The National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the highest advisory body to the Chinese Communist Party government, met on Saturday to discuss the ongoing population crisis.
The commission’s chairman, Wang Huning, advised drawing on “Marxist population theory” to “analyze the new demographic trends, characteristics and problems facing China.”
National government Global Times” account Saturday’s meeting did not elaborate on Marxist population theory or explain how Wang wanted to use it. increase National population. Marxism is good at killing people and uses various methods such as: war and political execution to forced starvationBut the track record of healthy population growth is even more questionable.
Karl Marx’s “Population Theory” is mainly configured The tendency to believe that it is a good thing for more workers to produce more, as long as they don’t starve, is one of the weaknesses of Marxism, as mentioned above. One of his complaints about capitalism was that he felt it led to overpopulation because low wages and capitalists’ greedy demands on labor gave workers no incentive to stop having children.
Illustration of Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Marx believed that China at the time was overpopulated, which led the Maoists to decide to decimate the population with strict limits on family size, forced sterilization, and forced abortions.The current crisis is largely due to the following reasons: brutally effective It was a one-child policy.
Some details are Global Times What was said at the meeting appears to suggest that the Committee of 100 has done little and encouraged more of the same tactics that China is already using without much success to halt the natural decline of its population. It sounded like.
Chinese Vice Premier Liu Guozhong, a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said that efforts are being made to improve targeted and effective fertility support measures and reduce the costs of fertility, childcare and education. He emphasized that it should be done.
“Accelerate the improvement of population governance capacity and standards, accelerate the coordination and provision of services for the elderly and children, promote the construction of a birth-friendly society, and accelerate the formation of high-quality and high-quality population development trends. “There is a need for sufficient quantity, optimized structure and reasonable allocation to support China’s modernization through quality population development,” Liu said, as quoted by People’s Daily. Stated.
Wang Peian, a member of the CPPCC and a former family planning official, said: Global Times The answer lies in some combination of “increasing financial support, improving childcare services, optimizing time support, strengthening intergenerational care supports, strengthening cultural guidance, and strengthening reproductive health services.” You will need to do it with
China is To increase Subsidy To motivate children to become new parents. Total one-time subsidies exceed $4,000 in some areas, which is prohibitively expensive for Chinese workers. One village in southern Guangdong province offers an extra subsidy for the second child and an even bigger incentive for the third child. While this is a reasonable strategy given the importance of three-person families in population growth, it is a surprising shift from the one-child policy and China’s policies. To give it up slowly and reluctantly.
This photo taken on May 17, 2018 shows a poster in Chinese promoting in vitro fertilization posted in the lobby of Piyavate Hospital in Bangkok. (LILLIAN SUWANRUMPHA/AFP via Getty Images)
Guangdong actually has one of the highest birth rates in China, perhaps because it enjoys a booming job market as a major industrial hub, and it was also ahead of its time in offering incentives for childbirth. For this reason, national government planners appear to believe that the best bet to halt population decline is to replicate Guangdong’s policies and conditions in as many places as possible.
Wang Pei’an said: Global Times:
Fewer and fewer young people want to have children. This is due to many factors, including higher education, which can affect plans to marry and start a family, the high cost of raising children in modern society, and the weakening of traditional family culture. These trends are contributing to smaller family sizes, later marriages, and a shift to DINK (dual income, no children) households..
Wang sees a slight increase in births over the past year as a sign of optimism.
In addition to people preferring to have children in the Chinese Year of the Dragon, the gradual end of the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing number of marriages, and optimization of fertility policies will also have a positive impact on the Chinese Year of the Dragon. is expected to give. birthrate.
Some of the factors Wang mentioned are temporary, like the pandemic and the Chinese zodiac. Due to the increase in childcare subsidies, couldn’t help Perhaps this is because the opportunity costs of marrying young and raising children remain too high for young people, especially young women. It’s hard to imagine a subsidy large enough to convince nervous students in a competitive job market and precarious economic circumstances to decide to spend their 20s raising children.
