- cross-posted to:
- longreads@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- longreads@sh.itjust.works
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.
You must log in or register to comment.
I hate to do this, but I feel like Taiwan(numba 1) is doing this better than China(numba 4).
The Taiwan government is literally giving money to have kids. The more kids you have, the more monthly cash they give you. I think our president said something along the lines of “it’s up to our country to take care of all children of Taiwan”. I’m paraphrasing.
Not just cash, we also have infrastructure setup. Most malls, government buildings and public places have breastfeeding rooms. There is almost always a bathroom designated for people with children. There are even bathrooms set up with small tiny toilets. There is a designated area for kids to sit on the train. There are designated elevators for kids.
Plus healthcare is free/cheap so that helps.
If China wants more babies, it needs to start giving the people things that promote having kids. Unless you force them to have kids… I guess because you can. Fuck the CCP.
The Taiwan government is literally giving money to have kids. The more kids you have, the more monthly cash they give you.
South Korea has a similar strategy, although I think it comes as housing benefit and paid time-off.
The problem is that these economic incentives are relatively small. And they all come with the caveat that you have to… get married and take up a subservient role in child care and produce babies (the last bit in particular being extremely unpleasant and not something you can easily pay people to do).
By contrast, private employment in the professional sector offers a significantly better deal. Get more money than the miserly state stipend. Keep your independence. Don’t tear your vagina in half producing a new baby. Enjoy your fucking life in an economy that is built to produce luxury consumerist experiences.
If China wants more babies, it needs to start giving the people things that promote having kids.
The article is paywalled, so its hard to say exactly what Chinese social policy isn’t doing. But the country worked very hard to curb its population towards sustainability and to improve the outlaying regions of the country that was shedding peasant farmers in droves. Compare the population distribution of China to neighboring Japan, where a full 12% of the population lives in the capital city. Tapei is nearly as bad.
At some point, people are responding entirely to social pressures. I’m not going to try and have kids if I’m living in a closet on a peasant wage. Neither are folks in Europe or North America. We’re all in the same boat in this regard. Post-industrial countries are all seeing a population shortfall, in no small part because they’ve compressed populations into these tiny spaces and given them barely enough to live on.
Add in the cultural shaming of “teen pregnancy” and what you’re left with is asking a bunch of career-professional thirty-somethings to get off the career elevator so they can fuck like horny adolescents.
That’s not going to work anywhere you try it.
Taiwan has paid time off for mothers(not dad’s). Usually a month or so. There are no housing benefits in Taiwan that I know of. The incentive is def a small portion of how much a child costs, but it’s not a little. I get like 8000nt a month directly deposited into my account. I also get schooling incentives. It is basically free cash that pays around 25% of my child’s schooling/daycare.
China has a brutal 996 culture if you’re lucky to even have a job. Nobody is going to start making babies when a VERY large % of your young population is unemployed.
I get like 8000nt a month directly deposited into my account.
That’s, like, $250/mo American though, isn’t it? Imagine giving up a career that earns you $10k/mo so you can spend your time as a daycare worker for 1/40th of that.
China has a brutal 996 culture
Hong Kong and Shanghai business sectors have operating managers that try to foist 996 culture on people, and there are enough young people who don’t want to spend their lives on the farm willing to take the opportunity. But you by no means need to work a 996 in order to afford basic standard of living, outside of the high rent sectors in the bigger cities. You see similar work-till-you-drop attitudes across the Pacific Rim - in Japan and Korea and the Philippines and across the pond in California even.
There are plenty of American gig-economy workers and student workers and double-job-holding hard cases who work what amounts to a 996 in practice. As someone who tried to work while in college and hold down two jobs at once, early on in my life, I’ve seen it and lived it. A pure sucker’s bet, as the pay in these jobs is routinely shit and all that extra work never amounts to any kind of career advancement - just burnout. But this isn’t in any way unique to China, much less endemic.
Nobody is going to start making babies when a VERY large % of your young population is unemployed.
Unemployment globally is at record lows. Demand for labor is ramping up as the Boomer generation retires and the smaller Millennial and Zoomer workforces matriculate into the industrial and service sectors. And, generally speaking, unemployed people (particularly high school/college drop outs) have more time and opportunity to fuck, not less. When you’re young, hot, and broke, fucking is one of the only reliable forms of entertainment. Also, a decently paid way to make a living.
But Western neoliberal culture hates when young people have kids, and both the economy and the legal system exist to punish you for it. Everything from tax laws to workplace advancement are predicated on you giving every ounce of time to your career. Dating, leisure, hobbies, and parental leave all come with a host of knock-on economic penalties and social stigmas.
Its not the unemployed people who are having trouble finding the time and opportunity to make babies. Its far more often the upwardly mobile who have to put off starting a family time and time again, because the economic costs grow considerably as you rise up the socio-economic ladder.
China wants people to move from rural areas to cities, which is why they forcibly move them from rural areas to cities.
China wants people to move from rural areas to cities
Given their development patterns, it more appears that Chinese planners want the cities to move to rural areas. The article you’re citing is describing mass modernization in some of the most remote corners of the country. Northern Hebei abuts Inner Mongolia. Liaocheng is basically China’s Iowa.
they forcibly move them
Did you even read the article? They are redeveloping historically agricultural land into urban industrial centers, primarily for the purpose of increasing output in these agricultural territories. Farmers are moving from underdeveloped ranch homes to fully electrified and transit-connected tower blocks of their own accord. In fact, one of the bigger complaints in China is the political economy around folks jumping the queue in order to get into these new luxury units faster.
“Urbanization is in China’s future, but China’s rural population lags behind in enjoying the benefits of economic development,” said Li Shuguang, professor at the China University of Political Science and Law. “The rural population deserves the same benefits and rights city folks enjoy.”
This is a sentiment that’s sharply divided rural and urban communities in China for decades, and which has contributed to a gray market of labor moving from poorer rural neighborhoods to richer urban centers that the state is hoping to discourage.
Dystopian shithole.
Every
AmericanChinese woman has a duty to birth at least one able-bodied worker.~ Mike “Chinese Communist” Johnson, Speaker of the Beijing House of Representatives
No dispute we have a problem with fascist republican swine, but we’re a far cry from China.
There is a reflexive need among Americans to assume every other country is significantly worse than their own.
China is an authoritarian state that had a literal one-child policy until recently
China is an authoritarian state
My guy, I’m living in a state that tried to arrest a woman for removing an ectopic pregnancy. The border towns of my state are rapidly developing the largest per-capita prison population on the planet, thanks to the number of migrants being snatched up and forced into
concentrationdetention camps combined with our already prodigious home-grown prison population. A full third of my city budget is dedicated to funding an enormous do-nothing police force and our new mayor spent his first day doing ride-alongs with cops while promising even more money. You can get arrested in my state for simple vagrancy. You can get arrested and jailed for days at the age of 6 years old for stealing a crayon. You can get arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for submitting a provisional ballot on election day>had a literal one-child policy until recently
Until as recently as 2010, US prisons had a policy of sterilizing inmates.
China’s One Child policy boiled down to withholding financial benefits after the second kid, which is no different than the American EITC refundable tax credit that caps benefits at 3 dependents, along with numerous other state benefits that are capped at between two and four children depending on the state.
If you want to talk about authoritarianism, you’re going to have to put more on the table than a vaguely referenced policy you know very little about. Nevermind how you’re speaking about this in a state that has been caught engaging in outright genocidal conduct towards its native, african american, female, and LGBT populations within the last few news cycles.
My guy, I’m living in a state that tried to arrest a woman for removing an ectopic pregnancy.
Yep, and your state voted for that. My state amended it’s constitution to prevent this situation, also through voting.
In China, you don’t get that option, because China is an authoritarian state.
Authoritarian doesn’t simply mean “bad” even though authoritarianism is bad.
You know what’s not a sign of an authoritarian state? An appeals court overturning a bad verdict.
Crystal Mason’s contentious illegal voting conviction must be reconsidered, criminal appeals court says
You should really click the links you use as evidence.
your state voted for that
Gerrymandered districts mean 40% of the population picks 60% of the legislators.
In China, you don’t get that option
In China, I can get an abortion any time I want. The cost is trivial, the facilities are clean, and the doctors aren’t legally required to guilt trip me with far-right propaganda just for asking. I don’t need to block walk for ten years, canvasing uninterested men and begging them to support some Ivy League prat (D) over Local Car Dealership creep ®, in hopes that I maybe get the supermajority of democrats necessary to repeal an ill-conceived trigger law passed before I was even legally allowed to vote. I just get to do the thing, because it has been considered a fundamental human right since the 1950s.
You know what’s not a sign of an authoritarian state? An appeals court overturning a bad verdict.
An unelected body of bureaucrats green-lighting a state campaign of hyper-policing aimed at a vulnerable group, for the purpose of instituting an unpopular morality code, is a textbook example of state authoritarianism.
Even then, as you note
Authoritarian doesn’t simply mean “bad” even though authoritarianism is bad.
I could at least live with a certain amount of authoritarianism (because hey, that’s hierarchies for ya, and whatchagonnado?) but the current hierarchy has produced a local authoritarianist tendency that is also absolutely shit.
China’s authoritarian government gets people super fast trains and world leading hospitals and salt-fusion nuclear reactors.
My authoritarian government gets people daily multi-vehicle traffic fatalities and medical bankruptcies and big holes in West Virginia where we mine burnable rocks that clog our air and waterways and fill our fish food with mercury.
I can’t vote the authoritarianism out of Texas any more than I can vote the authoritarianism out of China. And since I don’t speak mandarin and I’ve got something of a large, well-established community of friends and loved ones in Texas, I’m stuck here for the time being.
Lolbruh. Would you rather live in America or China?
If I was fluent in Mandarin? Chongqing is an absolutely gorgeous city with fantastic food and amazing transit. I’d take it over Houston in a heartbeat.
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.
It does take two to tango.
Estimating the fuck-rate of my grandchildren’s grandchildren and being very concerned in a paper that can’t predict the next quarterly financial cycle correctly.
