Crashing population creates chaos
Re: “Too many people in the world”, (Citizen, Nov. 22)
The “one-child policy” of China was not Mao’s idea. Mao actually encouraged families to have more children, in the belief that population growth empowered the country; the policy was implemented a few years after his death. Oh, it had some effect, all right. The long-term effects of the one-child policy were so disastrous that the communist Chinese government reversed course and allowed two children as of 2016, and no restrictions at all as of this past summer. The reason? They have “too many men, too many old people, and too few young people.” Of course, the traditional preference for boys made it far, far worse than anybody ever imagined. They won’t even have enough younger people to staff the nursing homes that the older people will eventually find themselves in. Crashing the population creates societal chaos.
I think the letter-writer had better think long and hard about what it is they are really asking for. Canada doesn’t need such a policy. It’s had below replacement birth levels for many years. Our population increases through immigration, which is just a population shell game. The primary population growth has been in developing countries whose populations by and large aren’t white, and some of those, like India, still have a culture of boy-over-girl preference. When living standards rise, birthrates generally tend to fall naturally. To suggest forcibly dictating to oppressed peoples how many kids they can have, is severely problematic.
April J. Gibson
Duncan