
China’s Looming Crisis: A Shrinking Population - jseliger
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/01/17/world/asia/china-population-crisis.html
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mc32
With increasing prosperity of the average citizen in China, more people would
create further ecological pressure in a heavily populated geography. Gradual
contraction of population in that circumstance is better than overcrowding and
competition for scarce resources.

It won't be easy to navigate, but it's a necessary step as people become
richer and consume more per capita.

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soared
Are there any other countries besides China where we doubt nearly any "fact"
they produce? What causes this? Its incredibly odd to read an article where
the government makes a claim and then follow it up with a claim from someone
else that is entirely different.

> China’s fertility rate has officially fallen to 1.6 children per woman

> Yi Fuxian, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, ... [claims]
> the fertility rate averaged 1.18 between 2010 and 2018

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forkLding
I think another way of looking at it is the same way people try to avoid
taxes.

In China, with the One-Child policy, you would be fined heavily for having
more than one child (now the limit is two). However there will be scenarios
where rural and poorer folks have more children so they will under-report or
even neglect to report the size of their children because they don't want to
be hit with heavy fines. The disadvantage is however that extra children won't
be officially registered and have a hukou and won't enjoy official protections
of a Chinese citizen. On the other side of the spectrum, very rich to rich
Chinese can pay for the fines and thus might choose to have 2 or more children
because the fines are not that expensive to them. I have observed both
scenarios when I was in China.

Note that there are exceptions to the original one-child policy, ethnic
minorities don't need to abide by the one-child policy and rural parents whose
first child is a daughter can have an extra child. As well, people from the
previous generation who don't have siblings can have two children to make up
for the lack of people in their family.

Thus the official numbers will have to be taken with a grain of salt in the
same manner people and companies report their taxes as there will be
individuals with more than one child who under-report to not incur fines.

