China’s one-child policy will cause demographic 'disaster,' expert foresees

Sep 30, 2010 / 07:11 am

The Chinese government’s announcement that its “one-child policy” will remain in place will lead the country into a “demographic disaster,” one expert observer has said. He suggested that a coercive euthanasia program could be added to the country’s coercive abortion and birth control campaigns.

Li Ban, head of China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission, said the country “will stick to the family-planning policy in the coming decades," CNN reports.

In response, Joseph Meany, Director of International Coordination at Human Life International (HLI), said the Chinese government’s population control policy is “stubbornly persisting in leading their country into a demographic disaster.”

"It is simply incomprehensible that the Chinese National Population and Family Planning Commission can seriously mean to extend this destructive policy for an unspecified number of decades into the future," said Meaney in a Tuesday press release.

"China's population is currently projected to start shrinking in absolute numbers by 2026, but the coerced low fertility of Chinese women means that the Peoples' Republic of China is one of the fastest ageing societies in the world."

Noting that there are often four grandparents for each child as a result of the policy, Meaney asked how the Chinese government plans to pay the pensions of hundreds of millions of elderly.

"One shudders to think what draconian measures will be implemented by the Chinese government once it becomes fully apparent that they cannot financially support the millions of disabled and elderly persons who are no longer seen as contributing to society. Coercive euthanasia cannot be far behind their renewed commitment to coercive abortion and birth control."