China no longer has the highest population on Earth

[Yong Fang]

I knew this was going to happen, but I read yesterday that India has overtaken China in having the largest population on Earth. China is now #2. China will probably keep the second position for decades and even until the apocalypse since no other nation has nearly as many people.

But China’s population is declining, which is causing a crisis for the government since now China has more elderly than young people which puts a strain on their social safety net. China even made a law (don’t know how it can or would be enforced) that children have to take care of and at least visit their parents ever so often.

Now in China, a citizen can now have up to three children. The problem with the so called “One Child Policy” is that people preferred boys to girls and would abort of the females, causing a wide gap of the sex balance of a generation. Now there is something like 109 men for every 100 women in China. It has gotten so bad that men are looking at other Asian nations like Vietnam and even North Korea seeking wives.

The urban people now are only having one child. First of all, many of them grew up in the One Child era and this is what they know. Also, China is expensive. Housing is expensive in the large cities. Raising children is very expensive with the added cost of sending the child to school, most schools require payment of tuition. The urban people do not need six kids like the rural people did. But even in the rural areas, mechanization has made all the extra people obsolete (and why Chinese want boys as farmhands instead of girls who will be married off and be someone else’s farmhand).

Even in my wife’s family, I can see the shrinking. My wife’s parents have six children. Of those six, my wife, who is the youngest in the family has one child (not mine), the next youngest, her sister has one child (who is about 30, and just got married), youngest brother has one daughter and she has one daughter, the second oldest brother (I think…) has two children, and one son has two children and the daughter has one child, and (I think…) the oldest brother has two children and maybe has two grandchildren.

So a couple who has six children only has about 15 decedents 70 years later. But that is probably common now. But incredibly people not having children is putting the government into a bind. But the Chinese government isn’t all that smart to begin with, this seems to be not known or ignored in the West. But the government of China went from “Stop having kids!” forty years ago to “Start making kids!” now.

Congratulations to India (I guess). I think probably somewhat at least in the cities there people are having less children but India is much more rural and much more farmland. Perhaps.

[TheLittleFaerie]

China is no where as BIG as I thought it was.... I used to think China was HUGE, but when I look at it, it's barely even as big as the US