The following comes from an October 29 Wall Street Journal article by Laurie Burkitt:
China will abandon its one-child policy, perhaps the most notorious of the Communist Party’s intrusions into Chinese lives, amid a looming demographic crunch that threatens the long-term health of the world’s second-largest economy.
All Chinese couples will be allowed to have two children, Chinese official media said, showing Beijing isn’t ready to totally relinquish its grip on the homes and bedrooms of its people. Demographers also warn that the move may be too little too late, as China already faces a declining, graying population without the workers it needs for its vast economy.
The meeting and the decision to drop the one-child policy took place against a backdrop of uncertainty for China’s leaders.
Manufacturing and infrastructure spending, which drove three decades of astonishing growth, no longer pack the same punch. Labor costs are already rising amid higher expectations from Chinese workers.
Beijing faces the difficult task of nurturing long-term growth, including a difficult shift to depend more on consumer spending and services. An aging population with fewer young people could drain resources and make that shift harder.
The policy has caused social disruption as well. Due to social pressure to have boys, about 116 boys were born for every 100 girls in China last year, according to official media, compared with the World Health Organization’s natural rate of around 105 to 100. It has also led to horror stories such as local officials who force women into abortions to make population targets.
Too bad the Chinese never thought of religion, and promotion of religious vocations! Priests, brothers, monks, and nuns, with worthy vocations, all helping build a better country, under God’s loving guidance! And maybe offering lifelong lucrative incentives to both men and women, for promising to remain single and celibate, and to join secular organizations devoted to helping build up their country, in a great many good ways!! Also, to offer lucrative careers — for particular government employees, and military personnel— restricted to single, celibate lives, in service to their Nation!!
What an interesting idea. Yet, they wasted so many lives.
Maybe that will be the new law in CA, perhaps even proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown, a former priesthood candidate.
Too bad the heartbroken women and men whose children were murdered by forced abortion can’t turn back the clock and be allowed to give birth and love to those forever-dead babies ripped by the government out of the wombs of their overcontrolled mothers, most of whom will grieve those babies for their entire lifetimes.