Overpopulation in China: A Growing Crisis

Overpopulation is a crisis that stands alongside climate change. As it is one of the biggest challenges facing humanity today. It is one of the main problems for the environment, humans, and for the whole ecosystem (Howell, 2009). This results to many problems such as increased birth rate, decreased death rate, and immigration. Currently, many countries are suffering from overpopulation, but China is officially the most populated country in the world. China has approximately 1.42 billion people, which means that China represents 18% of the world's population, this has caused serious issues as this actively demonstrates that it can create many problems such as unemployment and illiteracy. This essay will focus on the overpopulation in China and the effects it causes.

There are absolutely many causes of overpopulation, as it can be poverty, poor contraceptive use, and mortality rates are being reduced as the medical technology is getting improved, this can be a positive news in many ways, but it is still letting people living longer than ever before, so there are hundreds of causes of the overpopulation in China.

China's government and other organisations such as the central committee of the communist party of China (CCCPC) started to work on solving this problem and restrict its development. The only solution China's government has made was the one-child policy that was created in 1979 by a Chinese leader called Deng Xiaoping, and this was made to temporarily limit China's population growth. China's government started working on this policy on the 1st of January 2013. After that, China's government began to facilitate this one-child policy, then in 2015 China's one-child policy was officially scrapped and couples in this time could have two children (Zhang, 2019). This policy stated that citizens must have only one birth certificate unless the child has health problems. Therefore, the parents are permitted to have another child if their first one had any health problems. On the other hand, China's government also offered special benefits to those who agreed having one child only. Whereas people who get more than one child are being taxed approximately fifty percent of their income. If adults do not follow the rules of the government, they will be punished by loss of employment. There are other solutions that China's government could have done at that time. For example, promoting adoption, this solution is even better than the single-child policy the government has made, this solution can help in many ways, the first and most important thing is that it helps orphans to stay in orphanages and gives a chance to the parents to have more than one child so in this way, they will be allowed to have as many children as they want just by adopting orphans, and follow the government rules by not having more than one child.

The one-child policy leaded to many effects on china's population and had many drawbacks when it was applied such as, the fertility rate decreased, and birth rates also decreased, and what I think about this policy is that it also can lead to a lack of children in schools, so if every couples have one child only therefore, there will be emptiness in schools which can be a disadvantage. The Chinese government estimated that 400 million births in the country were prevented by the policy.

So far, China's controversial one-child policy is still the most superior birth control venture in the history. In some ways, the policy was successful as it intended to regulate overpopulation in China, it is estimated to have prevented up to 400 million births and reduced the country's birth ratio to just 1.7. Yet, the one-child policy also left behind many after-effects, now, China must face concerns of an aging population, shrinking labour force, and address the wounds of many families, especially women, by its gender discriminatory policies. Now, with China's global two-child policy in effect, the impacts are still ideological. While some believe that the policy's impact on population growth will be relatively small, reaching 1.45 billion in 2029, others are hopeful that the two-child policy will lead to better health outcomes and a reduction in abortions.

To sum up everything that has been stated so far, what China's government have done in 2013 was great, and should have been continued over and not scrapped in 2015, because if it was continued it could have led to limit the growth population in many better ways. China has applied one-child policy for two year only. Whereas, if it were for seven years, this could have been preferable, as by this they could have limited and got rid of this problem. Therefore, we all know this policy was indignation on many of the Chinese people, and did not suit everybody's wishes. This could have been more achievable than having this reoccurring problem again in five years' time. Lastly, China must sate that this policy has to be applied again to limit and control the future overpopulation that will be happening soon. It seems only time will tell.

References:

1. Howell, N., 2020. Overpopulation: Cause, Effect and Solution | Earth and Human. Earth and Human.