Cleaner Greener China: Clean Technology, Green Products, New Ideas, Clean China

There is no denying it.  There are a lot of people in China, nearly 1.5 billion to be exact!

The problem is that since 1979 and the implementation of the “one child” policy in China, imbalances in China’s demography have formed and the calls to end the policy are growing.

In the China Stakes article Drop “One Child” Policy, Scholars Urge, a report of the recent Forum of China’s Population and Economic Development Under Low Birth Rate includes a bit of the debate among those who believe that the policy should be adjusted.

Although any deviation from the “One-Child” policy is still expressly denied by the government, more and more scholars and policy researchers are calling for change and a revision to a “Two-Child” policy. Otherwise, they say, looming ahead is a demographic transformation unprecedented in human history that will see the rapid aging of China’s population and the shrinking of the population of the most populous country in the world.

and that

the coming five years offer an opportunity for the government to adjust the birth policy, and that it should gradually allow urban and rural women to have to children with the prerequisite of later childbirth for the first child (originally this was set at age 24 or later, but this time no age was mentioned) and a proper interval, perhaps several years, between first and second birth

For me, there are few issues more important than population when speaking about sustainability, and as I mentioned in my earlier post Should Cleantech be Socialized?, it is one of those topics that should actually be a component of every discussion when experts come together to develop solutions.
The global population is now more than four times greater today than it was in the 1950s, and balancing this growth is essentially at the core of what we should be discussing.

Coming back to China though, and more specifically China’s current policy, it is clear that the graying of China will be an issue that they will have to struggle with, but I am still not convinced that increasing the population through the widening of this policy would be in the real best interest of China long term.