Cherchez la femme… China’s bureaucrats are pleading with women to have babies
by Louis T March, Mercator:
We’re talking about China again. Why? Because when China sneezes, much of the world catches a cold. Ready or not, that is today’s multipolar reality. China matters – big time.
For the record, yours truly is neither misogynist, misandrist, nor Sinophobic – just an America-first guy. But the Wall Street Journal rang in the New Year with a report about Chinese women that cries out for comment: “China Is Pressing Women to Have More Babies. Many Are Saying No”.
Two accomplished female reporters, Liyan Qi and Shen Lu, take the People’s Republic (PRC) to task for hectoring young women to have more children. They have a point. I have it on good authority that women are at fault for 50 percent of the demographic conundrum. But many from the other 50 percent have opted out of family life in the lying flat (tang ping) and let it rot (bai lan) movements.
Regarding the fairer 50 percent:
Fed up with government harassment and wary of the sacrifices of child-rearing, many young women are putting themselves ahead of what Beijing and their families want. Their refusal has set off a crisis for the Communist Party, which desperately needs more babies to rejuvenate China’s aging population.
Putting yourself ahead of what the government wants is fine by me unless it harms others.
Family ties
Putting yourself ahead of family is something else. In a materialist me-first ethos, individuals are valued solely for their economic utility. Family is an impediment to financial success, a lifestyle encumbrance. That is postmodernism, where everything is relative. Globalism thrives on it.
In Confucian (and Christian) tradition, the individual is integral to (thus inseparable from) the family. It is a filial duty to have children and carry on the spiritual and consanguineal bond transcending generations, each nurturing the next. There was a time, believe it or not, when families got along much better than they do now. But that’s something for another discussion.
It wasn’t too long ago that the Chinese government was doing more than simply hectoring women. Back in the one-child days the state tried to supplant the family. Didn’t work. Now the government really regrets the failed dystopia where government bureaucrats monitored menstrual cycles, fined families for bearing children, mandated abortion and didn’t exactly discourage infanticide.
Demographic collapse
Today China is in early-stage demographic collapse. The population is projected to fall from 1.4 billion to somewhere between 500 and 700 million by 2100. The fast-shrinking labour force is a huge problem, and caring for the exploding elderly contingent is more costly than ever:
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