Declining superpower

During the 36 years of Deng Xiaoping-implemented one-child policy, parents preferred to have a boy rather than a girl. Consequently girls were aborted or if born they were not nourished or left in the forest. Now in the population pyramid there is a gap of 35 million ‘lacking women’. That means that 35 million men cannot make a family and have children. Population is declining rapidly. In order just to maintain the 1.4 billion Chinese, every woman must give birth to at least two children. But in the report of the 2020 national census the fertility rate is only 1.3. That means China is aging at the same rate as Japan and Italy.

The 2020 census was terminated in December 2019 but published belatedly on May 11, 2021. Observers say it was manipulated and embellished for all the CCP targets for growth were missed.

Since October 2016 the Chines Communist Party has set the two-child limit.

But the couples say that having kids is too expensive. Both partners must work in the cities to cut out a tolerably decent life. They cannot pay a babysitter.

“Having a kid is a devastating blow to my career,” says Anie Zhang, 26, insurance manager in Shanghai. Most Chinese think in terms of materialism. But I propose another explanation:

The couples refrain from giving the CCP manpower, soldiers, scientists, engineers, miners, seamstresses etc. They think life in Communist China is not worth living. They refuse to burden their offspring with a life under permanent surveillance, in a country with polluted air and water, in houses that can be demolished at any time at the whim of an ambitious CCP agent. The traditional countryside dwellers abhor living in high-rise ghost towns. Farmers want to live in villages near their fields, but industrialization forces them into megatowns.

Life under the threat of being imprisoned for diverging thought is a nightmare. If their potential children adhere to Falun Gong principles of compassion and truth or any religion except Xi’ism they would be robbed of their organs. It is better to have no children at all. They are wondering why news from abroad is withheld from them at the ‘information firewall’. Those who have preserved their sanity fear that Xi’s overbearing trade and strategic policy will bring about hunger, decline and defeat.

Reverting to the population pyramid. It is evident that the now large active producing age bracket of the 40 to 60 years old will reach retirement age by and by soon. Consequently the much fewer 20 to 40 years workforce will have to nourish their parents and grandparents. And that in an utterly deficient old-age pension scheme. The CCP plans to rise retirement age from 60 for men and 55 for women by a few months every year. In factories and service enterprises robots can replace humans at a restricted scope only.

We in the west can hope that the reduced Chinese power will prompt the wild helmsman in Beijing to refrain from triggering a war in his pursuit of world domination.

The Asian superpower of the future is India whose rapidly growing population will overtake China’s dwindling one by 2027. Western democracy will keep the upper hand over Communist totalitarianism.

Erich Wannemacher

Lapu-Lapu City