the CCP started implementing the One Child Policy. The US has done some pretty bad social engineering in time, but none with quite the cruelty of the OCP, or whose effects are quite so predictably disastrous. Maybe they will get lucky because robots will arrest their demographic collapse, but on an ex ante basis the policy is simply atrocious.
Personally, I haven’t spent that much time investing this question, but I currently believe it’s very unlikely that the One Child Policy was primarily responsible for demographic collapse.
Personally, I haven’t spent that much time investing this question, but I currently believe it’s very unlikely that the One Child Policy was primarily responsible for demographic collapse.
This may not have been the original intention behind the claim, but in my view, the primary signal I get from the One Child Policy is that the Chinese government has the appetite to regulate what is generally seen as a deeply personal matter—one’s choice to have children. Even if the policy only had minor adverse effects on China’s population trajectory, I find it alarming that the government felt it had the moral and legal authority to restrict people’s freedom in this particular respect. This mirrors my attitudes toward those who advocate for strict anti-abortion policies, and those who advocate for coercive eugenics.
In general, there seems to be a fairly consistent pattern where the Chinese government has less respect for personal freedoms than the United States government. While there are certainly exceptions to this rule, the pattern was recently observed quite clearly during the pandemic, where China imposed what was among the most severe peacetime restrictions on the movement of ordinary citizens that we have observed in recent world history. It is broadly accurate to say that China effectively imprisoned tens of million of its own people without due process. And of course, China is known for restricting free speech and digital privacy to an extent that would be almost inconceivable in the United States.
Personal freedom is just one measure of the quality of governance, but I think it’s quite an important one. While I think the United States is worse than China along some other important axes—for example, I think China has proven to be more cooperative internationally and less of a warmonger in recent decades—I consider the relative lack of respect for personal freedoms in China to be one of the best arguments for preferring United States to “win” any relevant technological arms race. This is partly because I find the possibility of a future world-wide permanent totalitarian regime to be an important source of x-risk, and in my view, China currently seems more likely than the United States to enact such a state.
That said, I still favor a broadly more cooperative approach toward China, seeking win-win compromises rather than aggressively “racing” them through unethical or dangerous means. The United States has its own share of major flaws, and the world is not a zero-sum game: China’s loss is not our gain.
Yes I was making a pretty limited critique of a specific line in Lark’s comment on causal attribution. I mostly agree with you (and him) on other points.
I agree that the US government, and Western governments in general, have substantially greater respect for individual freedoms, partially for Hayekian reasons and partially due to different intrinsic moral commitments to freedom. I also agree that this is one of the most important factors to consider if you’re asking whether you prefer a US- or China- led world order.
I spent some time researching this topic recently (blog post link). It seemed an odd paradox—why does the one-child policy not seem to have that much of an impact on the birth rates?
The answer is quite simple but weird that no-one knows about it. It’s mainly that the pre-One Child Policy population control policies in China in the 1970s were more restrictive than you think, and the 1980s policies were de facto more liberal. You can see this 1970s crash on any visualisation- from 6 to 2.7 births per women in 7 years! (1970-1977). A big chunk of this was because the legal marriage age shot up in most areas, to 25⁄23 for rural women/men, and 28⁄25 for urban. You get a big gap where people, especially in villages, would previously be having kids at 18 and suddenly weren’t.
Thanks to Deng’s reforms, the 1980s were more open in many ways, marriage was restored to the normal age, divorce was liberalised, so the one child policy was implemented partly to stop a resurgence of the birth rate! So alongside a big wave of sterilisations, you also get the “catch-up” of people now allowed to marry and have kids. Also, after some pushback, the OCP wasn’t that strictly enforced in the late 1980s, especially in rural areas, so you get some provinces where 3 or 4 kids stayed normal. Some people also took advantage of Deng’s reforms to leave their village, get divorced and have a kid with someone else. So you don’t see a big crash in the birth rate in the 1980s, and China averaged 2.5 kids per woman in the mid 1980s.
The OCP was more strictly enforced in the 1990s, so you see the crash from 2.5 to 1.5 births per women then. You also start seeing the extreme sex ratio imbalances. Now that the 1990s (56% male) cohort has reached parent-age, that’s one reason the current crash in the birth rate is so extreme. China would probably be seeing drops in the birth rate in the absence of any population control policies, but there’s no chance it would be this extreme.
This is a claim that has intuitive plausibility, and I sort of used to believe in the past, but I’m personally fairly skeptical these days. In this graph of fertility rate of China over time below, can you point to where the One Child Policy was implemented? (Here’s that same graph + other parts of East Asia + US + India for reference).
Personally, I haven’t spent that much time investing this question, but I currently believe it’s very unlikely that the One Child Policy was primarily responsible for demographic collapse.
This may not have been the original intention behind the claim, but in my view, the primary signal I get from the One Child Policy is that the Chinese government has the appetite to regulate what is generally seen as a deeply personal matter—one’s choice to have children. Even if the policy only had minor adverse effects on China’s population trajectory, I find it alarming that the government felt it had the moral and legal authority to restrict people’s freedom in this particular respect. This mirrors my attitudes toward those who advocate for strict anti-abortion policies, and those who advocate for coercive eugenics.
In general, there seems to be a fairly consistent pattern where the Chinese government has less respect for personal freedoms than the United States government. While there are certainly exceptions to this rule, the pattern was recently observed quite clearly during the pandemic, where China imposed what was among the most severe peacetime restrictions on the movement of ordinary citizens that we have observed in recent world history. It is broadly accurate to say that China effectively imprisoned tens of million of its own people without due process. And of course, China is known for restricting free speech and digital privacy to an extent that would be almost inconceivable in the United States.
Personal freedom is just one measure of the quality of governance, but I think it’s quite an important one. While I think the United States is worse than China along some other important axes—for example, I think China has proven to be more cooperative internationally and less of a warmonger in recent decades—I consider the relative lack of respect for personal freedoms in China to be one of the best arguments for preferring United States to “win” any relevant technological arms race. This is partly because I find the possibility of a future world-wide permanent totalitarian regime to be an important source of x-risk, and in my view, China currently seems more likely than the United States to enact such a state.
That said, I still favor a broadly more cooperative approach toward China, seeking win-win compromises rather than aggressively “racing” them through unethical or dangerous means. The United States has its own share of major flaws, and the world is not a zero-sum game: China’s loss is not our gain.
Yes I was making a pretty limited critique of a specific line in Lark’s comment on causal attribution. I mostly agree with you (and him) on other points.
I agree that the US government, and Western governments in general, have substantially greater respect for individual freedoms, partially for Hayekian reasons and partially due to different intrinsic moral commitments to freedom. I also agree that this is one of the most important factors to consider if you’re asking whether you prefer a US- or China- led world order.
I also agree with your final paragraph.
I spent some time researching this topic recently (blog post link). It seemed an odd paradox—why does the one-child policy not seem to have that much of an impact on the birth rates?
The answer is quite simple but weird that no-one knows about it. It’s mainly that the pre-One Child Policy population control policies in China in the 1970s were more restrictive than you think, and the 1980s policies were de facto more liberal. You can see this 1970s crash on any visualisation- from 6 to 2.7 births per women in 7 years! (1970-1977). A big chunk of this was because the legal marriage age shot up in most areas, to 25⁄23 for rural women/men, and 28⁄25 for urban. You get a big gap where people, especially in villages, would previously be having kids at 18 and suddenly weren’t.
Thanks to Deng’s reforms, the 1980s were more open in many ways, marriage was restored to the normal age, divorce was liberalised, so the one child policy was implemented partly to stop a resurgence of the birth rate! So alongside a big wave of sterilisations, you also get the “catch-up” of people now allowed to marry and have kids. Also, after some pushback, the OCP wasn’t that strictly enforced in the late 1980s, especially in rural areas, so you get some provinces where 3 or 4 kids stayed normal. Some people also took advantage of Deng’s reforms to leave their village, get divorced and have a kid with someone else. So you don’t see a big crash in the birth rate in the 1980s, and China averaged 2.5 kids per woman in the mid 1980s.
The OCP was more strictly enforced in the 1990s, so you see the crash from 2.5 to 1.5 births per women then. You also start seeing the extreme sex ratio imbalances. Now that the 1990s (56% male) cohort has reached parent-age, that’s one reason the current crash in the birth rate is so extreme. China would probably be seeing drops in the birth rate in the absence of any population control policies, but there’s no chance it would be this extreme.
Thanks for explaining, that makes sense and is very interesting!