China suffers worst wheat harvest in 55 years
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
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Agraza
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There are a lot of caveats. Ethnic minorities are exempt. Certain autonomous regions are exempt (hong kong) that leads to birth tourism. Most rural citizens are virtually exempt, and enforcement is much lower inland in general. In most cases you're allowed to have a second if your first is a girl. In cases both where that is and isn't so many daughters are given up for adoption before being registered with the government so the couple can continue to try for a son.
khorum
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The one-child policy is a relic from their cultural revolution when collectivist policies starved 120 million people, but it lingered because it was a useful incentive to stay in rural china instead of hopping on the massive urban migration that they're seeing to this day. The party couldn't give less of a shit about some ecological impact of 3 billion chinese babies, it was all down to a couple rows on a spreadsheet.
That said---and folks don't seem to get this---the one-child policy has less to do with China's massive demographic time-bomb than chinese cultural inclinations. Low fecundity and replacement rates are a consequence of their rapid economic ascendancy and rigid immigration barriers. South Korea has a similar demographic timebomb and of course Japan's massive demographic death sentence is legendary. Neither of those countries have ever had a 1-child policy. Taiwan and Singapore have similar issues.
It's a function of their inimical immigration policy too. Restrictive immigration is a major culprit in every developed country that's facing a demographic crisis. Germany is actually poised to be in a worse demographic situation than Japan. So are the low countries and Russia.
Ironically, the US mitigates the demographic situation because immigration, legal or otherwise, offsets the low fecundity of our middle- and upper-class families.
That said---and folks don't seem to get this---the one-child policy has less to do with China's massive demographic time-bomb than chinese cultural inclinations. Low fecundity and replacement rates are a consequence of their rapid economic ascendancy and rigid immigration barriers. South Korea has a similar demographic timebomb and of course Japan's massive demographic death sentence is legendary. Neither of those countries have ever had a 1-child policy. Taiwan and Singapore have similar issues.
It's a function of their inimical immigration policy too. Restrictive immigration is a major culprit in every developed country that's facing a demographic crisis. Germany is actually poised to be in a worse demographic situation than Japan. So are the low countries and Russia.
Ironically, the US mitigates the demographic situation because immigration, legal or otherwise, offsets the low fecundity of our middle- and upper-class families.
khorum
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That's more apt than u think. Gear inequality pushing upward ilevel mobility is a pretty good analogy to the "where'd the middle class go?" question: they went upwards.
In fact, higher rates of teen pregnancy, working single mothers and low wage equilibrium among immigrants is a huge chunk of the bottom quintile in the US.
In fact, higher rates of teen pregnancy, working single mothers and low wage equilibrium among immigrants is a huge chunk of the bottom quintile in the US.
Tolan
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Absolutely. China is trying to kick water uphill here.
Top-Down economic control of their sort is so fucking insane. Hey maybe next year we can pass a law that says that the sun isn't allowed to rise any more! I hope we don't have to watch another generation of Chinese peasants get liquefied by the Party.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ch...0UI0CU20160104
Top-Down economic control of their sort is so fucking insane. Hey maybe next year we can pass a law that says that the sun isn't allowed to rise any more! I hope we don't have to watch another generation of Chinese peasants get liquefied by the Party.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ch...0UI0CU20160104
But isn't the goal of a country to make the country as nice of a place to live as possible for the residents? Seems like importing 30+ million poor immigrants per year to hit your pop growth benchmarks would be a pretty terrible decision for China.
The real reality isn't like guilds, its a cyclical expansion and retraction of population over time that makes a true healthy country. It's gonna be a shittier country in the US in a hundred years if we end up at 700 million people through mass migration all so we can pay that 2% dividend each year and never have to suffer a health retraction.
Big Phoenix
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khorum
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China has ALREADY been importing millions of poor immigrants for most of the last couple decades. They just happened to be poor Chinese from the hinterlands instead of foreigners--and they've been funnelled into the shitty working and living conditions just as poor immigrants have been in every other country.
The difference is Chinese costs of living have prohibited the fertility benefit of a highly-fertile working poor cohort. Chinese migrant labor tend to work away from their familiies or defer starting a new family until their conditions improved (which haven't, and won't). Unlike poor immigrants in the US who get hounded and harassed into hiding and are forced to start businesses and work under the table with their families, conditions that mimic the low-earnings, high-mortality conditions that provoke high fertility in the third world except now they're earning dollars and their kids get scholarships or join the ROTC.
We really couldn't have planned our model any better than it's worked out.
Big Phoenix
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khorum
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They put those breakers in after the crashes last year---but they never directly addressed the underlying problems with skittish retail speculators and bunk, overvalued real estate and "resort" stocks that were shady casino developers.
Their remedies from last year were predicted to make those problems worse down the line because they basically bubble-gum'd the bubble over with some currency manipulation that suggested a regression back to the bad old days towards an export-reliant economy __AND__ direct liquidity intervention by the state banks.
So they jerry-rigged a scaffolding of direct state bailouts AND currency manipulation yet did nothing to lance the bubble that remained a ticking time bomb.
Their remedies from last year were predicted to make those problems worse down the line because they basically bubble-gum'd the bubble over with some currency manipulation that suggested a regression back to the bad old days towards an export-reliant economy __AND__ direct liquidity intervention by the state banks.
So they jerry-rigged a scaffolding of direct state bailouts AND currency manipulation yet did nothing to lance the bubble that remained a ticking time bomb.
Eomer
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Vice has a good documentary about China's abandoned cities, they build these cities with high rise apartments and they have occupancy rates of 1-2% and they just keep building them. When their real estate bubble pops it's going to be much worse than ours was.
Eomer
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I was doing some ready on China's ghost cities, and from what I can tell it's a thing that the media blew out of proportion. It's not nearly as big of a deal as it was made out to be:Chinese Ghost Town Story Is Overblown - Business Insider
The big thing to notice is that China's urbanization rate is somewhere in the mid 50's, and climbing rapidly. Most developed countries are 70-100%, especially larger ones. At 1.3 billion people, that means there's still another oh I dunno, 200-300 million people who will be moving to cities over the next decade or two. They're going to need a few ghost cities to hold all those people.
The big thing to notice is that China's urbanization rate is somewhere in the mid 50's, and climbing rapidly. Most developed countries are 70-100%, especially larger ones. At 1.3 billion people, that means there's still another oh I dunno, 200-300 million people who will be moving to cities over the next decade or two. They're going to need a few ghost cities to hold all those people.