Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Population Control

Which of the following views by China's former leaders do you think history will prove to be true regarding China and its population?  Mao Zedong held that a large population was an asset for China.  Zhou Enlai believed that controlling the expansion of population was a pre-requisite for economic growth.  Explain why you believe one or the other to be correct.  

This is one instance where I agree with Mao.  Contrary to popular accepted thinking on the subject of family size and its relation to economic growth, I believe in a natural law and evolutionary approach to population management.  The dynamics of populations begin at the very heart of creation, and when these fundamental forces are unnaturally manipulated, the very nature of our existence is tampered with and is at risk.  When political and social engineers see a problem like the Chinese government does, they view the growing baby, the fertile mother, or the large family, as a threat to their way of life.  It is not initially a question of survival, although through the failed policies of the CCP have often made it one (for instance, the famines of the Great Leap Forward which killed 30 million), but a question of material and economic allocation of resources.  For the one-child proponents, it is a zero-sum game, with a finite and limited amount of products, services, entertainment, jobs, and other resources.  They ignore the advances made through biotechnology and medicine and their effect on the maintenance of large populations. Mao was right to assert that a growing and large population can be a tremendous asset to a country, as we are witnessing from the efficiencies of the Chinese economy, borne not through automated factories, but raw labor advantages.  However, Mao was wrong in possibly every other way in providing for his countrymen.            Thus, one of the dilemmas created through the forced restriction of the birth rates, is a rapid aging of the populace.  In the article "The Most Populous Nation Faces A Population Crises", Kahn writes about the rapidly aging Chinese population and the coming burden on the largely non-existent Chinese pension system, a shrinking labor pool, rising taxes, and increased competition for capital.  To quote Mr. Hu Augang, a Chinese economist, "We will have the social burden of a rich country, and the income of a poor country.  No country has ever faced the same circumstances before."  To remain philosophically consistent, any government that is willing to go through the type of measures China has taken to enforce control over births, will possibly use similar techniques on the aged, such as euthanasia.  If the Government thinks they have the power to destroy life at the earliest stages, what is preventing them from killing seniors who are placing a burden in a similar manner?