It’s great, but I had kind of assumed it was already in place.
China has a far weaker social safety net than a lot of people assume.
Average Lemmy White Gwailou has a warped worldview on China
Except me
Especially considering the pedestal it lives on on Lemmy.
I asumed little, but childbirth I thought would.
Anything to help people that want to have children is good.
that want to have children
As long as people who don’t want to have children aren’t pressured. Not everyone is interested in parenting, and that needs to be accepted.
China isn’t good about things like that. They have billions of people, they aren’t going to worry about the feelings of those not contributing to the machine.
How have you taken a good thing for people and turned it into a bad thing for you.
Can’t you just be happy for others without making it about yourself?
China is not doing this out of kindness or altruism in any respects. They don’t care about people wanting to have kids. They’re doing it because they need more poor people to keep working and replenishing the poor workers, to prop up the elite class. Why can’t you see this?
Not isolated to China. Most western countries including the US have the same goals, it’s not altruistic.
Sure but that’s a totally different discussion than the other commentor making it about themselves
Yes, there is real concern that measures to prop up birth rates might become coercive. That people may feel pressured to reproduce whether they want to or not.
I don’t live in China, so this isn’t about me.
Did you hurt yourself making that stretch?
Exactly it’s not about you.
So why are you commenting that some people DONT WANT KIDS and this shouldnt be forced on us.
You are making it about yourself.
The only person trying to make it about me is…you.
Quit trying to make it happen, and stop with the fucking gaslighing.
The original comment was
“Anything that helps people that want to have children is good”
Your response was
“As long as people who don’t want to have children aren’t pressured. Not everyone is interested in parenting, and that needs to be accepted.”
At no point was anyone’s talking about forcing people to have kids. You’ve built a strawman and are arguing about something that nobody is talking about.
You. You have made it about yourself and are now trying to pretend you didn’t.
Swing. And a miss
Given how overpopulated the planet is, I’m not a fan
Childbirth costs isn’t what’s preventing people from having babies though
You’re right, falling birth rates are affecting people in rich and poor countries alike.
I think the answer is more complicated and has a lot to do with our collective psychology as a species, what we’re consuming and what we’re feeling about our futures.
That said, money and cost do play a huge role in this. People have complicated feelings on having families right now, and the barrier of cost is a great idea for the brain to seize onto as a validation for avoiding continuation of the species.
In China even high schools are paid, the answer is not complicated in this case. It’s just crazy expensive to have children in China with the local salaries
They subsidize a lot more than childbirth
I agree with this in the basis of the thought. But depending on the social security in various countries there are groups that abuse this help. So I’m hoping that loopholes are plugged at the same time.
That kind of thinking is what stops the US from implementing any kind of decent social programs. If your first concern is ppl taking advantage of it you’re not really concerned with helping ppl
I’m not from the US… Not by far. Where I’m from many people abuse the system by having an exorbitant amount of children (10+), get free kindergarten care, extra money, don’t work, don’t contribute to society, steal, cause issues, etc.
Are you familiar with the term “anecdote”?
This policy that would help hundreds of millions of people could potentially be abused by thousands!
Those who advocate means testing deserve nothing at all
How could you abuse this? If I have a child and get my medical costs covered, I don’t get any additional benefits if I ditch the child.
That seems somewhat unfair towards people with other interests who aren’t being subsidized.
Sadly, when it comes down to it, children are necessary for society to function long-term. They are the people who will be financing and effecting your retirement, at least in a well-functioning society. I think it is a sound policy to make sure people can have children without any unnecessary suffering, there’s plenty of necessary suffering in there already.
Sadly, when it comes down to it, children are necessary for society to function long-term.
It shouldn’t be sad, this is basic reality. We should love kids and want kids and pressure our own countries to make it easier to have families.
I am really getting worried that the left broadly is turning soft anti-natalist and there is no faster way to end your movement than by not having more people. I feel like “birth rates” and “fertility” are terms that we feel have been co-opted by the right because figures like Elon Musk and the manosphere bros.
How many humans should we aim to have, long term? 20 billion? 50 billion? We’re already on track to reach 10 billion in the next 25 years.
I believe that as a society, we should have a long-term plan and a goal for our species’s population count, because simply offering incentives for continued growth in order to continue funding generational gaps in our pyramid scheme of social welfare is untenable. Ultimately we will reach the logistical capacity of a functional welfare state, to say nothing of all the other problems.
How many humans should we aim to have, long term? 20 billion? 50 billion?
That’s not what this issue is about, this isn’t “pro-growth” this is about averting economic and logistical collapse across much of the developed world.
Sure, we could do with a reduced population, but it needs to be reduced slowly enough that we don’t see mass casualties and so that our infrastructure, production and logistics aren’t suddenly unmanned, or many, many people will suffer.
We have to understand that the argument for continued population upkeep is about stability not some desire to perpetually increase population. There’s not a sharp, two-sided binary here, the problem is that many, many people in the developed world are having either no kids or not enough to keep up with expected decline and longer lifespans. When we run out of young people to run our cities, our roads, our offices and our shipyards and rail systems, we end up with collapse.
Look into South Korea for a vision of the worst case and think about what will happen broadly when the same syndrome hits other major world powers and logistical hubs.
I think you’re missing the forest for the trees. Continuing to fixate on short-term problems like bridging a generational gap—which incidentally we’ve survived many times in anthropological history—by continuing policies with long-term ramifications is not a good plan.
At some point we need to come to terms with the fact that continuous population growth is not tenable. Whether the population cap is 10 billion or 100 billion, the fact of the matter is that we will eventually hit it. We can’t keep procrastinating because we’re unwilling to resolve the challenges you’ve mentioned in a more effective manner.
Call me an optimist, but if we’re unable to change our habits as a species, perhaps a well-needed revolution will kick us into action.
We probably won’t ever hit 11 billion contiguous humans. At least not without colonizing Venus. The birthrates worldwide are dropping quickly, and every time another country passes through the Industrial Age, into the Modern Age, their birthrates fall off a cliff. I suspect we will eventually stabilize around 9 billion people, which is a few billion lower than the maximum projected sustainable population of The Earth.
China is thinking long-term and practical. If they lose their young work-force it won’t matter what those “other people” are doing or not.
Someone in China told me once that one of the biggest differences between China and Europe/USA is that in the west we think in terms of years or decades. In China they are making plans for the next several centuries.
This isn’t a glowing endorsement of the heinous shit China has done, but it should at least make you understand that this isn’t a social welfare program designed to help families as much as the first of many measures to fight the forces that are eroding the power and production capability of other countries. If you want to see how bad it can get, look into what the future holds for South Korea.
years or decades.
Let’s face it, in neoliberal democracies we barely think past the next quarter. Next election cycle at the most!
I would love a government with a long term outlook rather than one that is concerned only with getting re-elected or failing that getting a cushy job with one of their “donors” after they leave office
It’s like if 200 million of China workforce were gig workers or something.
Desperation?
People don’t want to have kids. I wonder why. Remember the laying flat movement and the 996 culture.
I wonder why.
If only there was an actual solution to this LOLOL…
If I lived under an authoritarian regime, I would not want to bring a child into it.
Imperialist shill.
lived under an authoritarian regime
I mean… isn’t that just most of history tbh?
Most people aren’t antinatalists lol
I agree, but how is that relevant to China? It pretty consistently has the highest government satisfaction rates in the world.
Edit: and before you accuse me of Chinese propaganda, that’s data from western organizations like Pew Research or Ash Institute
Because they jail/disappear anyone who complains? Lol.
Edit: Without entrenched freedom of speech, surveys mean nothing but what respondants think their opressors want to hear.
Dumb take. The data portraying that comes from western institutions like Pew Research or the Ash Institute
You seem to struggle with the simple concept. So badly in fact, that I suspect this is all disingenuous bullshit from a bad faith ideologue.
In the slight chance this is just a high level of ignorance, naievety or low IQ, here is my polite response.
Oppressed people won’t tell anyone anything that can be used against them, western or not. Pew Research isn’t going to protect them. The Ash institute won’t un-disapear anyone. The people speaking to western, even academic sources still have to live under oppression when the survey is done.
Speaking to foreign journalist is a great way to get your family threatened.
https://rsf.org/en/chinese-regime-s-fierce-repression-journalists-hidden-behind-day-celebration
Edit: Never mind. For bad faith arguments I hereby award you a personal block.
Quoting RSF, the western politicized organization that refused to comment on the illegal arbitrary detention of a Spanish journalist in Poland. The organization classifying England’s “Press Freedom Index” as satisfactory while all sorts of reporters bring up the massive repression against anti-zionism in all media. Surely that Montpellier-based organization with branches exclusively in western countries could not be used as a political tool!
You have literally never spoken to a Chinese person living in China, and it shows.
Oppressed people won’t tell anyone anything that can be used against them, western or not
Look. I understand you’ve been exposed to decades of anti-China propaganda, but this is fucking wild. In my university department I’ve been fortunate enough to direct the master’s and bachelor’s theses of some 10 Chinese students. I’ve discussed politics with most of them, between 2020 and 2024 for a frame of reference. We’re talking highly trained young men and women from a variety of backgrounds and provinces. None of them has had any problem talking to me about politics, other than “I’m not really interested” for some of them. Out of those students, only one chose to pursue a career in Germany (highly developed, rich country in Europe), the rest moved back to “authoritarian, evil, oppressive” China.
The one who chose to stay in Germany told me that he came to Europe considering himself an opposition supporter against the government of China, but that when he saw the politics in Europe, he started to be a lot more charitative towards the Chinese government and he’s not so clear about his position anymore. Another student told me she couldn’t understand how the German government did nothing while hundreds of thousands of citizens were needlessly dying of COVID because it didn’t want to infringe too much on “the economy”.
Tell me now: how many actually Chinese people living in China have you spoken with?
I live in a democracy and don’t want to bring children into this.
The truth is that the strength of a democracy has little relation to the birth rate. If you live in the US, for example, you only live in a democracy if your income is in the top 10%. This has actually been studied. The opinions of the poorest 90% of the population have absolutely zero bearing on what government policy is implemented.
The US and China actually have similar levels of democracy. China forms all its policies from the CCP, an organization of about 100 million people. The share of the population in China that has any impact on policy is actually quite similar to the share that does the same in the US.
It’s true. The very poor people I’ve known in the US have believed that “the system is rigged” and they have little freedom and no voice. They believe they are exploited by powers far beyond their ability to challenge and the last way any of it would ever change is through voting, which they see as an empty, farcical gesture.
While you are correct, taking a piss poor example of democracy against another piss poor example of democracy doesn’t really explain anything. I said authoritarian regime, I stand by that.
What democracy currently have population replacement birth levels?
All the ones in Europe (if you count them as democratic obviously)
I think you’re imagining that statistics, because they do not. But hey, let’s check. Name three European countries that have population replacement birth levels.
I never said democracy equals replacement level birthrate.
No, but your comment implies it would be higher, even if that wasn’t your intention.
Do you want to discuss things with the public, or do you want to debate the voices in your head and the things they told you.
Ehh, the character of the regime doesn’t seem to affect birth rates a whole lot. Brutal dictatorships that make China seem like a gentle puppy could have perfectly ok birth rates. E.g. Nazi Germany had 2.5 fertility rate in 1939 and 1940, it was their highest since 1922: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany
I really don’t think the average Chinese cares too much about how authoritarian their govt is when it comes to deciding on whether to have kids. The consequences of one-child policy, economic prospects, stability, general cultural optimism/pessimism, social habits (and the effects of technology on them), etc. are all likely to be much more important factors.
The consequences of one-child policy, economic prospects, stability, general cultural optimism/pessimism, social habits (and the effects of technology on them), etc. are all likely to be much more important factors.
Those are all directly and heavily influenced by an authoritarian regime, so in the exhale you disagree with me, while on the inhale you argue my point. ;)
Those are all directly and heavily influenced by all regimes in general, aside from the one-child policy which might be regarded as an authoritiarian policy. Shit economy making people not want kids works the same both in democracies and in authoritarian countries (in fact, the latter might even dampen the negative psychological effects upon the population through propaganda).
[The shitpost formerly here is a good reminder to not Lemmy when too drunk. Know your limits]
It must be fun when you just make up what the other person said and call them names over that. You homophobe.
[The shitpost formerly here is a good reminder to not Lemmy when too drunk. Know your limits]
Children in China have better lives than those in the US.
And you’re mad about it.
personable as always, .ml
As someone currently in China, I’d rather have a kid here than in the US.
There’s a lot more random shit explicitly for children around, like malls will have basketball courts, arcades, playgrounds, and other things that definitely doesn’t generate as much, if any revenue, so kids aren’t just expected to silently follow their parents around or be on the phone for hours at a time. As a consequence, you see fewer outbursts of children in public. They still have a long way to go regarding mental health in other ways. A mother I talked to was confused that anyone could think it’s possible to teach children to listen without hitting them.
As far as education goes, I see more small, private schools than the US, which worries me as it implies the public schools in the area aren’t as good. It’s notoriously stressful for the children, but then so is living with a real danger of getting shot at school.
thanks for your actually sensible and cogent input.
it’s hard for me to understand how private schools can exist in China. i have a difficult time understanding how they balance / navigate between socialism and capitalism.
i would never raise my children in the US. the US has too many problems. we’re quite happy in the EU. as you say, lots of children and family friendly public spaces around, and even as a part of private places they set aside spots for kids without cost.
HCOL, many graduates are having impossible time of finding jobs, plus china trying to lure graduates/phd from the states has incensed them as well.
Good thing they made actual unions illegal in the Workers’ Paradise ™️.
Whenever I see that, I love to remind people, than Tienanmen Protesta were (partly) against China pivot from communism to capitalism - this article summarizes it nicely: https://jacobin.com/2019/06/tiananmen-square-worker-organization-socialist-democracy
From Bars, Pride and dating apps: How China is closing down its LGBT+ spaces
At the same time, China’s population growth and economy are slowing. “The current population growth couldn’t support economic growth,” explains Hongwei, meaning there has been a push to encourage heterosexual couples to have larger families to ensure an abundant future workforce.
China: be less homo and breed more
The ban on Grindr could be put down to China’s wider dislike of Western apps, which are often accused of being vehicles for foreign influence. But removing Blued and Finka, which were both developed in China, represents a “seismic change in government attitudes towards homegrown LGBT apps”, says Hongwei.
Before targeting Blued and Finka, the Chinese authorities led a campaign against authors of the “Boy’s Love”, or Danmei, same-sex romance stories, some of which feature explicit love scenes between men.
Several Danmei writers, most of whom are female, have reported being arrested and questioned by the authorities, and in recent months two major Danmei sites have either shut down, or drastically reduced and toned down their content.
Today, “officially, those Three No’s are still in place, but we are seeing evidence that the space for LGBT+ communities is starting to shrink”, says Marc Lanteigne, associate professor of political science at the Arctic University of Norway.
Shanghai Pride shut down in 2020, and one year later the government shut down student LGBT+ accounts for “violating internet regulations”. Grindr disappeared in 2022, and in 2023 the Beijing LGBT Centre closed its doors after 15 years.
In June 2024, the Roxie, Shanghai’s last officially lesbian bar, was forced to close “under pressure from the authorities".
“The authorities have been slowly chipping away at those spaces that were open previously,” says Hildebrandt.
With the closure of so many physical spaces, online networks had become “really the only places in which many members of the LGBT+ community could express their sexuality openly” he adds.
But in contemporary Chinese politics, “the Maoist principles about equality have more to do with uniformity,” says Hildebrandt. “You gain equality by being more like everybody else. You don’t gain equality by being diverse.”
In a bid to create greater conformity within the population, “there has been a push in China to reinforce traditional family values and, in some cases, traditional masculine values,” adds Lanteigne.
Since the Covid pandemic, “the Chinese government has endorsed nationalist discourse and LGBT culture is seen as very politicised siding with Western ideologies”, says Hongwei.
“There’s the impression that LGBTQ communities are by default connected to the West and could be seen as destabilising forces,” adds Lanteigne.
Broader political and social forces may be at work, but the result is a real loss of liberty for gay and queer people in China. Hildebrandt says: “There is a real sense that it’s become a more difficult environment to be openly gay."
If we close gay bars, gay people will be straight right?
The notion of homosexuality as a sexual orientation didn’t exist until recently.
People had gay relationships and did gay sex but they’d also tend to get married and pump out a kid or two. I’m assuming while being gay on the side.
Maybe the answer is less about punishing homosexuality than it is about applying extreme social pressure on monogamy?
IMO monogamy does more damage to society than all the gay in the known universe ever possibly could. The fact that homosexuality doesn’t do any damage at all, really, is a factor as well.
Good. Can’t wait to beat this drum to hopefully shame the less than useless US congress to do ANYTHING.
I mean, shaming America’s greatness against other countries has worked in the past. That’s how we got:
- Universal healthcare
- Mandated paid maternity/parental leave
- More than two dominant political parties
- Cheaper or free college education
- High-speed passenger rail
- Mandated annual paid vacation time
Oh wait.
The Congress of today likely won’t. But the people who takes their vacated seats? Possibly.
Judging by the two-party system and the past Democrat governments, I don’t think there’s a significant possibility of getting more than one those in the next decade. At least four of them run directly in contradiction to the groups with enough money to systematically sponsor and corrupt politicians (no matter which party), own mass media and control other relevant institutions.
These kind of things only happen when people have the power to pressure the government into supplying them.
does this apply if one of the parents was not chinese?
Probably not. Probably need a certain social credit score and last name
In the US, we just call our social credit scores credit scores.
A good credit score won’t qualify you for a free birth in the USA. But a bad one might!
… in a blue state.
Social credit scores only apply to companies 😭
BUT.
AT.
WHAT.
COST!
Yeah! Why would China spend that money on their people when they could spend it on their military and use their military to harass brown countries?
I mean, China does also spend on their military and harass brown countries.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1786968298636423210
Every time China visits we get a hospital, every time Britain visits we get a lecture
Whataboutism.
China is #2 in military spending after the USA.
As for harassing brown people: well there’s the whole Uyghur thing. And the simmering fight with other countries over islands in the South China sea.
Two things can be bad. These are not sports teams where one side wins and the other loses.
Two things can be bad. These are not sports teams where one side wins and the other loses.
Yes. I completely agree. However, it’s important to dispel false equivalence. Every country spends money on military, that doesn’t imply they’re all bad or neglecting their citizens.
Why is the US spending so much on military? Why is China spending so much on military? Why does the US routinely invade countries in other regions? Why does China suppress Uyghur people in the Xinjiang conflict? Like you said, two things can be bad, but it’s also negligent to imply the two situations are comparable.
China is #2 in military spending after the USA.
I don’t believe they have another option, given the USA’s military and aggression.
It’s telling how limited their spending is - consider China’s disproportionate economy, size and population, and their borders. According to Wikipedia, they only spend 1.7% of their GDP on military - that’s alongside the Netherlands, Czechia, Italy and Spain.
Yeah that’s the thing. USA and China are both bad, sometimes due to the same thing (imperialism, capitalism, cronies running things etc), sometimes for unique things. Saying one country is good doesn’t make the other bad in the same domain. And vice versa.
However it is extremely important and necessary to compare things. Like you have compared military spending between different countries. The USA’s manifest destiny CAN be compared to the Han supremacy in China especially in Tibet and Xinjiang. But of course there are marked differences.
China is #2 in military spending after the USA.
China plus the next 13 countries on the list can’t total US military spending. And I don’t even know if Israel + Ukraine should count, given how much of their military budget is just US foreign aid.
As for harassing brown people: well there’s the whole Uyghur thing.
The original “evidence” of 1 million Uyghurs in concentration camps stems from US propaganda outlets and far-right “researchers” like Adrian Zenz. These numbers could not be independently verified, and other media sources that repeat these claims merely cite each other or this original, US-backed research. Zenz himself is a known antisemitic conspiracy theorist, far-right evangelical, and Islamophobe who has written that the Jews who refuse to convert to Christianity will be wiped out by God in a “fiery furnace”. Why would a German with such hateful views toward Jews and Muslims be such a champion of Uyghur rights? It was later found that Zenz had received $625,000 from Donald Trump’s Chief Strategist Steve Bannon to help him fabricate the story of Uyghur genocide.
Brother, you are sucking from the tailpipe of propaganda while your country is drowning in the blood of native peoples.
Nice genocide denial.
Also I’m not American nor pro-American.
genocide denial
Brother, get your ass to Afghanistan and say that to any of the survivors of the US occupation.
You don’t care what genocide is. You just want some foreigner to eat your sins.
Also I’m not American
Did you clap for Yaroslav Hunka with the rest of your ilk?
If they’re are covered, why or how are they out of pocket?
I think once they are covered, they will no longer be uncovered. I.e. no longer be out of pocket.
Still you have to pay to raise them, which I’m guessing is the main factor for people not to want children. Which I suppose is what the government is trying to encourage here.
The solution is to pay workers enough so that the government doesn’t need to shift the burden of paying for children to those who don’t even have any.
As always, the money needs to come from the people at the top. As always, privatize the gains and socialize the losses.
The solution is to pay workers enough so that the government doesn’t need to shift the burden of paying for children to those who don’t even have any.
I know you’re banned, and this comment tells me a lot about why that probably happened without me having to dig through the mod history.
This is some pro-capitalism slop even if you think it’s so far left it has tank treads. This is a surefire tactic to put a nation’s healthcare in the same situation the US is in now. Without a total reform of the entire economic foundation of a country, you are simply NOT fucking getting a government who will tax their wealthy to keep up with whatever the healthcare system is charging for their procedures.
This is why healthcare is more complicated than lopping off the heads of the elites and spreading that money. We have to make systems that ensure no single person or institution is left on the hook for figuring out what to charge or pay.
edit: the comment gets worse the more I reread it.
doesn’t need to shift the burden of paying for children to those who don’t even have any
This is the very fundamental principle of having healthcare, whether it’s private or public, it’s very expensive and resource-intensive to keep people broadly alive and healthy, you absolutely cannot start deciding who gets this funding and who doesn’t deserve it if you want a fair system, and it feels like everyone (people like you) really get bent out of shape about this right up until YOU are the special case who needs society to pool our resources to help you with your stupid problem. Then suddenly the “social contract” that made you so mad previously seems like a pretty good idea. FFS I am so fed up with narrow-minded children weighing in on shit they have no understanding of.
That doesn’t make any sense.
Paying workers more is fine, but you’re saying that the costs for reproduction should come from parents, and then you’re saying they should come from the rich. People without children should contribute to childcare costs, and they are incentivized to do so, too, because children are important to pretty much everything. By having the government fund childcare, the rich do contribute more.
Whatever you said is inconsistent.
Everyone has been born so everyone should have had a free birth. I do agree that workers need better pay but certain expenses should be handled by the government only. It’s not gonna properly optimize itself by supply and demand when we as a society benefit in more children.
They don’t have universal healthcare?
Also DYK China now has a 3 child policy. Maximum, that is.
The only thing that’s free in the people’s hospital is walking in the door.
But it is all very cheap, I got an xray, ultrasound, and consult for like 15 USD. Cuba seems to have a better model regarding healthcare.
Good to know. Sounds like token pricing to prevent abuse.
Its not quite that cheap, remember that wages here are much lower. OTC meds are often more expensive than in America, and TCM is sold alongside actual medicine
Even quadruple that it’s still token. More and it’s still cheap.
TCM?
Traditional Chinese Medicine. It comes in pillboxes that look exactly like actual medicine, but then you translate the ingredients and it has like bear bile and shit.
no… they canceled that, and now want you to pop out as many slaves as possible
no… they canceled that
This shit is so easy to check before you click “reply” I have no idea why we can’t be asked to spend several seconds on a basic google search before spilling whatever is on our mind. You can hate China for whatever reasons, but let’s not share factually incorrect information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-child_policy
edit: why am I not at all surprised your mod history is filled with hate towards Asian people.
They removed the fines, so it’s a decriminalization, which is practically just legalizing having as many kids as you want.
Why would they bother checking themselves when it’s easier to post misinformation and wait for someone to correct it?
I wish the USA did. Quiverfull is a bane.
