A nation of bachelors and little emperors

After 31 years in place China announced earlier this month that it planning to remove the controversial and extreme one child policy. At the schemes birth the slogans used were phrases such as 'Have fewer children, live better lives,' or 'Stabilize family planning and have a brighter future'. However, with occurences such as forced abortions and infanticide based solely on gender and country wide outrage at the scheme no-one can say the future has been particularly bright since its introduction.

Far from it, in fact, with 40 million men unable to find wives due to the huge gender gap created by the preference of parents to boys babies rather than girls. China now has a gender imbalance of 120 boys to every 100 girls. This is a problem not only in terms of social upset and imbalance but also due to the rising amount of crime due to the problem; little girls are being stolen for sale to parents of young boys as a future wife for their only son who they know may never find a wife.

The economic effects of the one child policy have also hit China hard. When the scheme was introduced 30 years ago many demographers pointed out the risks of a shortage of labour force and an ageing population and now it seems these effects are coming to a head. The dependency ratio already has the nation at it's knees with lone children saving rather than spending to support their 4 grandparents and 2 parents. This in turn is having a knock effect to the Chinese economy because as people don't spend they are harming the country's efforts to reduce reliance on exports, thus raising export rates.

China took the advice of Thomas Malthus when they employed this population control strategy but now it seems they should have looked more to his controversial rival; Marquis de Condorcet who thought that the population growth problem could be solved by increases in productivity and improved female education. This now seems to be the better option and now people are calling for the scheme to be removed and relaxed in order for the populaiton probems to be recovered. It is now thought that the best policy is to take responsibility from the State and give it to the mother.