China Is Pressing Women to Have More Babies. Many Are Saying No.
China Is Pressing Women to Have More Babies. Many Are Saying No.
The population, now around 1.4 billion, is likely to drop to around half a billion by 2100—and women are being blamed.
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.
China's problem is a universal problem. They're "communist" in name only. Their economy has capitalist demands for growth/metastasis, same as ours and most developed economies.
People want to have kids when they can expect those kids to live at minimum the same quality, and preferably better quality, than they themselves did and do. That just isn't the case anymore as the global economy has run out of massive new sectors for growth/metastasis and has begun eating itself. You can see this in all the entire sectors here merging into monopolies and duopolies. Constant merging isn't a business strategy, it's just trying to buy time in a failing economic model.
Capitalism has always been a long-term pyramid scheme to concentrate all the power/wealth/means/capital to a small owner class. The problem is, the con has run out of new places and ways to exploit people as you eventually can't squeeze more out of a fully exploited stone. No pensions, laughable pay, no future. Just expected to thanklessly generate capital for the owners in larger and larger quantities for the love of what? The nation trying to commoditize your entire life to profit the right people? Why would you bring another poor, desperate child to suffer such a world?
Now, in their desperation, these economies that lead their societies and governments around by the nose are desperately screaming "MORE LIVESTOCK TO EXPLOIT GOD DAMN IT!" because in lieu of not being able to squeeze any harder on existing capital batteries without being correctly told to 'get fucked,' that's all they have.
I firmly believe that is why the federalist society that runs our SCOTUS is trying to get abortion banned, as the most profitable capital batteries are desperate, poor ones. I also believe the intentional decline of our public education system is meant to address the same problem, if they can make the population stoooopid enough not to consider the lives the children of already struggling peasants would have.
This world is finite. Its resources finite. An economic model literally based on infinite continuous growth/metastasis or die is not compatible with the world as it is. In every sense, it is killing us, whether by climate change from without, and loss of actual personal meaning within, at least for the non-winning vast majority. The goal of global economics should have been to establish a sustainable population that could find equilibrium/homeostasis with our shared, COMMUNal environment we all rely on from one breath to the next. Not a lot of room for Super Yachts and private jets in such a world though...
Governments and companies have gotten by in the past with a combination of factors:
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Religion pressuring people into marrying and having children.
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Poverty and poor education causing people to have children they weren’t prepared for. Includes lack of access to birth control and discouraging its use.
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One income households made it feasible to raise large families when times were good. The rich have since siphoned off all economic growth while real wages have stagnated.
Having children is an unpaid job. If the government wants people to have children, it should start paying for it. Or, the wealthy will need to stop hoarding all the wealth and let regular people earn enough to support a family on one income again.
In the meantime, people should feel justified and good about not reproducing. The planet is already pushed to its breaking point. More humans will consume more resources and emit more CO2.
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I have several very close friends who are Chinese. Some from near Shanghai some from near Beijing. The reason they explain is much more cultural and not capitalist as some here suggest.
For one, it is extremely rough on women because young men act very spoiled and men in general have an abusive problem there. So they don’t want to have kids with these men and they don’t want to marry them either. Women are getting married much later with it not being completely unheard of to be 30 and unmarried anymore in China.
Second, it is also hard on women because of family. When they get married the man’s family is their new family essentially and they lose support from their blood family. This can be tough especially if the husbands family hates the woman (not that rare).
Third, divorce is still rare because of the culture of stick through it and be a good wife. Divorce is also hard when you have kids and there’s a lot of pressure to have kids right away when you get married. This is changing but it’s slow.
Finally, we arrive at feminism. This is a good change and women are realizing all the cultural problems and see they can be happier on their own and make big money on their own too. So why get married, why have kids when you can be happy by yourself?
So all in all it’s not bad changes, these are cultural changes most countries go through and I’m happy for the Chinese women and hope all goes well. If you have any questions or want me to elaborate just let me know.
Put women in the workforce but keep the societal expectation of having them do all the housework, child rearing, cooking, cleaning, etc.
Gee I wonder why they don’t want to engage in that social contract anymore, and that doesn’t even cover how fucking expensive it is to even have one kid
Ah yes, "a threat to be eliminated" is surely a stance that will get women on board with child-bearing.
China could probably stand to spend some time not having an extremely strong stance on babies.
Why would anyone want kids while they can't afford anything with no kids? If they want people to have kids, they better help them financially. You can't have a child and leave them for strangers to raise them at daycares. Or have the mother sit home and the dad works 3 jobs to put food on the table. Fuck that.
If there's one thing I know about the Chinese Communist Party, it's that they take rejection and defiance in stride. At least this isn't anything as dangerous as hunger strikes and students assembling in public squares so maybe they can save a little gas money on tanks and pressure washers this time around.
Loving this child free wave
Increase education rates, reduce poverty, and give women more rights = fertility goes down. This is a good thing in theory, but society has to change its approach to designing the economy to handle a declining population.
Well this will most definitely end well.
/s obviously, but this type of rhetoric never leads to anything good.
They should allow immigration. There are other young countries looking for jobs. 60% of the Arab World is under 30.
Its crazy to me that countries are urging women to have children. At least they should do what Christians and Muslims do and brain wash women to have children.
Oh look, it's the same fucking problem of every fucking rich country! The "find out" part after the "fuck around" of living conditions getting ridiculously expensive, plus expecting both parents to magically have time and energy to work AND care for their child
That is the correct response.
After all, the Capital god needs offerings to maintain its power