China’s one child policy has been around for a long time. The reasons for it were generally understood that there were simply too many people in China to feed. But now with India looking to soon overtake China as the most populous country in the world, there may be other reasons for ending the one child policy.
China has the mentality of once Chinese always Chinese. You can see this in many places. Perhaps the most obvious is Taiwan. For the most part the entire world sees Taiwan as a sovereign country separate from China, but China still sees it as part of China. Other examples include not recognizing people born in China being naturalized citizens of other countries. When they return to China they still must use a Chinese passport.
So with China at the moment being the most populous country, or best put the Number One spot on the list, removing the one child policy may be simply to keep India from taking that Number One spot. So very simply it may be more about saving face than changes in the ability to feed everyone.
Seeing the Chinese Government melt down and display nothing short of a temper tantrum when their face got dirt on it when one of their more outspoken political prisoners received the Nobel Peace Prize, it is easy to see this dot about population has merit. So removing the one child policy may be more about pride than anything else.
But removing the one Child policy may turn out to be a double edge sword. Depending on what prediction you follow about the direction of global population, you can start to see the second edge of that sword. One prediction says the global population will max out about 9 Billion people. The other prediction is it will start into decline as climate change takes it’s toll on global food supplies. We are already seeing examples of that where entire crops are lost in just a few days or weeks. We can not forget that is how nature restores balance. China has had one of the biggest examples to date that shows that.
When China started filling the Three Gorges Dam, there was a plague of mice that were displaced. Millions of mice fled the rising water and searched out a new place to call home. That plague of mice lasted about one month and then ended. The reason it ended was the mice consumed all available food, and the survival of the fittest played it’s role. Mice are just as much a part of nature as humans, and nature does not care about what species is out of balance.
So this brings us back to the debatable question about changing the one child policy. Is there some underlying wisdom that is being missed, or is this all about face. If it is about face and staying number one despite the changes in global climate, it will eventually come back and haunt them.
