One child policy reversal: too little, too late?

During deliberations for the just-completed Fifth Plenum of the CPC 18th Party Congress, which laid out the 13th five-year plan (2016-2020), China has at long last scrapped the one-child policy completely; to some, this is all but admitting the mistake of putting the nation on a path to senility before first-world prosperity.

Having lost two younger siblings to the one-child policy in the early 1980s, this is a rather personal issue for myself - not to mention all mainland-born Chinese millennials of the so-called "little emperor" generation of spoiled brats and neurotically self-centered introverts.

The social effects of the one-child policy are tremendous in both scope and duration: not only must China grapple with a declining workforce at a far lower income level than Japan was at when it grayed in the 1990s, it is also facing the time bomb of a surplus of 40 million extra men of marrying age in the coming decade.

This second phenomenon casts a long shadow over the government's hopes of turning the economy around from investment to consumption. Research has already shown that ferocious young male competition for a constricted pool of brides contributes to the high savings rate in China (i.e. saving for a home purchase) - thus crimping the consumer spending Beijing so desperately needs to transition the economy in the coming years.

But a more obvious - and serious - problem is that the lopsided gender balance only prolongs the depopulation crisis. Let's say the rising generation of a society consists of 120 males and only 100 females as a result of disproportionate aborting of female fetuses, which is exactly what has happened in China for decades, leading to just such a breeding male-female ratio. If this young population had not been subjected to such a skewed abortion gender imbalance, perhaps it would be 40 more females and 20 more males, for a total of 140 each. And so even though the total young population is 220 as opposed to 280, or 21.4 percent less on account of the abortions, the total potential future families among this population is 28.6 percent less - 100 versus 140 (i.e. the number of females).

Such grim prospects for the rising generation in China explain why it has even been suggested that wives take multiple husbands.

To be continued...