《大国空巢》英文摘要

A BIG COUNTRY IN AN EMPTY NEST
-- WRONG DIRECTION OF CHINA'S BIRTH CONTROL POLICY

Fu-Xian Yi

http://www.strongwind.com.hk/default.aspx

Population has its own intrinsic control mechanism. Even if China had not implemented birth control policy in the 1970s, its population would not have increased infinitely, and by 2005 it would have grown to around 1.5 billion. If the policy had been repealed completely in 1980, the population in 2005 would have been around 1.4 billion, but with a sounder population structure and a higher living standard, beneficial to the nation’s sustainable development.

If the population theory of Ma Yinchu was implemented in 1950s, around 300 million (457 million in fact) people would never have been born between 1959 and 1979, meaning that the number of babies born during that period would be nearly two-thirds less than that without the policy implemented. In such a case, China would have become a moribund country suffering from problems of aging and losing the capability for sustainable development.

The adoption of a birth control policy was rash and without sufficient scientific reasoning, and all predictions made at that time have been proven far from being achieved. The policy is not beneficial to the present times and harmful to the future. The deformity of household consumption patterns resulting from it has been a root of China’s economic problems, and the policy itself has threatened China’s sustainable development.

It is misleading that China is overpopulated. As a matter of fact, the nation’s overall resources are among the top in the world. Since the distribution of resources is not proportioned, “world average” is not an appropriate concept and a figure below that does not necessarily mean the lack of resources. Excluding the handful of countries that are rich in natural resources, China is not in a disadvantageous position in terms of resources per capita. The so-called “shortage” results mainly from the carelessly designed development mode, but not from overpopulation. Economic development is not solely determined by natural resources per capita. Human resources are the most important among all sorts of resources and are China’s biggest advantage in this regard.

Population explosion leads to advancement of science and technology as well as higher living standards. Population growth brings about  an increase in consumption of the existing resources, but only in an additive way, while more importantly, the transformation of new resources from non-resources, such as nitrogenous fertilizer made from air (nitrogen), is occurring  in a multiplicative way. Thus the reduction of China’s population is a tragedy to the whole world.

The Family Planning Commission is relying on fabrication of data to support its raison d'etre by adding 50% to annual births, thus augmenting the total fertility rate from the actual 1.2 -1.3 to 1.8. China’s population mystery is man-made. By the end of 2005 the actual population was about 1.25 billion, not 1.307 billion announced by National Bureau of Statistics. China is on the brink of negative population growth. If the current one-child policy continues to be implemented, China’s population peak would not even reach 1.3 billion, let alone 1.5 or 1.6 billion claimed by the Family Planning Commission and mainstream demographers.

Industrialization has changed the traditional family mode and shaken the two pillars of China’s reproduction culture, namely, ancestral and ethical cultures. Even if China would terminate the current birth control policy, it could hardly prevent China’s population from a dramatic decrease in the future.