True Story: Once upon a time, back in the days while Hu Jintao was the President of China, one of the Shanghai tax bureaus conducted an audit of a foreign-owned company there. Targets are very popular in China; not only do companies set targets for their salespeople, government agencies also set them for their tax auditors. Frustratingly, the auditor could not identify any obvious misdeeds. So… he made one up. And set a fine of 100,000 RMB. The questionable nature of his justification was obvious, but in good Chinese tradition, the management of the targeted company decided not to rock the boat. They agreed to pay the fine. The “settlement” was then submitted to the head of the tax office to approve.
I am an American working and living in China for over ten years, and cannot agree more with this post. Thank you for giving an avenue for balanced reporting with context.
Population control was at the top of the "elite" agenda in the 1970s. Key words: Club of Rome, Limits to Growth. There were agreements with multiple countries to adopt policies to control population; China was merely one of many. This policy was always extremely unpopular in the party and directly contradicted Mao's directives to maximize population growth, but Deng Xiaoping decided it was worth the price to obtain investment from the West. An official acknowledgement of this is in my opinion unlikely anytime in the foreseeable future.
Thanks for sharing the link. I'm afraid the story about Mr. Song and his allegedly accidental beer is probably a rather flimsy fig leaf for the actual dirty deal which was struck. Matt Ridley is correct that this remains the official storyline, but the surrounding facts tell a different story. This deal was however hardly limited to China; similar deals were struck with other countries, as well, e.g. India. Check out for example Matthew Connolly's book Fatal Misconception - The Struggle to Control World Population.
This is interesting. This is the first I've heard of other countries engaged in any kind of population control. Is there anything you can cite specifically that points to this being a motivation for the One Child Policy in China? I'm just curious.
A lot of water has flowed down the Yangzi since those days, but somewhere out there in cyberspace there is documentation of bilateral agreements to this effect back in the late 1970s.
I am an American working and living in China for over ten years, and cannot agree more with this post. Thank you for giving an avenue for balanced reporting with context.
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What do you mean by the "one-child policy imposed on it by the West in 1979", i've never heard the West being involved in this.
Population control was at the top of the "elite" agenda in the 1970s. Key words: Club of Rome, Limits to Growth. There were agreements with multiple countries to adopt policies to control population; China was merely one of many. This policy was always extremely unpopular in the party and directly contradicted Mao's directives to maximize population growth, but Deng Xiaoping decided it was worth the price to obtain investment from the West. An official acknowledgement of this is in my opinion unlikely anytime in the foreseeable future.
Matt Ridley tells the story https://www.mattridley.co.uk/blog/chinas-one-child-policy-was-inspired-by-western-greens/
Thanks for sharing the link. I'm afraid the story about Mr. Song and his allegedly accidental beer is probably a rather flimsy fig leaf for the actual dirty deal which was struck. Matt Ridley is correct that this remains the official storyline, but the surrounding facts tell a different story. This deal was however hardly limited to China; similar deals were struck with other countries, as well, e.g. India. Check out for example Matthew Connolly's book Fatal Misconception - The Struggle to Control World Population.
This is interesting. This is the first I've heard of other countries engaged in any kind of population control. Is there anything you can cite specifically that points to this being a motivation for the One Child Policy in China? I'm just curious.
A lot of water has flowed down the Yangzi since those days, but somewhere out there in cyberspace there is documentation of bilateral agreements to this effect back in the late 1970s.
This is a great effort. Thank you for your posts, I'm looking forward to follow them.