One-child policy – Welcome liberalization does not come without risk (2)

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On the one hand, it is clear that the one-child policy has played a key balancing role for China. On the other hand, any reduction in the extent to which the state is forced to intervene in the personal lives of its citizens is something to be welcomed. So the easing of the one-child policy should be welcomed as a positive move. But there is another aspect to this liberalization that will require careful thought and careful handling.

The easing of the one-child policy is likely to have a significant impact on another feature of modern China – the ‘demographic time bomb’. Received wisdom has it that in around two decades, as a result of the one-child policy, the working population in China will no longer be big enough to support the growing number of elderly. The same argument has been applied in western countries like the UK, where we have been told for some time that we require massive immigration to generate the economic activity required to support our own elderly population. Ending the one-child policy could therefore be a means by which China addresses and resolves this issue.

But there is an obvious flaw in this logic – it is unsustainable. If massive immigration is required in the UK now to support the current generation of elderly, then presumably even more massive immigration is going to be required in the future to support the current generation of immigrants, as they age and leave the working population. And so on ad infinitum. Only the capacity for the UK to support, feed, and house a growing population in finite space and with finite resources will be reached and surpassed long before we arrive at infinitum.

If China, with one quarter of the world’s population, adopts the same policy of deliberately devouring itself, then the issues will be even more acute, and they will arise even quicker.

The problem seems intractable, but it must be addressed. One possible approach would be to respond to the received wisdom with a simple question – Why? Why, in twenty years time, with technology and productivity expanding exponentially, should it be impossible for the fruits of the economic activity of one person to support a greater number of non-active dependents?

The logical answer to this question is ‘Why indeed?’ And here lies the nub of the problem. Because in order for that to happen, there has to be some level of equitable distribution of the fruits of economic growth. And to that effect, the West offers the worst possible example for China to follow.

Since the Second World War, there has been massive growth in economic activity, in productivity, and in technology in western countries. And yet, in the UK for example, while the average family is rather better off than it was, those who have a job are still working the same hours as their grandparents, while there is a huge population of unemployed or under-employed people who exist on the economic margins.

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