After over three decades of forcing the Chinese people to abandon or kill millions of children – or, if the parents can’t bring themselves to do it, killing the children over their objections – the CCP has finally figured out draconian population control has damaging consequences. So, being a Communist regime, they have replaced draconian measures (“one child policy”) with slightly less draconian measures (a “two-child policy”), while hoping for the best.
Don’t expect the best.
When Deng Xiaoping put in place the “one child policy” – effectively banning ethnic Chinese from having two or more children without explicit government consent (i.e., without bribing the right party officials) – it was at the high moment for global Malthusianism (the late 1970s). These days, Malthus’ heirs are trying to explain away the dangerous effects of depopulation in Europe and East Asia – including the Communist-run China. The regime itself said the decision to double down (in the literal sense rather than the blackjack one) was to “increase labor supply and ease pressures from an aging population” (New York Times). Of course, there is also the little matter of a massive gender imbalance, which is now so scandalous that – in typical Communist-regime fashion – the CCP made no mention of it in their announcement.
It didn’t take long for the rest of the world to realize how little improvement this was. Marco Rubio in particular nailed it (Lifesite News):
The fact remains that when couples conceive a third child, the Chinese government will force them to eliminate him or her, by any means necessary.
To which I would only add, again, that if the regime can’t force a family to kill a child, it will happily do the job itself, as it has for years.
