Last night I dined at chateau Perry, and in connection with nothing in particular I found myself asking the above question. Can you, I asked my hosts, think of a worse decision? Both in its consequences for the people who made the decision, and morally, in terms of its consequences for the people it was inflicted upon? I mean, this lunatic policy might well be in the process of taking out an entire civilisation. Thanks to this insanity, to quote the cliché (because dramatic and very quotable and likely to be all too true) about China that has been doing the rounds for a year or two now, they’ll get old before they get rich, a soundbite which was launched by this publication.
And they are still bashing ahead with this policy, as I serendipitously discovered when I got home last night and was browsing through an internet site called Weird Asia News. Mostly this site features weird headlines concerning weird stories like: Papuan Police Recruits with an Enlarged Penis Denied Job; and: Britons Suffer Chemical Burns From Chinese Sofas, which I suppose I ought to care about more than I do what with me having bought a sofa myself not that long ago; and: South Koreans Revolutionize iPhone Market with Sausage Meat Stylus, the last one being a lot less interesting than it sounds. But in among such drollery is to be found this report, entitled Thousands Sterilized In China Population Crackdown, about how they are even now, still – well, as of last month anyway – enforcing this exercise in national suicide.
A 20-day campaign was begun on 7 April to sterilize 9,559 adults in Puning county, which with a population of 2.24 million is the most populous area of Guangdong Province. On 12 April local officials said they had already achieved about half their goal.
Doctors have been working 20 hour days to complete the massive round of surgeries. Local officials are so determined to reach their target they have been detaining relatives of those who resist the operation, potentially in violation of Chinese law.
Some 1,300 people are being held in cramped conditions around the county and forced to listen to lectures about the one-child policy while their relatives refuse to submit to the surgery.
At Perry’s, conversation later ensued about why they unleashed this madness. What were they thinking? What are they still thinking?
My guess was that this began as a classic communist response to shortages. Communism always causes shortages. Faced with their shortages, the Chinese Communists figured that if they could only reduce the number of people suffering from these shortages, the shortages would go away. If that’s right, then, as Perry said, this was another of those Fixed Quantity fallacies in action. Also a classic case of a doomed attempt at economic calculation under Socialism.
My further guess now is that this has become a pissing contest between the Chinese government and the Chinese people, with the government now being too bloody stubborn to back down. If they give up on this policy now, that will suggest either (a) that it was wrong for them to have persisted with this for so long, and maybe even wrong for them to have done it at all; or else (b) that they no longer have the power – the balls, you might say – to enforce such arrangements.
I have heard it suggested that it is simply that the Chinese government fears the Chinese people and wants to thin the numbers down. When this policy got started, the Chinese government was much more completely in charge than it is said to be now. But if that is the thinking, why impose a policy that results in millions of sex-starved men wandering around? That’s not going to keep the peace.
Why? Because they don’t understand economics, like most people in the West. Because the ideas behind the communist regimes were developed in the West, and one they picked up on was eugenics. Because they believe they need to relieve pressure on “resources”.
The word “resources” is currently one of the most abused words in the English (and preusmably Chinese also) language. It brings with it as free baggage the mental model that there is a fixed pile of these “resources” and everybody who exists depletes the pile by some amount, just by existing. So the idea of population reduction is a natural logical consequence of believing in that model.
I had a C: drive crash a while back and lost my stacks of web bookmarks; I had stored one link to a Telegraph article about the envrionment or population etc, the comments section of which was mobbed by Greenies applauding China’s policy and stating that the whole world needs a one child policy etc. Malthus was wrong in both general and in detail, but his nonsense is far more widely believed than that of Englightenment writers on economics etc. Once you have that model of humans as a plague of mice swarming over and depleting a pile of grain, you naturally move on to wanting to stop the mice breeding.
Yeah, as Ian says, this whole thing was based on an acceptance of Thomas Malthus, a man who simply couldn’t have been more wrong.
Thing is, I doubt whether anyone anticipated the gender imbalance which is going to stuff Chinese society sideways. Although something could well have been done about it by now if the government had been even halfway sane.
The country is soon going to import women on a massive scale. Overseas Chinese, poor Vietnamese, Korean. Then poor Philippina, Indonesian, Malay, Indian and maybe Middle Eastern and African.
I can’t see many European, Australian or North American women going, the prospects just aren’t good enough, but poor South American? Maybe.
Regardless, millions of women will be shipped to China, and China is a very very homogenous society, and China is a very very racist society. All those next generation mixed race kids will have a devastating effect on Chinese society.
And can you appreciate the effect on the poorest societies across the world of collectively losing maybe five million young women seeking a better life in China?
Not long ago I found a lecture on YouTube called “Arithmetic, Population and Energy” by Al Bartlett. Very interesting.
In this lecture he also talks about the growth rate of human population and how soon we will get to a real overpopulation problem.
This isn’t related specifically to china, but it is related to population growth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9znsuCphHUU
If you don’t mind watching this video(about 1hr) I would like to hear your opinion.
Sorry for my english.
– Tal
“… why impose a policy that results in millions of sex-starved men wandering around?”
Not sex-starved, surely. Just infertile.
Tal, I haven’t time to watch the lecture, but looking at Bartlett on the web he appears to be pushing a Malthusian message in a fairly standard way.
One obvious thing to point out is that he appeals to the exponential curve. This is a common error. Growth is not exponential; a period of rapid growth cannot be extrapolated that way. If you measure your childrens’ heights, they will be found to be growing rapidly. It would be an error to presume that they will continue to do so indefinitely and become 10, 20 or 50 feet tall.
If you extrapolate any physical quantity as an exponential curve, you will inevitably discover a crisis at some point in the future, which is all that Bartlett appears to be doing.
“If they give up on this policy now, that will suggest either (a) that it was wrong for them to have persisted with this for so long, and maybe even wrong for them to have done it at all; or else (b) that they no longer have the power – the balls, you might say – to enforce such arrangements.”
Both; any politician who suggested scrapping the policy would lose face big time and be devoured by his political rivals (sort of similar to the NHS in Britain, but worse).
More generally, Chinese culture places a very high value on “harmony” which results in all manner of conflict avoidance and deference to the boss, in and between just about every organization. Unless and until that changes, Chinese civilization will always be, in the very real sense of the people not achieving what they might otherwise be capable of, retarded.
It was once predicted that China’s policy would result in a larger male-to-female ratio. Is this what BM meant by “sex-starved males”? And does anyone know if that has in fact happened? I believe it depended on female abortions or even infanticide.
Sterilising men is pointless. If you have ten fertile women and ten fertile men, sterilising nine of the men still means your sample can produce ten children per year.
(Un)Fortunately for the Chinese, boy children are traditionally of much higher value than girls, therefore girl children were, (are), aborted, (or, in the absence of UltraSound machines, murdered at birth). You wouldn’t want your one child to be a worthless girl.
Hence, the large number of sexually frustrated boys wandering around China, and the rise in the trade in foreign wives.
Eventually, the market will sort out the problem as Chinese girls increase in value due to scarcity, but not before a lot of damage is done to Chinese society.
Dom: “Not sex-starved, surely. Just infertile.”
No, sex-starved. Yet another classic example of the Best & Brightest being surprised by “Unintended Consequences”.
In traditional Chinese culture, it is apparently the duty of the eldest son to support his parents in their old age. So if the B&B insist on a couple having only one child, they will disproportionately choose to have a son. (How do they choose? Best not to ask. The answer might make some Western abortion fanatics a little green around the gills). Bottom line is millions of teenage Chinese males who have little chance of a date, let alone a wife. Sex-starved sounds about right.
Apparently, most of the Communist partisans who joined Mao Tse Tung on his 6,000 Mile March were teenage males. The present surplus males are a clear & present danger to the Chinese regime. The obvious fix, unfortunately, would be a World War I type conflict. Win or lose the war, the Chinese regime would come out ahead.
No, Dom, sex-starved.
The idea is that it’s a secondary effect of the one-child policy. Boys are more highly valued in Chinese culture than girls, so there’s a lot of abortion (and worse) going on so that couples can have their one child as a boy. Hence a lack of women in the adult population (according to Nationmaster.com, 48.6%, compared to a world avergae of 50.2%), and sex-starved men.
How much of this is due to the one-child policy is arguable, though. China isn’t the most heavily male-weighted population in the world (Qatar and the UAE have female populations in the 30% range, and India, with a similar-sized overall population also has a surprisingly similar balance to China; all, of course, place a high cultural value on boys), and the balance is pretty much unchanged since 1960, before the policy was begun.
Hmmm… time to ‘short’ communism futures and go ‘long’ on prostitution futures on the China market, methinks
Hmm. I’m not sure if you put me in a crowd of 1000 people. whether I’d notice the difference between there being 486 females, or 502. Only 28 of the males- 2.8%- end up without a partner. It’s estimated (not much research unfortunately) that in Western society about 1%, possibly higher, of males are “Love-Shy”, that is, men who never ever have a girlfriend[1], so on that basis your society is only suffering about 1.8% of the population being abnormally girl-starved males.
Looked at from that perspective, it hardly seems like a major crisis, or that the majority are having much success securing their preferred child gender.
—
[1] Hence, Linux.
Ah, no, my arithmetic betrays my comprehensive education. It’s actually 5.44% (minus the 1% who wouldn’t pull if they attended the annual general meeting of the Undiscriminating Nymphomaniacs Guild).
“I’m not sure if you put me in a crowd of 1000 people. whether I’d notice the difference between there being 486 females, or 502. Only 28 of the males- 2.8%- end up without a partner.”
Tsk, think economics for a moment (about as common as an occupation for the love shy as Linux). Everything happens at the margin. You really will notice a difference between a 50/50 and a 52/48 society as the effects will cascade right through the behaviour of everyone.
I tried googling Undiscriminating Nymphomaniacs Guild, just for research you understand, and nothing useful came up.
In the Wikipedia article on Human Sex Ratio, there is a good description of national differences in sex ratio, including explanation of changes with age (females living longer). However, there looks to be a clear distinction WRT China on the sex ratio for those under 15 years of age (with amplified diagram here). So, on this occasion (though IMHO not generally), Sam Duncan does not seem to have it quite right. [However, as is often the case, I’m just weighing in after a modest search for the underlying facts. If I’ve got it wrong, I ask for some understanding, and more forgiveness, after (of course) adequate itemisation of the evidence-based correction.]
Best regards
“The obvious fix, unfortunately, would be a World War I type conflict. Win or lose the war, the Chinese regime would come out ahead.”
A “WW1 type conflict” with whom? With current military technology, no government in the world would or could wage war against the PRC on even remotely comparable terms – except the PRC itself.
Considering the Chinese horizon through an historical lens with a 400 year aperture is like getting ready for yet another sequel to a real life horror film which you can view in slo-mo anytime you care to.
Worst decision in history? I think a bit of rhetorical overreach there.
I’d vote for Constantine making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire as the worst. He put back the development of Greco-Roman humanist civilization by more than a thousand years.
They intervening years were know as the Dark Ages with good reason.
I’m not a fan of religion, but I don’t agree. Greco-Roman civilisation was already on its way out for numerous reasons [insert fiercely arguing scholars here] and didn’t have a sustainable political/social/economic model. All Empires collapse, because imperialism is a pre-liberal (classical kind) model (same reason the British Empire collapsed, in a sort of irony, the country that invented liberalism didn’t apply it to the empire it founded).
Rome was doomed. When your only economic policy is plunder, you’re heading for history’s compost heap even if you’ve spectacularly bloomed for a while. Which is why, probably, ours is on its way out too- we discovered liberalism 300 years ago, never properly put it into practice, and have now entirely abandoned it. Hopefully the civilisation that digs up the remnants of the Millennium Dome will be more rational than we.
I’m not a fan of religion either, but when you consider what Christianity replaced, or what might have taken its place (Islam), it was a good move. Even if you are rabidly anti-religion, you have to admit that Christianity in the west laid the foundation of what we now have, including the separation of church and state.
“Even if you are rabidly anti-religion, you have to admit that Christianity in the west laid the foundation of what we now have, including the separation of church and state.”
What separation is that?
Hey! We haven’t had a theism – atheism fight for ages!
Vying for worst decisions in history have to be Adolf’s desire for a new living room, and Hirohito’s decision to go to Hawaii for his vacation.
A few equally bad decisions:
1) Britains decision to get involved in WW1. It probably wouldn’t have been called WW1 if we’d stayed on the sidelines. Really would have been all over by Christmas. No Russian revolution, no loss of a generation, no Hitler, No Depression, No WW2, no atomic weapons.
2) Multiple bad decisions by Hitler in WW2 (from his prespective of course): non destruction of BEF at Dunkirk, change of strategy in Battle of Britain from attacking radar stations & airfields to attacking urban areas, decision to split attack on Russia southwards to Stalingrad instead of taking Moscow in one concerted attack, declaring war on USA after Pearl Harbour, wasting resources on ‘the final solution’ when a little more resources put into jet planes and rockets would have turned the tide in his favour.
OTOH, it’s worth mentioning that if there had been no Christianity, there wouldn’t have been any Islam either.
Then of course, following the chain back; if there had been no Judaism, there would have been no Christianity, and if there had been no Zoroastrianism, there would have been no Judaism. What a very different world we would live in without the Persian Empire.
“Hey! We haven’t had a theism – atheism fight for ages!”
And who would want one? What I had in mind was more the point that western Statism overstrides much of contemporary ethics in a way comparable to how Christianity (particularly after the Reformation) underpinned the ethics central to the success of the Enlightenment (i.e. parrhesia). Government has become the New American Religion, and to carry on talking about separation of church and state at a time when the popular answer – in America – to every and any conceivable social problem begins with “The Government Should….” is a pointless exercise in conscientious ignorance.
As for worst decision in all of human history… worst decision for whom? What about the 1945 decision of the Allied Command not to force the USSR and Communist China into outright, immediate and absolute submission there and then that very year? Was it a “good” decision for those American and British soldiers who might otherwise have died (and their families)? What about those teeming millions of poor bastards all over Asia who got trampled underfoot and much, much worse? And especially after the sacrifice of so many young Americans to stop those bastard Japs butchering almost whole peoples they had never heard of, never met and had no interest in beside defending their own freedom? Speaking for myself I think that that craven submission by Truman and others was it – it was an unbearable dishonor and betrayal of the cause of freedom that ought to endure long after we’re all dead and forgotten.
Mike asked: “A “WW1 type conflict” with whom?”
If the Chinese regime’s objective is simply to kill off excess males (either their own, or some adversary’s males to free up the dance card of the local ladies), it does not really matter with whom.
The obvious targets (in no particular order) are:
– Taiwan (especially now that it is obvious that Obama will leave the Taiwanese twisting in the breeze);
– India (check your atlas, there is still disputed territory between India & China);
– the long march through the ‘Stans to Iran and oil hegemony;
– Russia (not the top choice, since unlike Obama they would have no hesitation about nuking Chinese cities);
– Vietnam (convenient, but not a top choice since the Vietnamese might win);
– North Korea (also convenient, and thanks to communism their women-folk are fashionably thin).
But you are right, Mike, when you imply that history predicts instead civil war within China. That is why it is so important to the regime to do something external before the excess lads cause problems internally. And time is not on the regime’s side.
Yes Alice, but consider the numbers implied by your comparison to WW1… and then consider things like the Su-27: if China gets into a fight with Taiwan, it isn’t going to be losing hundreds of thousands of young men trench warfare style is it? As for Obama – the sale of critical military upgrades to Taiwan (especially with regards to air superiority) isn’t up to him, it’s up to those fat leeches in Congress, which is why the Taiwanese have sometimes preferred a few dodgy tangos in Paris over the years.
I’d wager that there have been dumber decisions in history. But I’d be hard-pressed to think of what they are…
“if China gets into a fight with Taiwan, it isn’t going to be losing hundreds of thousands of young men trench warfare style is it?”
Agreed, but let’s not get too literal about WWI trench warfare. Iran/Iraq war young men charging minefields would do just as well. The only thing that matters is the body count.
The Taiwanese would probably fight like devils if the Chinese invade. The Taiwanese will know they are on their own, while the EU debates if their strongly worded call for all sides to lay down arms should be written in French or German and Obama continues to make speeches on health care reform. The Chinese could lose a lot of young men crossing the Straits and fighting house to house in Taiwan.
Given the size of the North Korean army, the Chinese could lose a lot of men in an invasion there, with or without trench warfare.
Logically, the smart thing for China would be to buy the ‘Stans and then invade Iran from the Caspian Sea. China’s Mongol overlords defeated the Persians almost eight centuries ago, using essentially that route. If Chinese boys are going to die, China might as well end up with the oilfields for their sacrifice.
65 years of peace have probably given most of us in the West a pleasantly inaccurate feeling that the days of mass conflict are behind us. Time will tell. And time is not on the Chinese regime’s side.
Besides which, China’s demographic problems aren’t really about overpopulation. Most of China’s population is concentrated in its’ coastal cities where fertility rates are already often <1 right now. If the disparity between the number of male and female babies continues, then China will eventually have an under-population problem because there are not going to be enough women to have babies.
But yes, the objective of any land invasion of Taiwan would be to bestow political power on either the old cabal or a new cabal in Beijing. Which is why they are desperately hoping to negotiate better terms of migration instead (starting with student exchange programs) with the current KMT administration in Taipei. But an important difference between Taiwan and 1930s Austria is that there are still more than enough young Taiwanese who hate their "compatriots" across the Strait, especially in the South; I don't think this is going to change any time soon.
“The Taiwanese would probably fight like devils if the Chinese invade.”
Yes and no, but in general, I don’t think so. Taiwan has a large middle-class, which looks to Paris, New York, San Francisco and London for lifestyle “gurus”; they make wafer panels, not meat cleavers now; private firearms-ownership is illegal; their military officer schools allow shooting practice twice a year only; a visit to the mountains usually means carrying nothing more than a small camera; most Taiwanese cannot even swim etc etc…
” The Chinese could lose a lot of young men crossing the Straits and fighting house to house in Taiwan.”
I hope it never gets to that.
If the Chinese regime’s objective is simply to kill off excess males (either their own, or some adversary’s males to free up the dance card of the local ladies), it does not really matter with whom.
The great thing about nuclear weapons is the way they bring the calculating old men and armchair generals into the conflict as well as the young guys. China will not have a serious war, i.e. one that is likely to affect demography, with any other nuclear power for that reason.
Eric, neither Taiwan nor Japan could develop their own weapons fast enough to stop the Chinese if they really wanted to use them and the United States is now run by guys who think that constitutional conservatism is equivalent to sexual delinquency. The Taiwanese cannot rely on an America whose spirit is just about dead and buried and nor should they.
Having said that, I don’t think the mandarins will use their big nukes against Taiwan.
To be fair, Nigel, so was I. 🙂
I don’t know whether this is a factor in the Eurozone but in North America the adoption of Chinese girl babies occurs on a grand scale. Male babies are not available for adoption and because of the one child policy presumably female infants are discarded so that the parents can get lucky another time. The preference for male children is not confined to Asia however – it’s a fact of life virtually everywhere.
If the goal is to get young Chinese men killed, an invasion of Taiwan won’t do the trick. Chinese losses in that adventure wouldn’t be large enough to affect demographics even in the event of a spectacular failure. One way or another it would be over in two weeks. If they were successful they’d likely be looking at a decade of economic sanctions from their primary trading partner, which would leave all those surplus young Chinese guys out of work and looking for someone to blame.
Japan is a much stronger naval power than China, but without the kind of military it would need to challenge the Chinese on land. A war between the two would involve a lot of snarling and a few sunk ships unless it lasted long enough for the Japanese to acquire nukes.
I should have added in my post that adopting a Chinese baby girl is a pretty costly affair. The Chinese authorities don’t want them but are definitely not running give away programs.
Ian,
The gender balance of the general population is not the point. What is important is the gender imbalance of the youngsters and currently that is running at 120:100 for live recorded births, and that is up from a still problematic 111:100 in 1990.
By the middle of this decade China is facing a sexual surplus of well over 40 million men who cannot ever hope to marry, unless women are imported. And that over 40 million is rising year on year.
Umm, “Three generations of idiots is enough”?
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Eric suggested about a China/Taiwan conflict: “One way or another it would be over in two weeks.”
I’m way out of my depth here. But even little old me knows that 1914’s “Home by Christmas” expectations did not quite work out. And Saddam Hussein’s mighty war machine was bogged down for 8 stricken years in Iran.
Remember that even the hapless French managed to hold out against Hitler’s mighty Wehrmacht for 6 weeks.
The far-left media have managed to make most people forget just how absolutely astounding the US military is (or was) — go half way round the world, carry the overhead of a bunch of foot-dragging “allies”, outnumbered something like 8 to 1 by the Iraqi armed forces, and still pull down the dictator’s statue in the heart of his capital city within 3 weeks. Without causing mass casualties, either.
But that was then. This is now. Obama won’t come out to play, certainly not to help the Taiwanese.
Which still leaves the Chinese regime with a problem. A growing pool of millions of frustrated fighting-age young men — the kind of people who have been the cutting edge of many a revolution. The West is not the only place where rulers may be faced with chosing the least unacceptable (to them) option.
On the sex ratio, I have a comment at May 5, 2010 06:19 PM, which unfortunately got caught in Smite Control.
Best regards
Alice,
The reason analysts generally believe a Taiwan invasion will be over in two weeks is because Taiwan is an island. China loses if it doesn’t succeed in that amount of time. Two weeks is the amount of time it would take the US to shift enough material around such that we can sever supply lines between Chinese troops on the island and the mainland.
The Chinese strategy would be to take the entire island, reinforce, and dig so well that we’d be unwilling to dig them out. If they fail to take the entire island, and the US is able to land reinforcements while preventing Chinese reinforcements the Chinese situation becomes hopeless.
The point is it’s the kind of “lightning war” scenario that requires surprise and doesn’t lead to a lot of casualties (well, there would certainly be a lot of casualties by the standards of current conflicts, but remember we’re talking demography in relation to a country with 1.3 billion people).
If you want to name worst mistakes, then let’s blame the real villains- diseases! A book I read recently claimed that hitler seemed to be suffering from Parkinson’s disease. If true, and if hitler knew this, then we see why he was in such a rush, and made so many wrong decisions! Lucky for us, of course! Though I’ve also read that some French generals had syphillis, which might explain some lousy French decisions!
Eric wrote re a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan: “Two weeks is the amount of time it would take the US to shift enough material around …”
Eric, sounds like you did not get the memo. Obambi ain’t comin’!
Yes, there was a time that the US would have flown to the aid of Taiwan. There was even a time when the US was ready to “bear any burden”. That all ended Jan. 2009.
Goodness, Empty Suit can barely drag himself away from the golf course long enough to visit oil spill threatened Lousiana. Interrupt his evening to authorize the US military to defend Taiwan? In your dreams!
But I doubt that the Chinese leadership would invade Taiwan. If they are going to undertake a deliberately bloody military campaign to use up some of those excess young males, then Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan-Iran offers a much better return if successful, and more opportunities for grinding warfare along the way. But that’s just an opinion.
Alice – the Vietamese military would have no chance of wining.
The Chinese military is an utterly different beast than it was during the farce of 1978 (a war the Chinese want everyone to forget).
The modernization of the Chinese military has been very rapid and they have been transformed – in peacetime the best comparision is the change in the German military between 1933 and 1939.
As for the demented one child policy (with all these single boys – and all the dead girls).
I do not know why the Chinese government started this and I certainly do not know why they carry on with policy.
I know the Chinese government is evil (very evil) – but there is some method (some rational objective) in their wickedness that I have failed to understand.
They have a purpose (I am certain of it) – I just do not know what it is.
Many things in China are unclear to me – it is as if a dark mist obscures my sight.
“Listening to Nongqawuse” would probably be a contender:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nongqawuse
(Any similarity between Nongqawuse and the proponents of “green jobs” is entirely deplorable.)
Surely the answer to China’s surplus of men is to acquire some women? Not to get their men killed. I suppose large scale raids into their neighbours would do both things.
They could all become engineers, since their sexual adventures allegedly seldom involve other carbon based life forms.
Or we could ship some of our surplus chatterati over and they could try their ‘Why can’t we all just be friends’ approach. It’s worked so well everywhere else.
Otherwise, I’m sure all the asylum seekers trying to get into the west would love to go there; solve two ‘problems’ in 1
mj, thanks for the reminder about nongqawuse, useful analogy there.
People are always saying the Chinese are “very, very racist”, and they may be. Here in Moscow I have known many Chinese students over the years and I have never heard any of them express anything close to a racist sentiment against anyone except the Japanese. They always seem shocked by the rampant racism in Russia, especially in the third week of April, when Russian Nazis celebrating Hitler’s birthday mean they are all barred from going out for a few days.
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned kidnapping. It is already a problem in China. If an only child dies some families will kidnap another or pay a kidnapper, especially if it is a boy. If the pool of surplus males is large enough don’t you think that Chinese teenage girls will be in danger of kidnapping & forced marriages?
I hope it never comes true.
High-level, centralized micromanagement works. The results don’t. The fulfillment of the process shows that the process works. The success of the process is the proof it works. The actual long-term results come later. Western thinking, Chinese-style.
Elaine: that sort of thing is just about weekly/monthly news here in Taiwan and certainly in several parts of China too. So yes it is already happening but the kidnapping in Taiwan is largely done by low level gangsters for blackmail purposes. Kidnapping in China is a crime many centuries old.
Does China even have the ability to ship a meaningful number of soldiers to Taiwan? And to land them against resistance?
Last I’d heard, the amphibious landing capacity to carry out a 6-6-44 “Operation Overlord” flatly does not exist in 2010, even if you add every single LSD and LST and such together. And sure, China can drop people out of airplanes, but light infantry can do precious little offensively once they land, without armor and artillery close behind. Never mind I don’t even know how many airborne soldiers the PRC has.
Plus, if Taiwan doesn’t have (very discreet) nuclear weapons of its own I’d be a little surprised. They certainly have the technical capability and the money to buy resources, and they have the sort of bad neighbor that would cause me to arm myself.
(P.S.: if Another Voice From China is reading this, I’m still waiting for an answer as to how so many Tibetans could die from the use of less-lethal weapons by ChiCom riot police. You bailed and ran before you could explain that one.)
Well, the author of Mein Kampf proposed ‘war’ as a better means of population control than birth control, which turned out to be a pretty bad idea ‘both in its consequences for the people who made the decision, and morally, in terms of its consequences for the people it was inflicted upon’.
The German decision to send Lenin into Russia. That is my choice for overall bad decision.
It’s a toss-up.
Worst decision in the world possibilities—
The entire chain of stupidity and vanity that led to the outbreak of WW1, the consequences of which were two more world wars, at least, and an entire century of political madness and murder on a scale never known before even in the grimmest periods of human history.
The decision by yours truly back in the early ’60’s to defy the demands of a neighborhood bully for the sake of a girl named Mary Ellen, who never paid off anyway, resulting in a serious beatdown with no commensurate reward from said ingenue.
Tough call.
My vote would be for her parents’ decision not to abort Rachael Carson.
Or the Treaty of Versailles.
Does China even have the ability to ship a meaningful number of soldiers to Taiwan? And to land them against resistance?
Last I’d heard, the amphibious landing capacity to carry out a 6-6-44 “Operation Overlord” flatly does not exist in 2010, even if you add every single LSD and LST and such together. And sure, China can drop people out of airplanes, but light infantry can do precious little offensively once they land, without armor and artillery close behind. Never mind I don’t even know how many airborne soldiers the PRC has.
Yes, they have the capability. Taiwan is hardly Rommel’s Atlantic Wall. Over the last decade the Chinese have built scores of tri-hull landing ships, including tank landers and the kind that can stand off a bit and disgorge amphibious armor. They also have some of those huge modern hovercraft – they bought six Zubr hovercraft from the Russians, which according to the linked article have about double the US Navy’s LCAC capability and can be based on the mainland.
They have a few advantages. They have thousands of GPS-guided SRBMs in range, which should be enough to cripple Taiwan’s relatively high-quality air force plus crater all the important roads and rails. With air superiority they can deny any sort of mobility to the defenders. They have smart bombs – that kind of pinpoint precision isn’t something Rommel had to deal with. Taiwan is reputed to be riddled with spies and saboteurs, so nobody really knows what (and who) can be depended on to function properly once the shooting starts.
Even Pentagon planners are willing to admit publicly they can probably do it if they’re willing to pay the price.
And that price might not be very high, considering how dependent the World’s commerce is on an unimpeded flow of goods from China. If we can put three carrier groups in their waters and they can shut down WalMart, it’s no contest.
A bit late, but:
@widmerpool:
Yes, but the fact that they are in Russia says something. They are very racist against other people in China but after you have left and become a target for racism yourself, your view changes somewhat.
Yes Eric – Taiwan “feels” very different from (say) South Korea.
In the Republic of Korea there is a “right” – not a perfect libertarian right, but a “right” in the American (not the European) sense.
The Grand National Party is someting I can understand – but the polticis of Taiwan feel as misty to me as China does itself (so I do not think there would be much resistance to Chinese rule there).
Elaine – female abduction and forced marriage (or forced prostitution) are already normal in China.
You guys are crazy!
This is coming from a well educated westernized student……….
What now? Go ahead and bash, words mean nothing on site like this, You have to take action and so far i have seen no action taken by this so called “organization.”
Hi! Thank you for this post; it has brought attention to the one-child policy.
I volunteer with All Girls Allowed, an organization that seeks to support Chinese girls and women who China’s policy affects.
Please contact tessa@allgirlsallowed.org for more details.
Gguyvhhhy