1. I have many friends in China and NONE, I mean NONE want more than one child.
The truth is they cannot afford it and China is a user pays society.
Thanks for these interesting details, Cune.
Yet, I think your friends are somewhat the urban middle-class, not the villagers who don't speak even official chinese let alone englishand who still live in the past. They too can't afford children, yet have many or would have many without the "family planning".
Such fines exists precisely because too many chinese still didn't get it.
The option to try freely for a boy was added finaly because there were too many infanticides when the first baby was a girl.
Today those who can offord it, use echography and abortion for the same effect thought it's also illegal.
And it's not cases isolated in the mountains: In China there are curretly 58% of boys for 42% of girls (vs. 52% of boys for 48% of girls elsewhere).
Maybe your friend don't care, but as the stats show, most chinese still do care about that.
(Note that more boys than girls will help them growing slowlier. The problem is that homosexuality is still an important crime in China [officialy punishable by death if i'm not mistaken] so I don't know how they will be doing...)
Now, as I said to Lollipop, China is at a turning point, hopefully to something better: more enlighted individual responsability vs. repressive measures. Some chinese like your friends are already beyond this point and I do believe that things are changing fast.
There are many things in the period of Mao that I shudder at. Just as there are many things in all other countries history.
Do we see Americans denounce previous governments that presided over the backing of ruthless dictators?
Mao is not a hero figure to common Chinese people. He is an icon that is seen in connection with the start of China.
To many Chinese people Deng Xiao Ping is the hero.
China is a 3000 years old civilisation, the Han dynasty founded China, how come Mao is the start?
He is not an idol, but he is an icon? how do explain that? Hu?! (pun 'not' intended, well, maybe it was
)
Moa was nothing to shrugg about or to scoff at. He (and his group) has shaped the life of billions of poeple in a way never seen before and with unprecedented mistakes.
But ok, that's history now.
There has never been a country in the history of the world that has successfully fed, housed and cared for 1.3 billion people.
Is that not an achievement in itself?
There has never been a country that has recorded the massive growth of China in such a short period.
Is that not an achievement in itself.
No, I don't think it is. I don't see why having billions of poor poeple with low education and very low prospect.
Natural reproduction was not an achievement. It was a burden. A cause for many problem like food supply, housing, polution, clean water, traffic jams, etc.
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The countries in Europe have a long time to built themselves and improve the democracy.Our country like a baby, we need advises and a little of forgive.
Thanks for your reply. In Europe we don't know China very well. Poeple tend to sympathize with Tibet because they are fascinated by their picturesque religion but it has nothing political or against china. The next day we would watch on tv a colorful documentary about some repressed tribes in Myanmar and start to support these poeple too.
In fact, we have no reason to insult chinese and we don't. Most of us even never met one and I never met a Chinese in my life myself. I just know what I know from reading and hearing.
Post-communist China is indeed very young. But you must take it as an advantage, an opportunity to do something new.
Communism worked like a deep-freeze, not only for the economy but for mentality too. Post-communist neo-liberalism is changing things very fast as if you were racing up for the lost time. I see that with eastern europe and Russia and I think China is in such dynamic too, althought differently due to completely different volumes of population.
Cheers.
