wsj.com
www.wsj.com

Chinese women have had it. Their response to Beijing’s demands for more children? No. 

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.

With the number of babies in free fall—fewer than 10 million were born in 2022, compared with around 16 million in 2012—China is headed toward a demographic collapse. China’s population, now around 1.4 billion, is likely to drop to just around half a billion by 2100, according to some projections. Women are taking the blame.

In October, Chinese Leader Xi Jinping urged the state-backed All-China Women’s Federation to “prevent and resolve risks in the women’s field,” according to an official account of the speech.

“It’s clear that he was not talking about risks faced by women but considering women as a major threat to social stability,” said Clyde Yicheng Wang, an assistant professor of politics at Washington and Lee University who studies Chinese government propaganda.

The State Council, China’s top government body, didn’t respond to questions about Beijing’s population policies.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      01·
      11 months ago

      Every American Chinese woman has a duty to birth at least one able-bodied worker.

      ~ Mike “Chinese Communist” Johnson, Speaker of the Beijing House of Representatives

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
          01·
          11 months ago

          There is a reflexive need among Americans to assume every other country is significantly worse than their own.

          • SCB@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            11 months ago

            China is an authoritarian state that had a literal one-child policy until recently

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
              01·
              11 months ago

              China is an authoritarian state

              My guy, I’m living in a state that tried to arrest a woman for removing an ectopic pregnancy. The border towns of my state are rapidly developing the largest per-capita prison population on the planet, thanks to the number of migrants being snatched up and forced into concentration detention camps combined with our already prodigious home-grown prison population. A full third of my city budget is dedicated to funding an enormous do-nothing police force and our new mayor spent his first day doing ride-alongs with cops while promising even more money. You can get arrested in my state for simple vagrancy. You can get arrested and jailed for days at the age of 6 years old for stealing a crayon. You can get arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for submitting a provisional ballot on election day>

              had a literal one-child policy until recently

              Until as recently as 2010, US prisons had a policy of sterilizing inmates.

              China’s One Child policy boiled down to withholding financial benefits after the second kid, which is no different than the American EITC refundable tax credit that caps benefits at 3 dependents, along with numerous other state benefits that are capped at between two and four children depending on the state.

              If you want to talk about authoritarianism, you’re going to have to put more on the table than a vaguely referenced policy you know very little about. Nevermind how you’re speaking about this in a state that has been caught engaging in outright genocidal conduct towards its native, african american, female, and LGBT populations within the last few news cycles.

              • SCB@lemmy.worldEnglish
                0·
                11 months ago

                My guy, I’m living in a state that tried to arrest a woman for removing an ectopic pregnancy.

                Yep, and your state voted for that. My state amended it’s constitution to prevent this situation, also through voting.

                In China, you don’t get that option, because China is an authoritarian state.

                Authoritarian doesn’t simply mean “bad” even though authoritarianism is bad.

                You know what’s not a sign of an authoritarian state? An appeals court overturning a bad verdict.

                Crystal Mason’s contentious illegal voting conviction must be reconsidered, criminal appeals court says

                You should really click the links you use as evidence.

                • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  01·
                  11 months ago

                  your state voted for that

                  Gerrymandered districts mean 40% of the population picks 60% of the legislators.

                  In China, you don’t get that option

                  In China, I can get an abortion any time I want. The cost is trivial, the facilities are clean, and the doctors aren’t legally required to guilt trip me with far-right propaganda just for asking. I don’t need to block walk for ten years, canvasing uninterested men and begging them to support some Ivy League prat (D) over Local Car Dealership creep ®, in hopes that I maybe get the supermajority of democrats necessary to repeal an ill-conceived trigger law passed before I was even legally allowed to vote. I just get to do the thing, because it has been considered a fundamental human right since the 1950s.

                  You know what’s not a sign of an authoritarian state? An appeals court overturning a bad verdict.

                  An unelected body of bureaucrats green-lighting a state campaign of hyper-policing aimed at a vulnerable group, for the purpose of instituting an unpopular morality code, is a textbook example of state authoritarianism.

                  Even then, as you note

                  Authoritarian doesn’t simply mean “bad” even though authoritarianism is bad.

                  I could at least live with a certain amount of authoritarianism (because hey, that’s hierarchies for ya, and whatchagonnado?) but the current hierarchy has produced a local authoritarianist tendency that is also absolutely shit.

                  China’s authoritarian government gets people super fast trains and world leading hospitals and salt-fusion nuclear reactors.

                  My authoritarian government gets people daily multi-vehicle traffic fatalities and medical bankruptcies and big holes in West Virginia where we mine burnable rocks that clog our air and waterways and fill our fish food with mercury.

                  I can’t vote the authoritarianism out of Texas any more than I can vote the authoritarianism out of China. And since I don’t speak mandarin and I’ve got something of a large, well-established community of friends and loved ones in Texas, I’m stuck here for the time being.

                  • SCB@lemmy.worldEnglish
                    0·
                    11 months ago

                    You can move within your country and your experience will be entirely different. You can’t in China, because it’s an authoritarian hellstate.

                    I agree that Republicans are authoritarians, and that sucks. I also acknowledge that you likely view hierarchies as inherently authoritarian and that we’ll likely not see eye to eye on where to draw lines. Also fine - that’s what liberal ideologies want, is that disagreement.

                    But to compare China positively with the US in terms of authoritarianism is, frankly, a bit silly.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
              01·
              11 months ago

              If I was fluent in Mandarin? Chongqing is an absolutely gorgeous city with fantastic food and amazing transit. I’d take it over Houston in a heartbeat.