The Wall Street Journal reports what might look like good news. Sadly, I suspect it’s not.
China’s leaders agreed to loosen the nation’s one-child policy and to give market forces a greater role in the world’s No. 2 economy, according to new details of a blueprint for reform released on Friday.
The proposals follow the end on Tuesday of a four-day meeting of top Chinese Communist Party leaders, and they represent the first comprehensive road map for reform under new Chinese President Xi Jinping.
While a preliminary summary of the meeting released on Tuesday was vague, the more-detailed document released on Friday sketches an ambitious reform program designed to address problems that China faces: maturing growth, rising worries about a wide wealth gap and endemic pollution, and increasingly vocal criticism of Beijing’s handling of a number of social issues.
I don’t believe it for a second. Not one. Here’s why:
The document said China would significantly ease its one-child policy, allowing couples to have two children if one of the parents is an only child. Currently, Chinese couples are restricted to one child except under some circumstances, such as rural dwellers, pilot programs in a number of areas and among ethnic minorities.
Enacted in 1980, the policy has been lauded by officials for taming a surging population from a years-earlier baby boom. But economists say it risks eroding China’s competitive advantage, draining its labor pool of future workers as the population ages and puts a greater strain on China’s emerging social safety net.
There’s no consideration that life itself is sacred and shouldn’t be destroyed or controlled by the government. This seems like a pure financial consideration. There’s no consideration about freedom. China’s work force shrank last year for the first time in decades, and that’s likely going to continue. So in a panic they’re easing the one-child policy in, let’s face it, miniscule ways.
But there’s no underlying admission that the policy itself is a horror. It’s a tweak. You can’t tweak a genocide.
November 15, 2013 at 7:27 pm
Yes, what you say is true. The dictatorship still maintains its control of people's procreation.
November 16, 2013 at 2:47 am
I'm pretty sure the last Chinese government that took account of the inalienable rights of man was some time in the Tang Dynasty. And no Communist regime will ever relinquish control over a little thing like "our policies will destroy our economy"—if you cared about that you'd never go Communist in the first place. Especially not since political corruption (rich people in China have as many kids as they want) is so lucrative for those enforcing the unjust laws.
November 17, 2013 at 8:10 pm
I disagree. I think china does care about its economy. I think it could care less about the humans that grease the gears of their economic machine. The only thing china needs to do to complete the trifecta of complete loss of human dignity is some Soylent green.
November 18, 2013 at 2:58 am
China hasn't really shown any sign of caring enough about its economy to change catastrophically bad policies. What they have in China isn't, admittedly, Communism proper, but a weird hybrid of Communism and Neo-Confucianism. But Neo-Confucianism, too, is incredibly bad policies—e.g. Joseon Korea, where officers needed permission from their provincial governor to mobilize troops even if Toyotomi Hideyoshi was literally at the gates, and where actual battlefield experience was almost considered a detriment to a military officer (most of whom were appointed based on bloodline and test-scores, in that order).
Westerners very rarely approach the levels of bureaucratic stupidity that are almost routine in Asia. Even Ancient Rome was fundamentally built on a model in which the freemen tolerated the government, rather than on the government tolerating their freedom; that is not the case for any stage of China or most of the cultures it influenced.