Chinese family values
Posted by ampontan on Saturday, October 6, 2007
IT SHOULD BE AXIOMATIC that government-mandated social engineering schemes are doomed to failure before they start, but an often-overlooked byproduct of those schemes is that they create problems worse than the ones they were designed to solve.
We all know that the Chinese have been trying to manage their population through the intensely unpopular program of limiting the number of children in a family (one in urban areas, two in rural areas if the firstborn is a girl).
We also know this has created the most lopsided gender balance ever recorded by demographers. The overhang of young male children without the chance to find mates could be the source of trouble both in China and overseas in the future.
What is not as well known, however, is that the policy has created a climate in which serious crimes flourish. It’s also created a market.
Here is the lead from a recent article in The Guardian newspaper from Britain:
In China, 190 children are snatched every day – more than twice the number taken in England and Wales in a year. The Chinese government does not acknowledge the extent of the problem, or the cause. The Single Child Policy has made it essential to have a son, leading to the abortion of more than 40 million girls and setting the price on a boy’s head at more than six months’ wages.
I could quote a sentence from each paragraph, but instead I recommend reading the entire sordid story yourself.
Here’s just one more, from government-affiliated CCTV:
Under the current law for families that adopt (i.e., buy) trafficked children, if they have not abused the children, and have not obstructed the rescue operations, the law enforcement can choose not to press charges, not to pursue further.
Perhaps the Chinese government would do well to devote further study to free market economics. The price of boys is about 10,000 RMB (US$ 1,335), roughly half the annual salary of a skilled production worker.
And if they really have the desire to indulge in social engineering, perhaps they should make Ethics part of the school curriculum first.
AMPONTAN 
John said
In certain circles I think it is absolutely axiomatic that social engineering programs always end in failure. Those are the circles that use phrases like “social engineering”. I don’t think your argument works, Ampontan. I have absolutely no desire to defend the one child policy, but if you’re going to seriously evaluate it you surely need to weigh the costs against any possible benefits. You’ve told us one of the costs, and then left it hanging. To my mind at least one possible benefit is a reduction in overcrowding and all the social and economic problems that brings. Does it outweigh the cost? I really don’t know, and I don’t know if you do either.
But let’s give you that, and say that the costs have far outweighed any possible benefits. They probably do. That still wouldn’t give any support for the idea that “social engineering” programs are harmful. It’s like claiming that heavier-than-air flying machines will never fly far and giving the Kitty Hawk as a case in point. The authors of the one child policy did not take seriously obvious social consequences of the policy. If this was social engineering, it was very poorly thought through and executed social engineering.
But, in fact, the reason the social consequences weren’t considered is that it wasn’t social engineering at all. It was economic engineering (i.e. planning) with social consequences, not in principle unlike the Fed raising or lowering interest rates. Maybe the best criticism of the One Child Policy is that they should have should have thought of it as a social planning problem and not merely an economics problem.
Again, I’m not saying the One Child Policy is good, or even that there is anything at all good about it. I just don’t think it contains any grist for your anti-government-regulation mill.
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Paul said
John, China’s population has never been a social or economic problem. Korea and Japan are far more densely populated, and they have no problems to show for it. People like to point to India as an example of overpopulation, but its economic problems are due almost entirely to over-regulation.
Besides, you’re being pedantic. This isn’t a scholarly thesis.
Brendon Carr said
In respect of China’s population being a social problem, there is one difference between Korea and Japan on the one side, and China on the other — income inequality. In China there are (hundreds of) millions of people who make $200 a year, right up against people who make $200,000 a year. The level of desperation that kind of inequality engenders is absent from the crowded streets and apartment towns of Korea and Japan.
John said
Paul, I’m not quite sure what you mean by “scholarly”. But if you mean that Ampontan’s references to “social engineering” weren’t actually meant to be part of an argument, then I agree. Nevertheless he went out of his way to make a link between the one child policy and the badness of social engineering, and my point was that there isn’t any. I don’t think I was being pedantic. The assertion of the link was meant to be taken seriously, and that’s how I took it.
Again, I don’t have any wish to defend the one child policy, but given that the goal of the policy was to prevent future over-population problems from arising, the fact that none arose is not an argument against it.
Bender said
The level of desperation that kind of inequality engenders is absent from the crowded streets and apartment towns of Korea and Japan.
I’m wondering how it really is in S Korea where many still immigrate to the US and other countries (which makes S Koreans inellegible for the diversity green-card lottery), while the Japanese don’t. In California, this is quite obvious- there’s a Korean languague DMV handbook(as well as Mandarin and I think Cantonese), but there’s not in Japanese. I noticed that Korean expats and international students seem to have lots of money (I mean in US dollars, not the purchase money parity inside Korea), even more than their Japanese counterparts. These guys don’t need to immigrate, and don’t. But then, S Korea’s per capita GDP is still considerably lower than Japan, and I understand this (poverty compared to the US) is the reason behind immigration. My bet it that inequality exists in S Korea at a considerably higher level than in Japan.