China’s Baby Shortage and the Population Crisis: Impact of Missile Scientist Song Jian’s Mathematical Model and the One-Child Policy

China’s population has experienced negative growth for two consecutive years, causing concern. The picture shows a child skating on a frozen river in Beijing on January 28, 2024. (Pedro PARDO/AFP)

[The Epoch Times, February 13, 2024](Comprehensive report by Epoch Times reporter Zhang Ting) China’s baby shortage is occurring faster than many people expected, triggering concerns about population collapse. A mathematical model developed by missile scientist Song Jian more than 40 years ago is one of the reasons behind today’s population crisis. Song Jian applied the mathematical model used to calculate rocket trajectories to the calculation of population growth, and the CCP implemented the one-child policy based on this model. This misjudgment not only caused today’s poor population situation, but also made the CCP unable to deal with the population problem.

The Wall Street Journal published a long report on February 12, saying that today, forty years later, China’s aging problem is much earlier than that of other major economies in the world. In a generation that grew up without siblings, young women are increasingly reluctant to have children, and the number of babies being born is decreasing every year. The Chinese government is at a loss as to how to change the mentality brought about by the one-child policy.

Missile scientists create mathematical model for one-child policy

Song Jian is a disciple of Qian Xuesen. He once led and presided over the development of the CCP’s anti-ballistic missile weapon system and is one of the CCP’s well-known scientists who research satellites and rockets. Public information shows that Song Jian also serves as vice chairman of the Three Gorges Dam Construction Project Committee.

But surprisingly, it was missile scientist Song Jian who prompted the CCP to launch the one-child policy.

According to Huari, Song Jian submitted a report on applying mathematical models to birth rates to CCP officials in 1979. Previously, he and a team calculated how different fertility rates would affect China’s population. Song Jian pointed out in the report that based on a fertility rate of three children per woman, China’s population will reach 4.26 billion by 2080.

With his computer-aided mathematical models and political connections, Song attracted the attention of top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. Susan Greenhalgh, an anthropologist at Harvard University, has written a book about the one-child policy. She said Song Jian believed that rapid population growth would hinder China from becoming a modern country.

“He (Song Jian) ​​used dire narratives of a coming demographic-economic-ecological crisis to persuade people (to reduce the population),” Greenhalgh said.

On September 25, 1980, the CCP asked party members to limit family size to only one child. The one-child policy, the most radical social experiment in the world, was launched and has been maintained for 35 years.

The one-child policy promoted by Song Jian was based on applying the mathematical models used to calculate rocket trajectories to calculations of population growth.

A report by Xinhua News Agency, the CCP’s mouthpiece, praised Song Jian for “establishing ‘population control theory,’ a new discipline that combines natural science and social science.”

The one-child policy subsequently changed the lives of Chinese people, and an imbalance in the ratio of men to women appeared in China. Social problems such as singles villages, wife buying, abandoned baby trading, and little emperors are emerging one after another, and many people are deeper into pain.

The picture shows a child on the streets of Beijing on January 17, 2024. (PEDRO PARDO/AFP via Getty Images)

Defects of Song Jian’s model

A growing number of demographers and economists say the one-child policy is outdated and flawed. They say China’s fertility rate will decline on its own as life expectancy increases and economic conditions improve.

“Hua Ri” said that one factor not considered in Song Jian’s population mathematics is human behavior. China’s government has resorted to sometimes brutal measures, including forced abortions and sterilizations, and has for decades promoted the benefits of small families, leaving a lasting legacy of the one-child mentality. But if a couple can only have one child, they prefer a boy.

The researchers say that in addition to cultural and social changes, Song’s model does not take into account economic forces, such as Deng Xiaoping’s reforms that triggered massive migration to cities, which played a larger role in lowering fertility than imagined.

Song Jian estimates that China’s population will not begin to decrease until 2035, but official data shows that China’s population will begin to decline in 2022. Therefore, his forecast is more than 10 years off from reality.

Facing the population crisis, the Chinese Communist Party has begun to implement the three-child policy since 2021. The former Family Planning Association has become the Family Planning Association, but it has not been successful.

This is because the current situation in China discourages many young people from getting married and starting a family. Marriage registrations have been declining for years. Even for many married people, raising children is still not in their plans because they cannot afford to raise children.

The Chinese Communist Party has introduced a three-child policy, but it faces challenges. (PSTR/AFP via Getty Images)

According to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Ms. Wu, who lives in Guangdong, made an calculation: raising a child requires about 16,000 yuan per month.

“I can’t afford it,” said Ms. Wu, who is in her 30s. After ten years of marriage, she decided not to have children.

In China, parents start preparing for the fierce competition they will face as soon as their children are born. From buying houses in school districts to sending their children to various cram schools, parents are scrambling to practice the concept of “not letting their children lose at the starting line.” This high-pressure competition is also affecting the thinking of modern young people on whether to have children. Many people do not want to see the next generation suffer this kind of pain again.

“I don’t want to bring a life into such a society,” said 22-year-old college student Mia.

Another obstacle to childbearing is the high unemployment rate among young people. A report in Huari in June 2023 said that a young man who was laid off by a private technology company in Beijing in 2022 said that he had submitted more than 200 resumes and participated in 8 job interviews, but he had never been accepted. Get a job. He thought things would be better in 2023, but it feels worse. He said he had no plans to marry his girlfriend until he found a job.

In view of the current situation of Chinese society, experts believe that the CCP’s three-child policy will not have any impact on increasing the fertility rate.

Reuters previously quoted Li Yifei, a sociologist at New York University in Shanghai, as saying that the three-child policy “fails to recognize the real cause of declining fertility… It is not that the two-child policy restricts people from having more children, but the difficulty of raising children in China today.” The high cost of housing, extracurricular activities, food, travel, all kinds of expenses add up. An effective policy is to provide more social support and benefits; relaxing the (birth) limit itself is unlikely to have a positive effect.”

The 2023 population data released by the Statistics Bureau of the Communist Party of China in January this year showed that China has experienced negative population growth for two consecutive years. The number of births in 2023 will be 540,000 fewer than in 2022. In 2023, the number of deaths will exceed the number of births by 2.08 million.

Party officials say the number of women of childbearing age is declining rapidly (3 million fewer than a year ago) and acknowledge changing attitudes toward childbirth and delayed marriage.

Researchers from Australia’s Victoria University and the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences predict that by the end of this century, China’s population will be only 525 million. ◇

Editor in charge: Lin Yan#

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2024-02-13 02:24:15