China's one-child policy

The world's human population is growing at an alarming rate. Some estimates predict it will exceed 9 billion people within 50 years. If this rate of growth continues, the planet will eventually be unable to support the human population. Different countries have found ways to encourage their citizens to limit population growth. One of the most scrutinized strategies is China's one-child policy. This policy allows each Chinese couple to have only one child. Punishments for those who do not follow the policy include imposing fines of as much as eight times the annual household income, destroying a family's home, or even forcing a pregnant female to terminate her pregnancy. While some officials believe that such a drastic policy is necessary to decrease the growth of the Chinese population, others feel the much less restrictive policies, such as family planning and birth control education, that are being practiced in other overpopulated countries. The situation in China poses a major ethical dilemma. Is it more important to control population growth or to respect individuals' reproductive rights? Discuss.

We need to limit population.... but not only that, we need to make sure the right people are having children (not just some yahoo who likes sex).

Personally? I think they should develop something to put into our food that makes us unable to have children....then, we must apply for a license to have a child (and given a drug to counter the effects so we can).

That way, billy-bob can have all the sex he wants without dumping his neglected children all over....hmm, but i guess that might cause a problem when those children arent available to fill in the lower class jobs...hmm...

Well I agree 100% with loriklorik.

I think a certain somebody's philosophy class got started on nietzshche... ;)

btw, it's been my experience that topics which are prone to moral relativism can only end in tears when discussed via teh interwebz.

The good kind of tears? :D

We have to be realistic in this situation. China is doing the only thing it can do. It's got to either limit the amount of children that are born, or face the reality that the country can't handle an extremely overgrown population. They are doing it for the good of the rest of the people in China. They aren't doing it just to hurt families or anything rediculous like that. I understand it. At least at the moment they are allowed to have "one" if they want. If it got that way in America we would have to do the same thing. It would be an extremely hard adjustment, but otherwise there might not be enough food to feed everyone, etc.

Just my .02

I agree with Ignayshus....and also with loriklorik...but that's not really a suprise.

...and you'll be happy thomolli...I got my tubes tied, so this inbred hate monger won't be breeding either.   ;)

(To thomolli) What aborted kids?... dont tell me you think each sperm is a child now?!

Fact is, people are having children without any consideration for the children (its a side effect of them having sex, they dont want kids). Do you not understand that? Do you not understand that the children are being made for the simple reason they like sex so much with so little responsibility?

How is wanting to stop people from having random unwanted children a bad thing? ... how is that hate mongering?...

Unless, again, you are saying that sperm are people (i hope you arent saying, please tell me you arent, do you even have any idea what that means if you are?)....do you not understand that a male has MILLIONS of sperm? Do you not understand that only ONE is used to make a baby? And that is for EACH ejaculation?...please please tell me you know at least that much!

I think in order to prevent overpopulation, one thing we can do is to stop giving food to impoverished nations.

Their population size has grown to a size greater than what can be supported. In nature if this happens, the population will eventually decrease again because there is not adequate subsistence. However, since we're humans beings (raised with an underlying notion that we are somehow "better" than the rest of nature), we feel that this law does not apply to us, and so we make more food, and feed (for lack of a better term) into the cycle, creating even more of a population boom, and so on and so forth.

Just my opinion.

Unfortunately, many impoverished nations are that way due to Western influence, which leads to a moral obligation in some part to help them. I think the entire overpopulation issue needs to be thoroughly thought out, and traced back to its most basic components, and these are what need to be addressed. China is only treating the symptoms, not curing the cause.

Poly has made a wonderful wonderful point.  This is a very true statement.  I've read lots of books in my day on all ranges of topics, but anything that touches on population and overcrowding always goes back to the basics.

A pen of rats were given enough food to survive, they did, and did not increase in population.  They were then given more than enough food to survive...they did and increased their population, when the food supply was held back, the population then decreased.    I'll try and find where that came from...no doubt one of the many books I've read, but I'll try and pinpoint it for reference.  It was an interesting portion of the book...I never had thought of that until it was presented to me in that way.

I also recommend The Population Bomb and The population Explosion for anyone interested in reading more about this topic. 

Hehe just letting people die doesnt really help with the entire building of society thing (or quality of life...).

Just stopping the lower classes from breeding so much would be enough to keep pop growth in check (but, even here in america, its hard because of older religious views towards children... for example, christianity its pretty much "have all the babies you can!! god likes babies!!" ...part of their success is ability to outbreed the competition heh. Sadly, this kind of thing doesnt help the population growth issue....)

You can still have a small population size and a society.

I guess I don't really see what you mean by that?

And smaller population size, I would argue, would lead to better quality of life because there would be more resources per individual.

Did i read "just stopping the lower classes from breeding so much would be enough to keep pop growth in check"? I hope that's not what it means.....

I think one of the reason why China is so strict about the one-child policy is because except the big cities, a lot of areas in China are still in-development and people might not be all educated enough or even have contact with birth control. Without a strict policy, people can easily just ignore the birth control concept and keep increasing the population. However, i know that the "one-child policy" doesn't apply to every family in China. I have asked my friend who is from China, and he said if you are "registered" with the government, and in order to do that you need to meet certain requirements, then you can have up to two children. I believe the certain requirements consists of having certain level of education, financially stable to support the kids and also the living standard. I am not 100% sure on this one tho.

I believe China is doing what they can do to control population. And honestly, I've never heard of them "forcing pregnant women to abort their babies" and "penalty as much as 8 times the household income". They do fine families who got pregnant tho, but just not a ridiculous amount.

Oh, yea...you "can" have a small population size and a society (humans were doing it for a long time!). But, when that "naturally" happens... you have a lot of children dieing (they used to simply kill unwanted children...or would have trouble having enough children to match deaths from low medical ability). Thats about why we have had low populations... (it wasnt for lack of trying, though, i think some very small societies have rules about birth... but again... break the rule = dead child).

With the big societies we have, trying to do something like that would be very bad! People like sex (children or not)... birth control can help (and has! right now, there are less americans being born each year then die..) ... but in 3rd world countries, they dont really have much social importance on birth control (so they make lots of babies).

Allowing nature to stop those countries from having so many children is just back to square one... lots of kids die. The goal should be building up their society to a point where they can use birth control (and other knowledge about sex).

But, back to america, there is still the issue with lower classes having so many children (sadly, when you look at it, that is actually needed in the type of society we have....there are LOTSSS of lower level jobs that need to be filled...and children without education are the perfect fit to do those things). That, or mexicans (and thats what we are seeing, they come in to fill jobs as our birth rates dont keep up).

What’s wrong with square one? I am speaking with regard to the impoverished countries. They survived for a very long time without Western intervention, and the notion that "bigger is better" and technology and capitalism are the way to go. The problem arose when we tried to force our ideologies on these people and build them up into a so called "great" society such as out own, while simultaneously exploiting their resources.

I agree that more money and effort should be put into education on birth control. Perhaps one way of dealing with the population increase in these countries would be to take the money used to provide food, and put it into planned parenthood education. (Maybe with Bush out of office, that will happen).

And as for you're first paragraph, it’s completely false. small children may have been killed if the mother died, and there was no one to provide for them, but they didn’t just take them out and kill them. Population size was kept down in the past because of natural causes. The natural environment is a very difficult place to live, and it provides whatever means necessary to maintain an appropriate population size.

but they didn’t just take them out and kill them.

Depends which society and how far back you are looking at. But, killing of unwanted children isnt unknown...

A lot of the 3rd world countries would have a lot easier time if their governments werent so corrupt. That is a first step in boosting their living condition a LOT...then they could actually work the land and live. Im not sure its an issue of population or resources, its just the inability to live without being used and exploited.

Heres a thing on infanticide... and as an aside, did you know there are places to legally drop off unwanted babies in america? (which they put in place so people didnt simply kill their children in a dumpster or something)

http://www.infanticide.org/history.htm

so maybe instead of killing the lower class off, we should kill off the upper class government officials who are exploiting everybody.

haha.


and yes, i acknowledged the killing of unwanted children in my post. They were unwanted if no one was able to provide for them...because there wasn't enough resources.

and yes, i did know that. and i don't deny infancide, i just deny it within the contex in which you presented it.