China has been undergoing a lot of changes over the last four decades. Some of these changes have vaulted her into major positions of world power. However, some have also hurt her significantly.
One of the more negative changes has been the incredibly low birthrates in China driven by government policy. However, some in the Chinese government are expressing concern about this, saying that the push to lower the population and with people having fewer children as each year passes, poses a long-term serious threat to the stability of China and the government.
Recently, articles claiming China’s birthrate dropped dramatically this year have spread on social media. The articles report an unconfirmed figure that as of Nov. 17, a mere 10.16 million babies had been born in the country this year. With just over one month left in the year, this means that the total births for the year would be about 11 million.
This would be a sharp drop from the 15.23 million births in 2018 and 17.23 million births in 2017, adding to an increasingly worrying trend. Birth population is the most important indicator reflecting population trends.
Regardless of whether these articles are reporting facts or rumors, there is no doubt that the birth population in 2019 will be significantly down from last year. Unless China fully liberalizes and strongly encourages childbearing, this downward trend will continue.
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Some believe that the development of artificial intelligence (AI) will make population decline irrelevant, but in fact the opposite is true. In the era of artificial intelligence, population size is actually more important. A larger number of people can not only support a larger and more diverse market, but can also produce more human capital. At present, China and the United States are the most developed countries in AI, which can be attributed to the fact that these two countries have the most effective population needed for development of AI.
At China’s current fertility rate, or the average number of children born per woman each year, the country’s population will halve every 30 years. Even the government-set target fertility rate of 1.8 will not be enough to help China’s population rebound, as it is still far below the replacement rate of 2.1. To prevent catastrophe, China must increase its fertility above the replacement rate.
People over 60 years old account for just under half of China’s total population, and this proportion is set to increase. Boosting fertility to be above the replacement rate is the only way to alleviate the stressors of an aging population. We must immediately open up childbearing policies and encourage families to have more children. The population situation is getting so dire that there are no compelling reasons for delay. A strong population of young people means a strong China. (source)
As noted above, for many decades China said that one of the biggest problems it faced was “overpopulation”, and to stop this they instituted the “one-child policy”, where millions of Chinese children were aborted, murdered, or given away in adoptions to mostly white people in the US and Western Europe. Males were favored over females, and the policy was enforced with an inhumane ruthlessness. Likewise, millions of Chinese women were sterilized against their will for having more than the “official” number of children.
As of November 2013, the government relaxed the one-child policy in favor of two children, and as of October 2015 abolished it. The government is now frantically trying to get their people to have children again, but after decades of enforcing eugenics and sterilization, they are having a very hard time convincing people to do this.
China has a birthrate problem, but they also have with it a hypergamy problem that is gravely aggravating the birthrate issue, for the Chinese women, as their incomes rise due to the modernization of China and social changes taking place, they are able to do what has already happened in the west for a while, which is to provide for themselves what a man could provide, and thus they will naturally expect more from a man and will be pickier. This makes them, for many men, less desirable as they will be more difficult to care for in terms of meeting needs that will keep them satisfied. Likewise, as in the western world, the women increasingly believe if they can work like men, they also can indulge in sexual practices as men do, which in a natural setting and lacking restraints is to sleep with a large number of women. It is polygamy (polygyny to be specific) by another means, except instead of a tribal leader with a bone in his nose it is a man in a suit with quaffed hair.
What is forming right now in China is a “perfect storm” in terms of demography. I have often spoken of the dire situation for Russia, but China is in a similar place. She has more males than women, so that many young men will never be able to get married (the ratio of men as compared to women in 140 to 100), and the increasing living standards and “westernization” of the women has created picky women who are more interested in careers and money than in family life, and those who do want families are choosing many times to leave China and marry a Nigel (UK), Chad (US), Hans (DE), or Francois (FR) instead of a Chinese man.
The current Total Fertility Rate (TFR) for China is 1.6, which is just lower than Russia’s but is likely going to continue to drop as people are not getting married, having families, or just dating.
Population is very important because the future of a nation can be measured by her children. If a nation produces children, they do not “waste space”, but instead take up the work of a society and build it. Many times, if the work is not good or there are other issues, these people will go around the world to seek their fortunes. The Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, English, Russians, and Turks did not build great empires by refusing to reproduce, but rather had children who then went out and conquered and settled the lands they went to. Many of them mixed with other people who migrated, or sometimes with the natives, and from this there came new families, cultures, and social growth and eventually harmony.
This is the story of many nations. The nation of Portugal was born by the union of English, Dutch, and Danish Crusader knights with coastal Iberian and Arab women following the establishment of Portugal during the Second Crusade in 1148. Alexander the Great “hellenized” the lands from Macedonia to Uzbekistan through his marriages and conquests and those of the Greeks who settled in those lands. Mongolia spread her culture from Japan to China and all the way to Poland and Egypt by way of the Mongol conquests. The spread of Turkish culture from Morocco to Pakistan came by way of the Ottomans. Even in Africa, it was population expansions in the Cameroon-Congo area that resulted in the Bantu migrations to all parts of southern Africa.
There is a direct relationship between population and political power, and is a reason why eugenics is so popular with many very wealthy people throughout history, because while many wealthy will not have children or only a few, poor people will freely have children, and the children pose a direct threat to the political leadership. Even in the US today, while fertility has fallen across all demographics, it is only the Hispanic bloc that has managed to maintain fertility rates at those above replacement. Likewise, one can see the rapid transformation of American culture through influence from Central and South America.
There is no “side” to take in this argument because the fact is that the changes in American culture- like anywhere else in the world -are a result of families choosing or refusing to reproduce as the Bible has commanded.
I have said before that one of the greatest crises the 21st century will see is going to be the mass unemployment of people around the world due to technological changes. To this, looking at these numbers in east Asia that suggest a massive population drop coming in the future, and in combination with what is already happening in the Western world along with the warning about the “disappearance of nations” in the Fatima prophecies, there is a second crisis of the 21st century that has not shown yet but will show, which will be the massive re-aligning of national, cultural, and ethnic identities as due to the refusal to reproduce, the mixing of peoples at levels never before seen, and the high chance of a serious war, there will be many cultures that may decline to the point of ceasing to exist, or will have to change so much they will no longer be recognizable in their future form.
Marriage, families, and children are all good things. No machine can substitute for them, and one can say that a great many of the problems facing the world today have come from their decline.
China has been at war with her own people for over eight decades now, beginning with the establishment of the Communist state under “Chairman Mao”. What Mao has been able to do is to rip apart Chinese society and now as the party has destroyed largely the will of her own people to reproduce and carry on the functions of society, China is not becoming stronger, but much weaker, and this will likely open her up to the possibility of invasion from outside and her conquest.