'One Child' Policy Weakens Chinese Economy, Expert Says

'One Child' Policy Weakens Chinese Economy, Expert Says

www.cnsnews.com

China's "one-child" per couple population control policy may be costing the Chinese economy billions of dollars, Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, said at a lecture in Washington, D.C., on Friday.

(visit the link for the full news article)

While I think China's policy is barbaric and definitely a human rights violation, I'm certainly thankfull they have it in place, so I'm torn on the topic. I certainly hadn't ever thought of the policy as one that restricts China's economic growth, however. Isn't this concept counterintuitive when you consider that wealthier populations generally have fewer children vs impoverished societies?

www.cnsnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

If fewer Chinese lowers the productivity of the Chinese economy, all I can say is I'm glad. It's not the same as everyone ripping the factories out of there and bringing jobs back to North America, but I'll take it.

But that isn't what this article is about at all. In fact, it's some kind of crazy, veiled pro-life rant. Caveat: I am a bigtime conservative and I usually agree with what the Heritage Foundation has to say. But this speaker is off his rocker and doesn't fool me a bit. He's clearly trying to spin his fundamentalist agenda on birth/population in a way to make it seem like it's about money in an attempt to rope in fiscal conservatives.

"Every birth that is prevented marks a reduction of several thousands of dollars in the GNP over the coming years. Every birth the government in China stops represents a financial blow to the Chinese."

Excuse me, but is this guy saying that we should all just pump out offspring every year until we die for the sake of the GDP?

Mosher said that the Chinese government estimates the "one child" policy has prevented around 300 million births since its introduction in 1979. There would be 300 million more Chinese alive today if that policy had not been adopted," Mosher said.

And here's where the real point of this speech becomes abundantly clear. It's obvious to me that this Mosher thinks that the right and moral thing to do is to expand the world's population balls to the wall ad infinitum. There's only one problem: The current Chinese population is having a devastating effect on the very finite amount of resources available, along with the massive population of India and others in the world.

So in this man's perfect world every sperm and every egg (whether fertilized or not) are a life which is not to be wasted. We're not even talking about abortion here, we're talking about simple use of prophylactics. This lecture goes way beyond the bounds of not wanting to end the life of a zygote/fetus...it is basically advocating unrestricted population growth which isn't good for anyone who is currently alive or their descendants.