized the problem of unending population growth in 1949 and therefore promoted birth control and family planning. By the late 1970s, China's population was approaching the one billion mark - clearly a reason for concern.
China's population crisis was recognized in the insightful 1995 book by Lester Brown: Who Will Feed China?: Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet.
By 1980, China had standardized a one-child policy nation-wide. The policy was most effective in urban areas. China's fertility rate began to decline and dropped below two children per woman in the mid-1990s. In other words, it was below replacement-level fertility.
Demographic success
China's one-child policy was dramatically successful. In 2016, all Chinese families were again allowed to have children. Population Reference Bureau's 2019 projections for China's population are as follows:
2019: 1,398 million
2035: 1,426 million
2050: 1,367 million
Notice how population will continue to grow by 28 million by 2035, then slowly decline to approximately today's levels.This is due in part to population momentum, where population growth continues beyond the time that replacement-level fertility had been achieved, because of the relatively high concentration of people in the childbearing years. In other words, children grow up to have children while their parents and grandparents are still alive. In China, the contribution of population momentum is 146 million people (or 11 per cent relative to the 2010 population).1
Imagine China with a population of 2 billion, had the one-child policy not been implemented! Considering that China is a huge burner of coal and consumer of natural resources, twice as many people would have caused twice as much environmental impact.
For 124 countries with projected total fertility below replacement, the fertility component will have a negative impact on population size over the period 2010-2100. The largest contribution in absolute terms will be in China with a decline of 425 million people to 2100 (or 38 per cent of China’s 2010 population).1
Media panic
It's unfortunate, but no surprise that American mainstream media doesn't get it. This January 4, 2020 Quartz article China’s population could start shrinking in 8 years warns:
It’s been over three years since China officially ended its decades-long one-child policy. But more and more experts are sounding the alarm that the move was too little, too late, to reverse China’s demographic decline—and consequently an economic one.
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), a prominent state-run think tank in Beijing, is the latest to issue a dire warning over the country’s graying future. In a report (link in Chinese) released yesterday (Jan. 3), the CASS said that in the worst-case scenario, if China’s fertility rate—the average number of children a woman is expected to have during her childbearing years—remains at the current level of about 1.6, its population could start to shrink as soon as 2027. It could even fall to the 1990 level of 1.172 billion people by 2065...
The New York Times - fondly referred to as "The New York Slimes" - is wringing their hands over China's return to demographic stability: China’s Birthrate Hits Historic Low, in Looming Crisis for Beijing, January 16, 2020:
The number of babies born in China last year fell to a nearly six-decade low, exacerbating a looming demographic crisis that is set to reshape the world’s most populous nation and threaten its economic vitality.
About 14.6 million babies were born in China in 2019, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. That was a nearly 4 percent fall from the previous year, and the lowest official number of births in China since 1961, the last year of a widespread famine in which millions of people starved to death. That year, only 11.8 million babies were born.
Births in China have now fallen for three years in a row....
Cai Yong, an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, said he expected the low fertility rate to continue for at least a decade.
“There are a lot of parallels with this demographic crisis to global warming,” Dr. Cai said. “The waters are rising slowly, and we need a longer term strategy to deal with it.”...
It appears that the NYT is now a big booster of perpetual population growth, AKA the Population PonzI scheme. While they obsess over global warming and climate change deniers, they are in absolute denial of environmental damage that unending growth would cause. What idiots. This is Loony Tunes stuff.
The Ageing Population Scare - A Transition not a Crisis
Ageing Populations have become the excuse of choice for ignoring overpopulation, but increasing births and immigration to underwrite old age costs is totally unsustainable. Supporting a temporary increase in older people will be much lest costly than building our infrastructure in all of its aspects in order to support an ever-expanding population.
Population aging in advanced economies is the manageable consequence of positive developments. By contrast, rapid population growth in many poorer countries is a severe threat to human welfare. Just to maintain the working age support ratio of 15 - 64 year-olds at their current llevel would need the UK population to rise from 59 million in 2005 to 136 million by 2050. (Extrapolated, Adair Turner, former Chair of the UK Pensions Commission).3
In a 2003 study: Is the ageing population a threat to health care? Professor Raymond Tallis of Manchester University found eighty per cent of men over 85 were living at home, successfully looking after their personal care unaided. Even half the 95-plus age group were still independent.
Many people over 70 are physically robust, look after grandchildren and do voluntary work. No four-year-old can do any of these things. Financial help is also provided down through generations (not up) on average until age 75. A huge economic expenditure is required to support young people which is being ignored - education, child benefits, higher unemployment, etc.
China, which will be one of the most impacted with regard to ageing population, has demonstrated the political focus to manage this transitional support and avoid unsustainable growth-mania economics.
Here they go again
China's one-child policy was widely supported by the Chinese people because they were well informed by the government as to the benefits. It lifted millions out of poverty and starvation and helped Chinass spectacular rise in living standards. It only applied to people in cities as people in rural areas could still have two children. Even though China still has a massive population overload it has dropped the one-child limit, because it bought in to the ponzi-economics panic that there will be too few young people to support the transient phenomenon of an ageing population.
China also now considers a stable population an impediment to their imperialist agenda. Read more about the Chinese mindset of global dominance: China, fearing India, abandons population stabilization.
References
1. Demographic Components of Future Population Growth, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affair,s Population Division,Technical Paper No. 2013/3. The introduction of this paper is particularly informative.
2. Here are excellent vizualizations of population per country: Population Pyramids of the World from 1950 to 2100.
3. The Demographic false alarm, by Brian McGavin and Tim Murray, October, 2008.
4. Pro-Growth Demographic Dogma, by Joseph Chamie, former director of the United Nations Population Division. IPSNews, January 2020:
The pro-growth demographic dogma is fundamentally a Ponzi scheme. It is a pyramid scheme that generates more money, power and influence for some by adding on more and more people through natural increase and in some cases immigration. Questions about the sustainability of long-term population growth are typically dismissed or left unanswered.