Dean's World

The U.S. currently provides funds to provide abortions overseas in places like China. Since China's draconian "one child" policy has often resulted in infanticide, mandatory abortions, mandatory sterilizations, and so on, you have to ask why we should be providing any funding for such heinous human rights abuses.

This also illustrates the foolishness of Malthusian thinking. Let's do a little population math here, shall we, and compare it to a nation of similar size?

1) China covers 3,696,100 square miles, with a population of 1,306,313,812 (SOURCE).

Divide the population by the number of square miles and you get: 353 people per square mile.

2) India covers 2,042,813 square miles, with a population of 1,080,264,388 (SOURCE).

Divide the population by the number of square miles and you get: 529 people per square mile.

India has never forced people to stop having kids. Yet their birth rate has been declining. Why? Because they've been growing wealthier and more free over time (SOURCE). They are clearly more crowded than China, and yet their economy and standards of living have been growing for decades.

Yet another nail in the coffin of the mass delusion that having more people on the planet causes poverty and hunger. Nope, in free societies it tends to translate to greater wealth and prosperity. At the rate they're going, India will within another generation or so rival the U.S. for standards of living, and may well be one of the world's superpowers. Since they're a liberal democracy I think that would be splendid.

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Kevin D (mail) (www):

I'd kinda like the U.S. remain the sole superpower, thank you. No slight to India of course. I think the world is better for it.

11.7.2005 7:11am

Eric R. Ashley (mail) (www):

Worse, they are massively aborting girls. So what do you do twenty years later with a massive excess of boys? Send them out to conquer the neighbors, of course.

I think we'll see from China the following 1)More jet-setting ruthless shark capitalists--aka young, talented Chinese men 2)Army marching to go find territory and umm, a woman. 3)More homosexuality 4)More social disorder since young men without women are a prime source of such 5)More emigration. 6)More immigration of Southeast Asian females to China.

It will be all of these. And since the culture has been denuded by Communist Atheism, the young guy has few breaks on his "Why don't I take what I want?" impulse.

11.7.2005 8:33am

Dave (mail):

Almost certainly, Eric.

11.7.2005 8:46am

John_B (mail) (www):

While India has never had a "one child" policy, it most certainly had policies--enforced often through violence--to encourage sterilization, voluntary or not. These notoriously took place during the administrations of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi.

There were attempts to "buy" people's willingness to be surgically sterilized by offering transistor radios, or sometimes cash, but the sterilization teams were working to quota. The frequently just grabbed people off the streets, drugged them, then snipped or sliced.

Of course that was a repugnant policy and it eventually failed. But over 1 million people were sterilized. Since India is "scheduled" to overtake China as the world's most populous nation by around 2020, the scheme didn't have much long-term effect. But those on the receiving end of government policy might have a slightly different view.

11.7.2005 10:32am

Tyrone Steels II (mail) (www):

With the world economy, it is only a matter of time before another superpower arises. That's a fact. And India wouldn't be a bad one. But I also feel that China will get there also. Interesting times ahead for sure.

11.7.2005 10:34am

zach.:

dean,

i agree with the broader point you're making, but i think it's misleading to divide population by land mass. most of china is not particularly suited to urban, or even suburban, life. wouldn't it be more sensible to divide it by like..arable land, or some other more informative measure than simply how much land it covers?

11.7.2005 12:58pm

Steven Malcolm Anderson (www):

I have yet to hear the advocates of "choice" protest against this flagrant denial of choice to women. If a woman has the right to choose to get an abortion, then surely she has the right to choose not to get an abortion, the right to choose to see her baby alive.

But then Communism is not about choice or respect for human life. I say the U.S. made a big mistake in recognizing Communist China in the first place.

11.7.2005 1:26pm

Robert Speirs (mail) (www):

Isn't female infanticide de rigueur in India when the family has no male children, and hasn't this been true for, oh, five thousand years?

11.7.2005 1:31pm

Dean Esmay:

Zach: not really, because humans have proven that they can and will live in virtually any environment, from the hottest and most hostile of deserts to the coldest and most frigid frozen tundras, from flat prairie plains to rocky mountains.

Besides, how much land do you want? If you restricted that to only a quarter of their land mass, they would still have barely 1,500 people per square mile, which is about the population density of a rural farming community these days.

Robert: I'm not aware that the practice has ever been that greatly widespread, although I'm sure it happens.

11.7.2005 6:08pm

Robert B.:

I've never heard of that kind of infanticide either, but what John_B talked about, i.e. forced sterilization, is described in the novel "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry. I'm not sure how widespread it was. However, the point is that government was not prima facie coercive, it was nominally a voluntary incentive scheme, that was ostensibly subverted by what were effectively mafiosi.

11.8.2005 11:49am