China’s population has been rapidly aging in the past few years, following the infamous one-child policy that began in the 1980s to cope with overpopulation. The one-child policy had detrimental effects on China’s population demographic; their population, currently at 1.4 billion, is steadily decreasing and aging. As the population ages, the ratio of retirees to workers increases, and the size of the workforce becomes insufficient to provide for retirees. These population trends are incredibly unsustainable, as there are 5 workers to support every 1 retiring person, and this is trending towards 2 to 1 by 2050. China’s retirement age is one of the lowest in the world, at 60 for men, 55 for white-collar women, and 50 for factory-working women.
China’s one-child policy went on for far too long– in the first place, the policy was inhumane. To enforce it with forced sterilizations and abortions shows how underdeveloped China’s human rights are. Additionally, it’s shown in the retirement age that China isn’t nearing gender equality. China’s one-child policy also led to a stark difference between the number of women and men in China. This gap, known as the missing women of China, is caused by a preference for sons to carry on the family name and contribute more to the patriarchal society, which can come to fruition through sex-selective abortions, female infanticide, which means the killing of newborn daughters, and prenatal sex selection. All of these methods are incredibly inhumane and a direct product of China’s one-child policy. China’s issues with retirement age and the economy are completely due to their ineffective policy. While the one-child policy may have helped China’s economy slightly, but at the expense of their human rights- which I guess China never cared much about. It’s interesting seeing how far countries will go to such lengths to ensure financial development but ignore issues such as human rights or gender equality development.
This relates to what we’re currently doing in class because China faced human rights criticisms for the violence that occurred surrounding the one-child policy. China’s domestic policy violates a myriad of human rights violations and could stand to be more thoroughly criticized by liberal institutions such as the UN.