A modern Chinese curse: may you live in child-free times
by William Huang, MercatorNet:
The one-child policy has corrupted the dreams of young people.
Even though replacing the notorious one-child policy with a two-child policy was supposed to usher in a new baby boom, China’s demographic decline has been accelerating out of control. Its birth rate plunged in 2018. In 2017 there were 17.23 million births but only 15.23 million in 2018, the lowest number since the man-made famine days of the early 1960s.
One reason for this drop, besides the obvious ones like continuing birth restrictions and the high costs of child rearing, is that China’s youth, thanks to decades of intense brainwashing by one-child policy propaganda, is overtly hostile to the idea of having kids. This factor is often overlooked.
If you log on to China’s equivalent of Twitter, Sina Weibo, or the popular app WeChat, you will have access to realistic and direct discussions by young people about China’s demographic issues and the two-child policy.
Surprisingly, most of the time an aversion towards getting married or having any kids at all is expressed.
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