“More than 50 million total deaths,” writes Washington Post columnist David Von Drehle, summing up the cost of Communist Mao Zedong’s decades of re-making Chinese society from the “Great Leap Forward” to the “Cultural Revolution.”
“. . . entirely self-inflicted,” Von Drehle adds.
“A free market of ideas would never have settled on such terrible policies,” he declares, “and a limited government could not have enforced them.”
Exactly! Is it finally morning in Washington?
The columnist articulates two principles: (1) “a free society is a great solver of problems and finder of answers because more brainpower is better than less,” and (2) “while a big government can certainly give a great boost to a good idea, it can also put enormous force behind a bad idea — and when it does, the effects can be catastrophic.”*
He highlights China’s brutally enforced One Child policy, instituted in 1979, whereby the government, according to One Child Nation documentarian Nanfu Wang, bragged it had “successfully prevented 400 million babies from being born.” Through forced abortions and infanticide!
“This draconian, ill-considered measure,” Von Drehle charges, “has brought China to the brink of population decline at a time when the rising nation is still too poor, on a per capita basis, to support swelling ranks of elderly pensioners on the backs of a dwindling number of young workers.”
So, in 2016, “the all-powerful government permitted couples to have two children,” he explains. “Birthrates have continued to drop, moving the Central Committee to raise the cap last month to three children.”
Regardless of the number, what could be more totalitarian than the government deciding how many children you may have?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Like covering up a virus outbreak that turns into a pandemic killing almost 4 million people worldwide — and over 600,000 Americans?
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2 replies on “The 400 Million”
How much of the declining birthrate is due to the Chinese cultural preference for a son over a daughter? The one-child policy led to the abortion of girls in an effort to ensure the birth of a boy. Today’s surplus of men over women works to limit the number of births, even as the population grows. If the limit on children was removed entirely, would it raise the rate of female births?
Part of the problem is that the birthrate in China would have fallen anyway as wealth increased. So now allowing three children doesn’t mean the same. Fewer couples will take advantage than many years ago.
Decades ago, being able to have two children would have saved millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of girl babies. The desire to have a boy would still have been a major factor, sadly, but it would not be have led to abortions of girl babies and their abandonment or murder by the state in front of the horrified parents had the state not dictated only one child.
That a government can take it upon itself to decide procreation for every individual is so terrifying and yet it was even welcomed as “courageous” family planning policy in much of the West.