Chinese women have had it. Their response to Beijing’s demands for more children? No.
Fed up with government harassment and wary of the sacrifices of child-rearing, many young women are putting themselves ahead of what Beijing and their families want. Their refusal has set off a crisis for the Communist Party, which desperately needs more babies to rejuvenate China’s aging population.
With the number of babies in free fall—fewer than 10 million were born in 2022, compared with around 16 million in 2012—China is headed toward a demographic collapse. China’s population, now around 1.4 billion, is likely to drop to just around half a billion by 2100, according to some projections. Women are taking the blame.
In October, Chinese Leader Xi Jinping urged the state-backed All-China Women’s Federation to “prevent and resolve risks in the women’s field,” according to an official account of the speech.
“It’s clear that he was not talking about risks faced by women but considering women as a major threat to social stability,” said Clyde Yicheng Wang, an assistant professor of politics at Washington and Lee University who studies Chinese government propaganda.
The State Council, China’s top government body, didn’t respond to questions about Beijing’s population policies.
In the US, you can move within the US whenever you please and arrive homeless if you can’t afford market rents. In China, you can put out a request to move and get on a waiting list for available housing, then move when a spot opens up. China, you get arrested and returned home for moving without a permit. In the US, you get arrested and incarcerated indefinitely for living without a house.
The Authoritarian Hellstate of China is one in which state agents try to accommodate the demands of the population at-large in order to avoid the socially destabilizing effects of mass unemployment and homelessness. The Freedom-burger Utopia of America is one in which state agents simply assault and imprison anyone who steps out of line, with the expectation that we all make the consumer choice to remain in bounds.
I wish it was just Republicans. Houston and California and New York Democrats are more than happy to pile on the conservative-inspired panics, when they see these mass-media hysterics as politically convenient. Whether you’re Mayor Eric Adams or Governor Gavin Newsom or Sylvester Turner, you’re on the side of the police in a war against the ugly masses.
It is definitely silly to compare the Chinese Communist Party to the American Republican Party.