How is Chinas one child policy a failure?
Clearing a few misconceptions here: Zoom is incorrect about the birth quotas. Most minority groups are allowed only two children (so say the minorities I speak with here). China would NOT have a population of 3-4 billion without the policy, since the policy is only 25 years old, which is not enough time to triple your population. Parents are not forced to abort children (contrary to popular myth), but they are usually “encouraged” (communist style) to do so. If they don’t, they have to pay a LOT of money for the extra children. My Chinese TA was the 2nd child of parents who refused to abort her. However, if parents have too many children, the government will sterilize them. Seriously. China instituted the policy to reduce the growing population. Ironically, it hasn’t reduced the population yet, since the only way to reduce the population is for people to die. It *is* slowing the growth. The real problem isn’t China’s population vs potential food production (since China’s farms are extr
