China, fearing India, abandons population stabilization

Back in 1995, Lester R. Brown called attention to China's overpopulation crisis in the prescient book Who Will Feed China?: Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet, by Lester R. Brown (Author) and Linda Starke (Series Editor), Worldwatch Institute. From the book's description:

To feed its 1.2 billion people, China may soon have to import so much grain that this action could trigger unprecedented rises in world food prices. In Who Will Feed China: Wake-up Call for a Small Planet, Lester Brown shows that even as water becomes more scarce in a land where 80 percent of the grain crop is irrigated, as per-acre yield gains are erased by the loss of cropland to industrialization, and as food production stagnates, China still increases its population by the equivalent of a new Beijing each year. When Japan, a nation of just 125 million, began to import food, world grain markets rejoiced. But when China, a market ten times bigger, starts importing, there may not be enough grain in the world to meet that need....

Recognizing the unsustainable consequences of unconstrained population growth, China implemented a one-child policy in 1979. The policy was not universal, but applied to ethnic Han Chinese living in urban areas. The policy remained in effect for 35 years. The good news is that it reduced China's population by an estimated 300 million - approximately the population of the United States.

From the article China's Former One-Child Policy, ThoughtCo:

The one-child rule has been estimated to have reduced population growth in the country of nearly 1.4 billion (estimated, 2017) by as much as 300 million people over its first 20 years. Whether the male-to-female ratio eases with the discontinuation of the one-child policy will come clear over time....

China's total fertility rate (the number of births per woman) is 1.6, higher than slowly declining Germany at 1.45 but lower than the U.S. at 1.87 (2.1 births per woman is the replacement level of fertility, representing a stable population, exclusive of migration). The effect of the two-child rule hasn't made the population decline stabilize completely, but the law is young yet....

See this UN graph of projected Chinese population to the year 2100. The red line represents median population projection and can be considered to be the most likely projection.

UN 2017 projections of China's population to 2100

 

China's population is projected to decline to the population it had when Brown's book was published. And that scares China!

The threat of India's overpopulation

India is projected to overtake China's population within just a few years. From the article India 'to overtake China's population by 2022' - UN, BBC, July 30, 2015:

A new UN study of global population trends predicts that India will overtake China to become the world's most populous nation by 2022...

Here's a UN graph of India's projected population growth. Again, focus on the red line:

UN 2017 projections of India's population to 2100

Africa's population growth

From the BBC article referenced above:

The report also says that Nigeria will replace the US as the world's third most populous country by around 2050.

Africa is expected to account for more than half of the world's population growth over the next 35 years.

The current world population of 7.3 billion will reach 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100, it predicts.

The new projection has India overtaking China's population six years earlier than previously predicted.

The reports says half of the world's population growth between 2015 and 2050 is expected to be concentrated in nine countries: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania, the United States, Indonesia and Uganda.

The populations of 28 African countries are projected to more than double, and by 2100, 10 African countries are projected to have increased by at least a factor of five...

Here's a UN graph of Africa's projected population growth. Again, focus on the red line:

UN 2017 projections of Africa's population to 2100

Africa is projected to grow to approximately 4.5 billion by the year 2050, while India will have 1.5 billion and poor China will have a population of approximately one billion. When the currency of global domination is expressed in human population numbers, the threat to China's global dominance is all too real.

The Chinese mindset

It's important to understand the Chinese mindset of racial superiority and their agenda of global dominance. As reported in the March 28, 2019 article Tucker Carlson Observes that Red China Now Promotes Population Growth, Limits to Growth, Tucker Carlson's interview with expert Gordon Chang explains a lot: The China Threat:

 

 

Here's the full transcript with highlights added:

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, every day China edges closer to overtaking the United States as the world’s richest country, but just because they are getting stronger economically doesn’t mean the Chinese people are more free. They are not. China is still imprisoning its Muslim population in the west. Ordinary Chinese still lose access to travel or education if the government says they have poor social credit and now a hacker has discovered a bizarre Chinese database that evaluated millions of Chinese women on whether they were quote, “breed ready.”

Gordon Chang is a columnist and author of “The Coming Collapse of China,” can’t come too soon. He joins us tonight. Gordon, thanks very much for coming on. What does “breed-ready” mean, and why would the Chinese government be assessing that?

GORDON CHANG: Well, breed-ready means they are able to breed children. And the reason why is because China has declining demography.

You know, if you start to look at some of the statistics, they are really frightening. So for instance, last year, their birth rate fell about 12%. Perhaps to the lowest rate in the history of the People’s Republic going back to 1949.

And we are seeing that the workforce has already topped out. The population as a whole will top out soon. China’s officials are just in a panic.

CARLSON: So they are identifying women who are breed-ready but then what do they do with that information? Is there going to be a coercive breeding program in China?

CHANG: There very possibly could be because some Chinese officials are now talking about having a two-child policy which is not a maximum two children, but they are talking about requiring couples to have two children.

Now, of course, China is not there yet. But you can see where they are going largely because they have been taken by surprise by a collapsing demography. They shouldn’t have been. People have been warning Chinese officials about this for the last 15 years. But they have sort of sloughed off the warnings but, you know, a couple of years ago they really started to see the consequences of declining demography.

CARLSON: But I mean, I have been hearing from Democrats in this country who are very concerned about having any kids because of global warming, it sounds like the Chinese aren’t as concerned about global warming as we are.

CHANG: No, and largely because every social problem, every economic problem they have, almost all of them are made worse by declining demography and the Chinese leaders start to notice and that’s starting with their economy because, you know, they grew during what was called the demographic dividend years. That was expanding workforce. Now, the workforce since 2011 has started to get smaller and it’s gotten smaller fast.

CARLSON: So we have the same demographic problems here, obviously and so does Western Europe declining below replacement rate. We just import new people from the developing world. Has it occurred to the Chinese to do that?

CHANG: No, you know, the Chinese don’t want to do that because they have a system and then basically, it’s based on racial superiority where they do view the rest of the world in inferior terms.

And you know, Tucker, on demography, within maybe three years, for the first time in at least 300 years, maybe all of recorded history, China is not going to be the world’s most populous society.

The world’s most populous society will be India and the Chinese both disdain the Indians because of this racial superiority view but also, they fear India. So people are concerned that China is seeing a closing window of opportunity and will lash out on that Himalayan border.

CARLSON: So, very quick, you just said something that almost nobody ever says which is that China may be the most racist country in the world, maybe after North Korea, but certainly, it is right up there.

The country is based on racial superiority and yet liberals in this country suck up to China constantly. Why does no one ever point that out?

CHANG: You know, that, to me, is a mystery because this notion of Han superiority is bred into the Chinese political system and you see it, for instance, they put on a skit on the China Central Television’s program, 900 million people saw it that depicted Africans as primates and it is just incredible, Tucker.

CARLSON: It’s unbelievable. But Jerry Brown is happy to call them wonderful, and so is Dianne Feinstein. Unbelievable. Gordon Chang, it is great to see you. I hope we will see you again soon, thanks.

 

The insanity of unending population growth manifests differently in different countries:

  • In America, population doubling is driven by the Congressional mandate of mass immigration.
  • In India, population growth is driven by high fertility and population momentum.
  • In Africa, population growth is similarly driven by high fertility and population momentum.
  • In China, population growth is driven by irrational views of racial superiority and demographic conquest.

India's overpopulation and China's race to presumed demographic destiny will have serious impact on a finite and fragile planet. Yet the consequences of unconstrained population growth on the African continent will be truly gargantuan. See World Fertility - The World's Most Important Graph and European Survival and the World's Most Important Graph.

For further reading on China's mindset, see Bully of Asia: Why China's Dream is the New Threat to World Order, by Steven W. Mosher, 2017. From the book description:

In a world bristling with dangers, only one enemy poses a truly mortal challenge to the United States and the peaceful and prosperous world that America guarantees. That enemy is China, a country

  • that invented totalitarianism thousands of years ago
  • whose economic power rivals our own
  • that believes its superior race and culture give it the right to universal deference
  • that teaches its people to hate America for standing in the way of achieving its narcissistic "dream" of world domination
  • that believes in its manifest destiny to usher in the World of Great Harmony which publishes maps showing the exact extent of the nuclear destruction it could rain down on the United States.

Steven Mosher exposes the resurgent aspirations of the would-be hegemon–and the roots of China's will to domination in its five-thousand-year history of ruthless conquest and assimilation of other nations, brutal repression of its own people, and belligerence toward any civilization that challenges its claim to superiority.