Running head: CHINA’S ONE CHILD POLICY

China’s One Child Policy

Bo Chen and Blessing Nworji

University of North Texas

COMM 1010 Section 008

Ms. Denecia Spence

November 2, 2009
Running head: CHINA’S ONE CHILD POLICY
2

China’s One Child Policy

China and the One Child Policy

China's One Child Policy was originally established by former Chinese Premier Deng

Xiao Ping in 1979 to control the rapid growth and population overshoot of the nation. Known

natively as the Family Planning Policy, it was initially implemented as a "temporary measure" -

however it has shown to be so effective in controlling population that the policy continues to

today. Although the One Child Policy limits Chinese couples to one child per family, it is not a

blanket policy and has many built in measures and exemptions for certain circumstances. For

example, rural couples, ethnic minorities, and parents without any siblings themselves are

exempt from the policy restrictions; and China has also eliminated the one child policy for

parents affected by the unexpected death of a child. In addition, this policy does not actually

apply to many of the Special Administrative Regions of China, such as Macau, Hong Kong, and

the disputed region of Taiwan. In total, only about 40% of the Chinese Han Mandarin population

is currently subject to the latest iteration of the One Child Policy.

China’s “One Child Policy” directly affects many of the larger intercultural, social-

economic, macroeconomic, and hot-button geopolitical issues that we face in our global society

today. Because population is interrelated on many levels and with such multifaceted aspects of

social-economic, macroeconomic, and geopolitical dynamics in our globalized society, we aim to

also demonstrate why China’s implementation of this policy has far-fetching consequences that

reach beyond its sovereign borders.

Running head: CHINA’S ONE CHILD POLICY
3

The Population Problem of Exponential Growth

Many of the problems that China and the rest of the world are facing today can be

attributed directly to the level of overconsumption of resources and overpopulation of humans on

this planet. While these problems are local, national, and global, they are all tied together by the

arithmetic of unchecked growth. Unfortunately the math tells us that our planetary population

overshoot has made each and every fundamental problem that much worse by exacerbating,

complicating, and compounding all situations with more and more numbers of people.

Peak Oil and EROEI

Peak Oil is the point in time when the rate of global oil and petroleum extraction has

reached a global peak and maximum, after which the world enters the stage of terminal decline

in terms of global oil production.

Peak Oil is based not only on the empirically observed production rates of individual oil

wells, but also on the totality of combined production rate of a field of related oil wells in

aggregate. While the United States entered terminal decline in the 1970's the world as a whole

did not peak until late 2006.

Many petroleum, energy, and economic experts and advisors have predicted that our

civilization's high dependence on modern industrial production, transport, agricultural and food

systems, and high technology systems all require the abundant availability of cheap and energy

density sources of power in order to be sustained. After post peak oil the decline in total

available net energy may signal the beginning of the end of our complex chain of modern global

civilization as we know it to be.

Running head: CHINA’S ONE CHILD POLICY
4

There is also a matter of EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested). Many so-called

alternative sources of energy – even if they could be technologically achieved, and were

economically feasible, and were scaled and brought online in time – are not energy dense enough

to sustain the underlying foundations and fabric of modern civilization. As a result, the majority

of all alternative and renewable sources of energy actually rely on the existence of petroleum

power sources to be manufactured, installed, maintained, and decommissioned and all need

conventional sources of energy to bring them to fruit; they are essentially derivatives of

petroleum. Therefore, it is clear that modern civilization is structurally and fundamentally

dependent on petroleum and its derivatives (such as coal, natural gas, etc.) as a necessary

prerequisite to its very existence.

Eating Fossil Fuels

Ever since the early 1950’s there has not been a positive correlation between net energy

inflow and energy outflow in modernized agriculture. Due to many combined factors such as soil

segregation and the loss of top soil and arable land, we have reached a point of diminishing

returns in farming. The agricultural green revolution refers to the extensive use of fertilizers,

pesticides, and technological farm equipment (all based on petroleum products or its many

derivatives) to allow global food production to keep pace with worldwide population growth and

exponential demand in rising standards of living. Thus like China's population control

mechanism, this Green Revolution also has had significant social, ecological, and

macroeconomic impacts. Quite literally, we are eating fossil fuels, and when petroleum runs out

we will face worldwide food shortages – this is true even if we don’t convert a single arable acre

of land to growing government subsidized corn/ethanol to power our SUVs.

Running head: CHINA’S ONE CHILD POLICY
5

Fiat Currency, Fractional Reserve Banking and Petrodollar Hegemony

The entire globalized modern banking and financial systems also rely devastating on the

existence of cheap and abundant oil, petroleum, and other hydrocarbon sources of power in order

to be sustain. Today much of our economies are actually debt-based economies that operate

under a fiat currency, fractional reserve banking system where money equals debt and both are

created out of thin air by central banks solely on the demand of it alone. The US dollar - the

world’s current reserve currency – is pegged to barrels of oil (it has long since decoupled from

the Gold Standard) by sheer force of America’s military might and the implicitly agreement of

OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) to sell and export their oil with

condition of accepting exclusively US denominated dollars. When the US Federal Reserve prints

monies to the tune of trillions to prop up America’s debt happy tendencies, it is actually by and

large the rest of the world – including major holders of US debt, securities and treasures such as

China, Japan and the European Union – that pay for it through the devaluation of their dollar

denominated assets. Essentially America has been raising the standard of living of its own

citizens by inflating and diluting the purchasing power and eroding the savings of the citizens of

every other nation in the world, and this in turn gives the United States an unfair advantage on

the world stage, and allows it to continue consuming disproportionate amounts of the world’s

last sizeable deposits of oil and of other dwindling resources.

Our debt-based economies and global financial capitalistic markets are also based on the

expectation of perpetual growth. In fact our entire monetary system is one giant pyramid scheme

that by its very nature requires more and more able and willing participants to join in on the party

in order to starve off the inevitable implosion and collapse. In essence, as a society and a global

civilization we have always financed today’s expenses using the expectation of future
Running head: CHINA’S ONE CHILD POLICY
6

generation’s expanded growth as collateral to pay off current debt. America’s (and also to a

lesser extent the rest of the world’s) debt can only realistically ever hope to be paid off if and

only if it can continue to growth economically and expand in prosperity at a fast enough rate.

However, it is an inconvenient truth and a stark mathematically certainty that exponential and/or

perpetual growth in a finite environment is an utter and absurd notion, a total and absolute

impossibility. Many physical restraints such as resource depletion of energy and the laws of

entropy and thermodynamics explicitly prohibit the fallacy of perpetual never-ending growth of

any kind. With the limits of growth comes the collapse and demise of our modern capitalistic

society and the Ponzi pyramid schemes that underlying modern macroeconomics – as with any

other kind of scheme, when there is no more growth it simply collapses upon itself domino chain

reaction supernova style.

One Child Policy Revisited

After nearly 30 years today millions of single children are coming of age in China and

transforming into the young adults of China's bright and prosperous future. The Central Chinese

Government has recently enacted several newer special provisions allowing millions of couples

to have two or more children legally and without penalty. Adults born and raised under the One

Child Policy can now have two children of their own, thus preventing too dramatic of a

population reduction and helping to alleviate the problem of China's aging population.

China’s “One Child Policy” is aligned with the nation’s objective of a peaceful rise to

power and beneficial towards the direction of one harmonious world. To put things into

perspective, China’s One Child Policy has overwhelming succeeded in helping to reduce the

burden of every other social-economic problem – a lesser overpopulated nation means less
Running head: CHINA’S ONE CHILD POLICY
7

pollution, less disease, less completion, consumption, less social unrest, and greater freedom of

wealth, prosperity, equality and equity for all to enjoy. A stable, healthy, prosperous and

sustainable China is good for the world and for China – a peaceful and happy China is a China

that is more empowered to lead the world and help achieve unity and one new world order in the

coming interesting and uncertain times.

In conclusion, it is important for us to remember that economically, physically, and even

socially, there is no such thing as a “free lunch”. In everything we do there are always

opportunity costs and tradeoffs. As with money, there is a time-value of “freedom”. Our choice

to pursue prosperity and growth right now at the expense of sustainability and our environment

will produce orders of magnitude more pain, suffering, and personal sacrifices (including the loss

of freedom) required from future generations. China’s One Child Policy should be considered

by the Obama administration to be implemented in the United States - even though American’s

make up only 5% of world population, we consume more than 50% of the world’s resources,

thus per capita we are actually significantly more overpopulated than even China.
Running head: CHINA’S ONE CHILD POLICY
8

References

Fishman, T.C (2006). China, inc.: How the rise of the next superpower challenges America and

the world. "United States" Scribner.

Greenhalgh, S. (2008). Just one child: Science and policy in Deng's china. "Los Angeles"

University of California Press.

Fong, V. (2006). Only hope: Coming of age under china’s one-child policy. Stanford: Stanford

University Press.

Lan, R. (2009). A man-made disaster: A log of the birth control campaign in 1975 in china.

"New York" CreateSpace.

Frescata, C. (2007). Green china, 2007-2008 (english and chinese edition). Biosani.

Milwertz, C. (1996). Accepting population control: Urban chinese women and the one-child

family policy (nias studies in asian topics, 74). RoutledgeCurzon.

Ruppert, M.C (2004). Crossing the rubicon: The decline of the american empire at the end of the

age of oil. "City: Unknown/Missing." New Society Publishers.

Deffeyes, K.S (2008). Hubbert's peak: The impending world oil shortage (new edition). "City:

Missing." Princeton University Press.

Perkins, J. (2005). Confessions of an economic hit man. Plume.

Simmons, M.R (2006). Twilight in the desert: The coming saudi oil shock and the world

economy. Wiley.

Kunstler, J.H (2006). The long emergency: Surviving the end of oil, climate change, and other

converging catastrophes of the twenty-first century. "City: Missing." Grove Press.

Running head: CHINA’S ONE CHILD POLICY
9

Pfeiffer, D.A (2006). Eating fossil fuels: Oil, food and the coming crisis in agriculture. New

Society Publishers.

Chicago, F.R (1994). Modern money mechanics: A workbook on bank reserves and deposit

expansion. "Chicago" CreateSpace.

Brown, E.H (2007). Web of debt: The shocking truth about our money system -- the sleight of

hand that has trapped us in debt and how we can break free. "City: Missing." Third

Millennium Press.

Spiro, D.E (1999). The hidden hand of american hegemony: Petrodollar recycling and

international markets (cornell studies in political economy). "City: Missing." Cornell

University Press.

Clark, W.R (2005). Petrodollar warfare: Oil, iraq and the future of the dollar. "City: Missing."

New Society Publishers.

Turk, J., & Rubino, J. (2008). The collapse of the dollar and how to profit from it: Make a

fortune by investing in gold and other hard assets. "City: Missing." Broadway Business.

Morris, C.R (2008). The trillion dollar meltdown: Easy money, high rollers, and the great credit

crash. "City: Missing." PublicAffairs.

Savinar, M. (2006, April 13). Life after the oil crash. Retrieved from http://lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Beback, W. (2009, October 29). One-child policy. Retrieved from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_child_policy

CIA, C. (2009, October 21). China. Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-

world-factbook/geos/ch.html

EIA, E. (1, December 2008). Total primary energy consumption (quadrillion btu) . Retrieved from

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=44&pid=44&aid=2
Running head: CHINA’S ONE CHILD POLICY
10

Wright, C. (2009, October 16). Oil consumption by country . Retrieved from

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_con-energy-oil-consumption

(2008, April 18). What is Eroei? . Retrieved from http://www.eroei.com/articles/the-chain/what-is-

eroei/

Duncan, R. (2000, November 13). The Peak of world oil production and the road to the olduvai

gorge. Retrieved from http://dieoff.org/page224.htm

Ruppert, M. (2004, January 14). Until You change the way money works…. Retrieved from

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/031406_money_works.shtml

Bartlett, A. (2006, March 24). Dr. albert bartlett: arithmetic, population and energy. Retrieved

from http://globalpublicmedia.com/transcripts/645