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Still-growing China faces crisis supporting ageing population
by Lindsay Beck, The Scotsman. EFL. Hat tip: Brothers Judd.THE world's most populous nation is still growing, with China's official population expected to hit 1.3 billion tomorrow, despite a quarter-century-old policy of allowing couples to have only one child. . . But while they have helped China curb its birth rate from more than 33 per 1,000 population in 1970 to less than eight per 1,000 three decades later, the country faces new demographic challenges over how to support an ageing population. . . . The strict rules on family size have also created a gender imbalance, with about 117 boys for every 100 girls, as a cultural preference for sons prompts couples, usually in rural areas, to abort girls. . . . . . . or just leave them in the woods to die. One of the guys I work for adopted a little Chinese girl a couple of years ago who was found abandoned out in the wilderness, more dead than alive. Cute little bug, she is, and doing quite well despite the rough start. You gotta wonder, though, what practices like that do to the soul of the culture, and the souls of the people who are forced into them. It is sometimes said that children are God's judgment that life should go on. Where the State replaces God, and decrees no more children, is the State thereby saying that we should give up on the world? Oh, and then there's the other demographic issue: Last year, about 57,000 babies were born in Shanghai, but there were nearly twice as many deaths. Such a large gap has profound implications for the future workforce and for an ageing society. At that rate, they'll end up like Old Europe, only worse. Posted by: Mike 2005-01-05 |
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