General Chat

.... has dropped it's one child policy, because they now are desperately short of young people. Any suggestions as to from where they might find replacements? Syria? Afghanistan? ....

The fact that people are living longer than they did years ago is not a bad thing. However, the world's population can't keep on expanding at it's current rate. If limiting the number of children a couple can have isn't the answer, then something else needs to be tried.

They have been dropping it for years with 2 in 3 people allowed a second child. Now it is policy. China has had large scale immigration from Africa into south China for a long time but few people have picked up on it. These immigrants are not treated very well.

China has p poor relationship with its central Asian Muslim minorities who get an even worse deal than the Tibetans. China is unlikely to enocurage more...

In any case it is too late for Mr Woo the population is so skewed that nothing can be done to fix it before the sky falls in. That's the trouble with dictatorships there is nobody to call time on even the nuttiest of ideas.

That was my understanding, Rollo, that the one-child policy had been dropped quite a few years ago. It was the 'old-school high-'ups' in the country areas who refused locals permission to have more than one but it will be interesting to see whether the whole of China falls into line now.

China has now realised what a mistake the one child policy has been - plus the favouring of a son rather than a daughter

I knew this was happening but never really gave it much thought.:( I wonder what happened when women gave birth to twins. Anyone know. Dosnt bear thinking about really :-S

if you have enough money in China you can pay a fine for having more than one child

now they have an imbalance in the sexes and a shortage of young people to fill necessary jobs - don't mess with nature is the key to all this

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

How much longer until we run out of room? :-S

The more the population increases the lower the standard of life will be. Do you want quality or quantity?

The birth control should be World wide .see stories of family`s having 11=13 children ..doesn't matter what creed, religion it needs sorting, .or is it to late for many parts of the world ?

I think people need to be educated about the possible effects of continuely increasing the population. It's not good enough to tell people "don't do this or that". You have to tell them why.

Agree not being educated doesn't help .I fear for the Generations after I go, God help them or .someone should before its to late !!

Medical Science may have improved the childhood or infant mortality rates, but Third World countries are lagging behind.

They are still having large families in the hope that some will survive to adulthood and are able to 'support' their aging parents. Even though more of those children are surviving, the culture is deeply ingrained. Who can blame them?

Large families have an upside. One of my GF had 11 children all but one of whom grew up ok surviving pre war health care and ww2. The aunts and uncles did ok for themselves three becoming millionaires and one a doctor. My GF was not well off but the kids all had a lot of love.

For myself all these kids became a great support network when I started work, owned places to go to and have fun and of course parents of my multitudinous cousins.

Are today's young people in the UK well served by our system of nuclear families and at most two kids ? The state pretends to help. This "help" comes in the form of homelessness and hostels, low pay and a hundred thousand pounds of debt for uni.

Sure it won't do for a world model but a large family should not be automatically castigated. I am very much against the cuts of one sort another in child support.

In third world countries there is no such thing as a state pension or security in old age. That is one strong reason why people have a lot of kids. Another is religion. It is both silly and an utter waste of time preaching at people to limit their families while standing on a UK soapbox. Given security and peace people will reduce the size of their families but not otherwise.

Whatever its pretences much of China remains a third world country where for thousands of years old people were supported by their families without any help from the state. Now, in large part due to the one child madness, the state pension system is bankrupt. Too late for a fix.

Yet it is to this tyrannical, bankrupt (*), corrupt and warmongering country that Geo Osborne wants to tie the future of the UK regardless of the consequences to UK alliances with yesterday's friends such as Oz, Canada and the USA even if the EU is seen as past its sell by date.

Mad.

(*) An auditing accountancy firm will take into account futrure liabilities in assessing whether an organisation/firm is solvent. China may have a lot of US debt and other financial assets in its moneybox but they are dwarfed by future liabilities - personal and corporate debt, pensions, cleaning up the environment .... China as with any mad dictatorship is poking Uncle Sam. The Americans could just annul China owned T-bills tomorrow and that would be that, China out cold without firing a shot. Apple too.