Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuckers Bryant. You know, one day I'm just not going to show up. I'll do both of our bits. I'll be like, hey, I'm Josh, Hey, I'm Chuck. Hey, I'm Josh. Hey, I'm Chuck. I think it's pretty accurate. Good luck with that shows good luck although I finally get to be shirtless the whole time. Are you ready for a little bit of irony this this afternoon? Yeah, let's hear it um. Back in nine okay short, little six years before Ghostbusters, Apple cheeked No. Thirty five? Uh short, little happy apple cheeked Chinese man named Mal's a Dung, also known as Chairman Mao, established the People's Republic of China Z yes and uh. One of the things that they were um big on was reproduction. I guess it's the only way to put in okay um. The the communist government under Chairman Mao UM they opposed birth control. They banned the import of contraceptives, and in in forty nine he said, of all the things in the world, people are the most precious. Ready for the ironic twist? Yes, thirty years later, China catapulted itself to the forefront of state controlled reproduction, which what came to be known as its one child policy. Discuss you know what, I got a little stat for your speaking. In the life expectancy in China was then like seven thirty five years old. Holy cow, and it's seventy three years old now. Yeah, with the with the communist government came things like sanitation, relative peace. War had had beleaguered China for generations, had been killing people left and right, and as a result, the population just skyrocketed. Indeed, and the old image of China that we have is probably like four or five kids, a couple of parents, a couple of grandparents, and auntie and uncle like packed together living in a house. Not true anymore, No, not anymore because of the one child policy. So let's talk about this. This is something people might have heard of before. But first of all, why did it come about. It came about from the population skyrocketing, right. Well, I've got some more info actually, are you ready for this? You want to know how it really came about? Yeah, you didn't look at any of this, I song Jianne. No, okay, all right, we're all gonna learn here. Then let's hear Mr Smart. Apparently there was a system's control specialist in China. He decides to visit Europe and back then, um, he was kind of isolated from the outside world, like many of the people in China, the intellection known for isolation. Yeah, so he goes to Europe and he picks up a little book called The Limits to Growth. Have you ever heard of this? The Limits of Growth was a really controversial book um to study put out by a think tank called the Club of Rome, and basically they said, in a nutshell the world will end by because of population overrun and uh. They brought it out to big fanfare along with The Blueprint for Survival, which was published in seventy two in England, who basically said that people in Britain were reproducing too quick and they couldn't maintain Uh. He goes back to China with these books and he said, you know, it really made sense to me, and so he was connected. He formed a little group. Uh, and decided to take it to the government and said, hey, we're gonna you know, he started applying these studies and these statistics to China and said, we're in big trouble. And so he took all this stuff and basically it was from there that it leap frogged, uh, that it catapulted rather into a reality. However, the ironic thing is is that whole limits to growth Apparently it was a bunch of bunk and it was based on bad statistics. And the co founder, I'm sorry, the founder of the Book of Rome, who actually helped write the book, came out a couple of years later and they had a retraction that said they wanted to jolt people from the comfortable idea that present growth trends could continue indefinitely. So they basically said, we were trying to scare people, and we cooked up a bunch of studies which led to China's one child policy. That's pretty cool. That's not the only thing, though, I think um China has uh never apologized for its policy and one of the reasons why they instituted it was because the population was growing rapidly UM, which is fine, right. That the reason that chairman MoU Is like reproduced, reproduced was because his vision for China was, uh, this huge booming economy based on tons and tons of labor. Right, it kind of makes sense in a way, it does make sense. The problem is, right now China has a quarter of the world's population but only seven percent of the world's arable land. That's that's that is a rub right there. Um. So one of the one of the reasons, in addition to this fake book that the institute the one child policy was to slow this population growth, right, and it worked tremendously, right it did, you know at ninth Well it worked to the team of about four hundred million kids not born, Is that right? It depends on who you talk to. Four millions the high end that I've seen. The lowest i've seen is two d and fifty million. Even still, that's substantial since in the last thirty years, you know, they said in nineteen eighty was the the what's it officially called the National Population and Family Planning Commission of China, the state agency that runs the reproduction control They said in nineteen eighty that we must have a cap in the by the year two thousand of one point two billion people, and uh, it's projected that they had one point to seven. They weren't too far off, but that's Chinese figures, and continue to grow. Now there's one point three three actually in more than that, because that was two thousand eight. Yeah, apparently every year China adds the population of Belgium to its own population ten million people. They literally bring over everyone from Belgium. Come on, and then Belgium has to start from scratch again. They get to ten million, and every January, come on, Belgium, I'm gonna go to Belgium. Next January. You can go, free trip trip to China. Well now, so I can stick my claim there in Belgium. Okay, just moving too, somehow move you to China eventually, chuck. So, okay, we have this huge population explosion. It's still going just because if you have one point three billion people, even allowing them to have one kid is going to add an add an add up. What's the projection. I believe by twenty there expected to peak at one point six billion. That is a lot um. But actually that's nothing compared to what it would have been had they not instituted this policy, which at first was voluntary um, and they saw a greater decline in um for fertility UM when this policy was voluntary. Right in nineteen seventy they had a fertility rate of I think six and by nine means six births per one woman, just so people understand what that means. That's the mean um. And then by nineteen seventy nine it was down to three. So they have their fertility rate, you know, it is now what uh in the urban areas one point seven I'm sorry, in the urban areas one point three and the rural areas two point out for about a one point seven average, right, but even still, if you look at the numbers, that's less of a decline than there was when it was voluntary. China started out with was a campaign called what chuck late long, few, late long and few. So you marry late in life, you wait a long time in between births, and you have few children. Uh, And couples who uh volunteer for this get a little certificate. What's that called the Certificate of Honor for single child parents? Ye must be nice, I guess having a came it depends, I don't know. Um. We should also say that the one child policy that was instituted in nineteen seventy nine. I don't know if we actually came out and said that yet. Yeah, that was when it officially became a mandate. So the one child policy, um, at least at first and generally in practice has been has restricted almost exclusively the Han ethnic majority. Those are the people who are really subject to one child policies, and the people who are under the most risk astrictions are urban couples from the Han majority ethnic minorities are allowed to have more kids. They've generally been excluded from the one child policy. Well, you have to get permission. I think if you're in the Royal area, you have to get legal permission to have a second child, if your firstborn as a girl, and if you're an ethnic minority, you can have three kids. Well, you bring up a really good point. Um. That's one of the huge byproducts this, uh, this one child policy, is that there China, the culture of China, not just the government, the culture has been accused of preferring boys over girls, to the tune of encouraging abortions for females stuff like that. You know that's true, but that's it is. Yeah, Um, at the very least, there's been tons and tons of reports and allegations that, uh, there's actually if state pressure, if not state mandated abortions UM or at the very at least local mandated, local pressured abortions UM. But one of the one of the ways China still um hasn't a low abortion rate of the female population report having an abortion. Where in the US forty three, that's higher than I thought. That's apparently really low, is it? Yeah, um, at the very least low compared to anecdotal evidence. There's probably a lot of girls out there who aren't willing to say that they had an abortion in half UM. But still, let's say that those numbers are completely accurate. China has abortion rate the US has forty three. One of the reasons that they've been able to maintain a low abortion rate comparatively UM is through open and universal access to contraception. Yes, i U d S and sterilization is what they prefer over of contraception is long term, right, They don't do the condom or the birth control pill that much, not much or vosectomes of work in China. They put it all on the woman because again that they have been accused of preferring boys. It's a very patriarchal society. You can't do that though in the long run, because I got another stat in the end, they think in the future, I would say, of the men in China won't have access to a wife, there aren't enough women. There won't be enough women right, which in and of itself is a problem, but it also gives rise to other problems. Um. Apparently there's been a huge rising prostitution, which has led to a huge rise in the prevalence of HIV. UM. There's been all sorts of um social maladies. I guess among men who can't find a wife. I mean imagine like they're just not being a woman out there that you can find to marry and settle down with, Like it's just not an option for you. Is going to produce all manners psychological and social problem. So yeah, there's there's all sorts of weird things that are kind of popping up up from this one child policy another one that I hesitate to work. Use the word weird more like horrific is female and fantaside, we said that China's been accused of preferring boys over girls. Um, there are so I should say there are surveys out there, there are facts and figures that China puts out that contradict any criticism. UM. But there's two sides of this coin. But in the West there's lots and lots of accusations of female and fantaside. Apparently it was UM traditional until the Cultural Revolution UH, and it started to kind of pick back up again. UM. There's no statistics or figures on how many girls might be killed at birth. UM, but number one apparently UH abortion after ultrasound sex screening. Sexing was so prevalent that in China banned UH sex screening neatle or prenatal sex screening, so you couldn't tell whether you you're having a boy or a girl. You know, there's a private sector that's picked up UM lack that will give you an ultratone to let you know what you're having. And apparently the the female and fantaside, if you view abortions in fanticide, has increased well, even in fant aside under like the the medical or sociological definition of killing a child when it's born or leaving it to die UM is still around UM and the the those are reflected in the boydie girl ratio right right, which are which is pretty significant. It doesn't sound like a lot, but what what are they? Uh? In two thousand five and estimated one hundred and eighteen boys were born for every one hundred girls, and that peaked at one hundred and thirty boys for every one hundred girls. And uh, just to compare that to the rest of the world UM or industrialized countries, I should say, UM roughly a hundred and four to a hundred and seven boys for every one hundred girls. So definitely a big deaf UM. One of the reasons why boys would be preferred is, um, they can earn more than a woman. Let's say a woman marries a man, she gets married off, she gets absorbed into the man's family. Um, what happens to the parents. Here's part of the problem. Seventy of UM China's aging population doesn't have a pension. They don't have four oh one case over there, they don't save the government starting to encourage it. This is what I see is the biggest problem. Maybe this is a huge, huge problem. Who's going to take care of people when they're getting older? So here's here's what's resulted a phenomenon called four to one. Right, you have a couple that's the two and they're they're responsible for the care of one child and for parents, for grandparents. So that's like the new family structure. Um as far as financial support goes. And as you keep having just one child, one child child, that for to one structure keeps going on and then it's one six. Well you know what I mean, that one child will have to be responsible for the care of ultimately six right, if everyone is still alive, his two parents and the four grandparents, well, then you just start killing the grandparents. This is too much of a burdens that, Um, No, because that that well, yeah, I guess if it's a boy and he has no one to marry and he's unlucky enough, No, that wouldn't work out if it were if it were just a boy and he never married, he'd just be responsible for his own parents. But what about the grandparents again? I think that was one of the points they made though, was as your parents old and the grandparents are hanging in there, all of a sudden, your parents are in their seventies, your grandparents are in their nineties, and you're the sole child. If you are lucky enough to marry and there are no grand if your grandparents are dead, you still are saddled with two sets of grandparents and a child, and that's what you're responsible for providing for. Right. Yeah, that's a big problem. Part of that is UM has been alleviated by a revision in the policy who where UM. Urban couples who are only children themselves can have more than one child. True, so that leaves two siblings, but you have to it's still very much unless you're an ethnic minority. I don't think you have to apply for a child if you're an ethnic minority. Another revision that they had, Chuck was, um, they stripped local birth quotas they is this the birth permits? Yeah, okay, yeah, they they stripped the requirement to obtain these birth permits and a lot of the provinces recently, right yeah, which basically they did it by um taking away the requirement to get a birth permit for a first birth. So what happened before was any locality had a quota of how many birth could occur, say in a year or a month or something like that, and if that quota was filled already, then some couple applying for a permit to have a birth would be denied until the next cycle. This is nuts. It is nuts. I'm all for family planning, but this is uh, this is turbo family planning. What's nuts is that aside from these social problems, it actually has led China to become a burgeoning economy. I mean it's actually worked in an economic sense, but in a socioeconomic sense it's it's it's exacting these huge tolls. I do have a couple of stats to back that up. UM, before they instituted this policy, the population and poverty was two d and fifty million. That's been reduced to forty million. And uh, education um of the average fifteen year old went from four point five years to eight point five years. So these are the stats that China's gonna point to clearly to say that hey, it's working right and you can't. I think it's so easy to vilify China for this. UM. The like Christian pro life groups are hugely against this one child policy UM because it does suborne um abortion right very clearly. UM. So there's a lot of people opposed to it. But if you're an economist, and maybe an economist with um, no heart damage to your prefrontal cortex, then yeah, it makes a lot of sense, and it worked. They've also started the girl care program you heard of that one, and that's basically, uh in a nutshell kind of trying to encourage the fact that girls have value and worth and are not second class citizens. You like that billboard doing, Yeah, the billboard. They have a billboard in China that's said in the Hibai province. It says there's no difference between having a girl or a boy. Girls can also continue the family line, yes, genetically speaking. So they're trying to do what they can there. UM. I guess probably the biggest rub of China's one child policy is that, UM, reproduction is a basic human right. The government's not supposed to tell you how many kids are do anything to interfere with your reproduction right. Um. And it's also contrary to the will of the people. In a two thousand three Chinese study, UH, there were some people who said they preferred one child. That's about of the population surveyed, but fifty seven percent said they preferred to So it's directly flies in the face of them exactly. What's interesting though, is that UH, there is a huge decrease in preference of three children, or more like five point five percent of the population. Surveys said that they would want three kids. So it seems to have peaked around too. And one of the reasons why China announced recently that it would be another decade before it appeal that's one child policy, is because they're afraid of another baby boom, and what they're trying to do is create a small family culture in the country. Gotcha. But surveys like these suggest that that's they've been successful in doing that, right. I think it's up for review next year and no to two thousand is it's up for review next year, But I don't know if that means anything's gonna I think they said this summer in July that it is going to be another decade before they repealed it. And there were a lot of people after remember the earthquake in such Uan province, Yeah, killed what like ten thousand kids, Yeah, and a lot of people's only child. That's your only child. It's a long kid. And what happens if you were fifty and when your child died, because you know, you wait a long time to get married and you your s O L thank you government. Uh, you know, I know plenty of Americans who think that it's the responsible thing to do to only have one child. I've heard people say that as a human it's like irresponsible to have two and three kids these days. Well, yeah, the toll we exact on the environment in or adding to the strain on the carrying capacity of agriculture. Supposedly, the agricultural techniques we have now can support a global population of ten billion. So we have a little ways to go. But who knows what will happened before then, how how much technology will advance? Um, we may turn to soilent green who knows? Um, do you know there's two women out there walking the planner right now, at least two who were sterilized before they ever had kids because they wanted to say the environment. Uh they're both English. As far as I know, I remember reading about that. Yeah, thank you pointing that out to me. Has nothing to do with China's one child policy. But yeah, so Chuck doesn't look like they're appealing it. They did make some they did for those people who were still in reproductive age following the earthquake who lost kids. They were um, making exceptions, right, but ultimately it's it looks like steady the course with the child the one child policy. So if, okay, if you want to read anything more on China's one child policy, We've got an article on the site appropriately entitled what is China's one child Policy? I'm pretty sure if you just type in one child it will come up in the handy search bar at how stuffworks dot com. Uh, and let's do listener mail Josh's listener mail time, And I'm just gonna call this Uh from Austin. Are our young fan who had a dream about us. And I've tried not to read dream emails because that encourages people to send in their dreams. And we've gotten a lot of hey that had this weird dream, but this one was about us, so of course I'm gonna read it. My name is Austin, I'm fourteen, and I'm your fan, and I live in Atlanta. And it makes it show so much better because you're located in Atlanta. True, you know, he feels at homeless. Uh. He's been listening for a while. He loves us, and he's just starting high school this year and his podcast has been a lifesaver in ap biology. Anyways, finally had my first dream about you. First first dreams. Uh, this is a good one, though. He awakes from bed and he notices that he's fallen asleep while listening to the podcast. It sounds like reality so far. Uh. He walks outside and there's a small red plane with a huge banner that reads all hail Chuck and Josh. I'm looking dream. Yeah, we sent that plan over your house, buddy. I'm a little confused about it, and even more so when I arrive at school and see that there is a bronze statue in your honor because you guys save the economy with our audiobook. Yeah, how about that? Um. However, it takes a gloomy turn from here. After a day of many questions and much confusion, I finally put together the clues. After saving the economy, you both take charge and become dual dictators of America. He require everyone to be educated by your podcast, and only your podcast, as made by the Stuff Amendment actually amended the constitutions. And we institute a half child policy, sure, half job policy. Uh, and we all must obey your command immediately. China declares war on us because you try to expand your band uh podcast to their country. We had a guy that wrote in by the way, it said it was not banned. No, the blogs, band, not the podcast. Okay, good to know. The rest of the dream is a bit foggy and I wish I could remember more. However, it seems to be a theme that the dreams that people right in end up being true and the unlikely chance that this does happen. Please remember me as a fan that's from Austin. In Atlanta and Austin. We will definitely remember you. We will. We will remember you when we take power and crush you. If you have a super cool dream about me and Chuck, or if you want to comment on China's one child policy, or um you have more than ten children more than ten, send us an email about it to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and that's of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot com home page. M brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you

Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuckers Bryant. You know, one day I'm just not going to show up. I'll do both of our bits. I'll be like, hey, I'm Josh, Hey, I'm Chuck. Hey, I'm Josh. Hey, I'm Chuck. I think it's pretty accurate. Good luck with that shows good luck although I finally get to be shirtless the whole time. Are you ready for a little bit of irony this this afternoon? Yeah, let's hear it um. Back in nine okay short, little six years before Ghostbusters, Apple cheeked No. Thirty five? Uh short, little happy apple cheeked Chinese man named Mal's a Dung, also known as Chairman Mao, established the People's Republic of China Z yes and uh. One of the things that they were um big on was reproduction. I guess it's the only way to put in okay um. The the communist government under Chairman Mao UM they opposed birth control. They banned the import of contraceptives, and in in forty nine he said, of all the things in the world, people are the most precious. Ready for the ironic twist? Yes, thirty years later, China catapulted itself to the forefront of state controlled reproduction, which what came to be known as its one child policy. Discuss you know what, I got a little stat for your speaking. In the life expectancy in China was then like seven thirty five years old. Holy cow, and it's seventy three years old now. Yeah, with the with the communist government came things like sanitation, relative peace. War had had beleaguered China for generations, had been killing people left and right, and as a result, the population just skyrocketed. Indeed, and the old image of China that we have is probably like four or five kids, a couple of parents, a couple of grandparents, and auntie and uncle like packed together living in a house. Not true anymore, No, not anymore because of the one child policy. So let's talk about this. This is something people might have heard of before. But first of all, why did it come about. It came about from the population skyrocketing, right. Well, I've got some more info actually, are you ready for this? You want to know how it really came about? Yeah, you didn't look at any of this, I song Jianne. No, okay, all right, we're all gonna learn here. Then let's hear Mr Smart. Apparently there was a system's control specialist in China. He decides to visit Europe and back then, um, he was kind of isolated from the outside world, like many of the people in China, the intellection known for isolation. Yeah, so he goes to Europe and he picks up a little book called The Limits to Growth. Have you ever heard of this? The Limits of Growth was a really controversial book um to study put out by a think tank called the Club of Rome, and basically they said, in a nutshell the world will end by because of population overrun and uh. They brought it out to big fanfare along with The Blueprint for Survival, which was published in seventy two in England, who basically said that people in Britain were reproducing too quick and they couldn't maintain Uh. He goes back to China with these books and he said, you know, it really made sense to me, and so he was connected. He formed a little group. Uh, and decided to take it to the government and said, hey, we're gonna you know, he started applying these studies and these statistics to China and said, we're in big trouble. And so he took all this stuff and basically it was from there that it leap frogged, uh, that it catapulted rather into a reality. However, the ironic thing is is that whole limits to growth Apparently it was a bunch of bunk and it was based on bad statistics. And the co founder, I'm sorry, the founder of the Book of Rome, who actually helped write the book, came out a couple of years later and they had a retraction that said they wanted to jolt people from the comfortable idea that present growth trends could continue indefinitely. So they basically said, we were trying to scare people, and we cooked up a bunch of studies which led to China's one child policy. That's pretty cool. That's not the only thing, though, I think um China has uh never apologized for its policy and one of the reasons why they instituted it was because the population was growing rapidly UM, which is fine, right. That the reason that chairman MoU Is like reproduced, reproduced was because his vision for China was, uh, this huge booming economy based on tons and tons of labor. Right, it kind of makes sense in a way, it does make sense. The problem is, right now China has a quarter of the world's population but only seven percent of the world's arable land. That's that's that is a rub right there. Um. So one of the one of the reasons, in addition to this fake book that the institute the one child policy was to slow this population growth, right, and it worked tremendously, right it did, you know at ninth Well it worked to the team of about four hundred million kids not born, Is that right? It depends on who you talk to. Four millions the high end that I've seen. The lowest i've seen is two d and fifty million. Even still, that's substantial since in the last thirty years, you know, they said in nineteen eighty was the the what's it officially called the National Population and Family Planning Commission of China, the state agency that runs the reproduction control They said in nineteen eighty that we must have a cap in the by the year two thousand of one point two billion people, and uh, it's projected that they had one point to seven. They weren't too far off, but that's Chinese figures, and continue to grow. Now there's one point three three actually in more than that, because that was two thousand eight. Yeah, apparently every year China adds the population of Belgium to its own population ten million people. They literally bring over everyone from Belgium. Come on, and then Belgium has to start from scratch again. They get to ten million, and every January, come on, Belgium, I'm gonna go to Belgium. Next January. You can go, free trip trip to China. Well now, so I can stick my claim there in Belgium. Okay, just moving too, somehow move you to China eventually, chuck. So, okay, we have this huge population explosion. It's still going just because if you have one point three billion people, even allowing them to have one kid is going to add an add an add up. What's the projection. I believe by twenty there expected to peak at one point six billion. That is a lot um. But actually that's nothing compared to what it would have been had they not instituted this policy, which at first was voluntary um, and they saw a greater decline in um for fertility UM when this policy was voluntary. Right in nineteen seventy they had a fertility rate of I think six and by nine means six births per one woman, just so people understand what that means. That's the mean um. And then by nineteen seventy nine it was down to three. So they have their fertility rate, you know, it is now what uh in the urban areas one point seven I'm sorry, in the urban areas one point three and the rural areas two point out for about a one point seven average, right, but even still, if you look at the numbers, that's less of a decline than there was when it was voluntary. China started out with was a campaign called what chuck late long, few, late long and few. So you marry late in life, you wait a long time in between births, and you have few children. Uh, And couples who uh volunteer for this get a little certificate. What's that called the Certificate of Honor for single child parents? Ye must be nice, I guess having a came it depends, I don't know. Um. We should also say that the one child policy that was instituted in nineteen seventy nine. I don't know if we actually came out and said that yet. Yeah, that was when it officially became a mandate. So the one child policy, um, at least at first and generally in practice has been has restricted almost exclusively the Han ethnic majority. Those are the people who are really subject to one child policies, and the people who are under the most risk astrictions are urban couples from the Han majority ethnic minorities are allowed to have more kids. They've generally been excluded from the one child policy. Well, you have to get permission. I think if you're in the Royal area, you have to get legal permission to have a second child, if your firstborn as a girl, and if you're an ethnic minority, you can have three kids. Well, you bring up a really good point. Um. That's one of the huge byproducts this, uh, this one child policy, is that there China, the culture of China, not just the government, the culture has been accused of preferring boys over girls, to the tune of encouraging abortions for females stuff like that. You know that's true, but that's it is. Yeah, Um, at the very least, there's been tons and tons of reports and allegations that, uh, there's actually if state pressure, if not state mandated abortions UM or at the very at least local mandated, local pressured abortions UM. But one of the one of the ways China still um hasn't a low abortion rate of the female population report having an abortion. Where in the US forty three, that's higher than I thought. That's apparently really low, is it? Yeah, um, at the very least low compared to anecdotal evidence. There's probably a lot of girls out there who aren't willing to say that they had an abortion in half UM. But still, let's say that those numbers are completely accurate. China has abortion rate the US has forty three. One of the reasons that they've been able to maintain a low abortion rate comparatively UM is through open and universal access to contraception. Yes, i U d S and sterilization is what they prefer over of contraception is long term, right, They don't do the condom or the birth control pill that much, not much or vosectomes of work in China. They put it all on the woman because again that they have been accused of preferring boys. It's a very patriarchal society. You can't do that though in the long run, because I got another stat in the end, they think in the future, I would say, of the men in China won't have access to a wife, there aren't enough women. There won't be enough women right, which in and of itself is a problem, but it also gives rise to other problems. Um. Apparently there's been a huge rising prostitution, which has led to a huge rise in the prevalence of HIV. UM. There's been all sorts of um social maladies. I guess among men who can't find a wife. I mean imagine like they're just not being a woman out there that you can find to marry and settle down with, Like it's just not an option for you. Is going to produce all manners psychological and social problem. So yeah, there's there's all sorts of weird things that are kind of popping up up from this one child policy another one that I hesitate to work. Use the word weird more like horrific is female and fantaside, we said that China's been accused of preferring boys over girls. Um, there are so I should say there are surveys out there, there are facts and figures that China puts out that contradict any criticism. UM. But there's two sides of this coin. But in the West there's lots and lots of accusations of female and fantaside. Apparently it was UM traditional until the Cultural Revolution UH, and it started to kind of pick back up again. UM. There's no statistics or figures on how many girls might be killed at birth. UM, but number one apparently UH abortion after ultrasound sex screening. Sexing was so prevalent that in China banned UH sex screening neatle or prenatal sex screening, so you couldn't tell whether you you're having a boy or a girl. You know, there's a private sector that's picked up UM lack that will give you an ultratone to let you know what you're having. And apparently the the female and fantaside, if you view abortions in fanticide, has increased well, even in fant aside under like the the medical or sociological definition of killing a child when it's born or leaving it to die UM is still around UM and the the those are reflected in the boydie girl ratio right right, which are which is pretty significant. It doesn't sound like a lot, but what what are they? Uh? In two thousand five and estimated one hundred and eighteen boys were born for every one hundred girls, and that peaked at one hundred and thirty boys for every one hundred girls. And uh, just to compare that to the rest of the world UM or industrialized countries, I should say, UM roughly a hundred and four to a hundred and seven boys for every one hundred girls. So definitely a big deaf UM. One of the reasons why boys would be preferred is, um, they can earn more than a woman. Let's say a woman marries a man, she gets married off, she gets absorbed into the man's family. Um, what happens to the parents. Here's part of the problem. Seventy of UM China's aging population doesn't have a pension. They don't have four oh one case over there, they don't save the government starting to encourage it. This is what I see is the biggest problem. Maybe this is a huge, huge problem. Who's going to take care of people when they're getting older? So here's here's what's resulted a phenomenon called four to one. Right, you have a couple that's the two and they're they're responsible for the care of one child and for parents, for grandparents. So that's like the new family structure. Um as far as financial support goes. And as you keep having just one child, one child child, that for to one structure keeps going on and then it's one six. Well you know what I mean, that one child will have to be responsible for the care of ultimately six right, if everyone is still alive, his two parents and the four grandparents, well, then you just start killing the grandparents. This is too much of a burdens that, Um, No, because that that well, yeah, I guess if it's a boy and he has no one to marry and he's unlucky enough, No, that wouldn't work out if it were if it were just a boy and he never married, he'd just be responsible for his own parents. But what about the grandparents again? I think that was one of the points they made though, was as your parents old and the grandparents are hanging in there, all of a sudden, your parents are in their seventies, your grandparents are in their nineties, and you're the sole child. If you are lucky enough to marry and there are no grand if your grandparents are dead, you still are saddled with two sets of grandparents and a child, and that's what you're responsible for providing for. Right. Yeah, that's a big problem. Part of that is UM has been alleviated by a revision in the policy who where UM. Urban couples who are only children themselves can have more than one child. True, so that leaves two siblings, but you have to it's still very much unless you're an ethnic minority. I don't think you have to apply for a child if you're an ethnic minority. Another revision that they had, Chuck was, um, they stripped local birth quotas they is this the birth permits? Yeah, okay, yeah, they they stripped the requirement to obtain these birth permits and a lot of the provinces recently, right yeah, which basically they did it by um taking away the requirement to get a birth permit for a first birth. So what happened before was any locality had a quota of how many birth could occur, say in a year or a month or something like that, and if that quota was filled already, then some couple applying for a permit to have a birth would be denied until the next cycle. This is nuts. It is nuts. I'm all for family planning, but this is uh, this is turbo family planning. What's nuts is that aside from these social problems, it actually has led China to become a burgeoning economy. I mean it's actually worked in an economic sense, but in a socioeconomic sense it's it's it's exacting these huge tolls. I do have a couple of stats to back that up. UM, before they instituted this policy, the population and poverty was two d and fifty million. That's been reduced to forty million. And uh, education um of the average fifteen year old went from four point five years to eight point five years. So these are the stats that China's gonna point to clearly to say that hey, it's working right and you can't. I think it's so easy to vilify China for this. UM. The like Christian pro life groups are hugely against this one child policy UM because it does suborne um abortion right very clearly. UM. So there's a lot of people opposed to it. But if you're an economist, and maybe an economist with um, no heart damage to your prefrontal cortex, then yeah, it makes a lot of sense, and it worked. They've also started the girl care program you heard of that one, and that's basically, uh in a nutshell kind of trying to encourage the fact that girls have value and worth and are not second class citizens. You like that billboard doing, Yeah, the billboard. They have a billboard in China that's said in the Hibai province. It says there's no difference between having a girl or a boy. Girls can also continue the family line, yes, genetically speaking. So they're trying to do what they can there. UM. I guess probably the biggest rub of China's one child policy is that, UM, reproduction is a basic human right. The government's not supposed to tell you how many kids are do anything to interfere with your reproduction right. Um. And it's also contrary to the will of the people. In a two thousand three Chinese study, UH, there were some people who said they preferred one child. That's about of the population surveyed, but fifty seven percent said they preferred to So it's directly flies in the face of them exactly. What's interesting though, is that UH, there is a huge decrease in preference of three children, or more like five point five percent of the population. Surveys said that they would want three kids. So it seems to have peaked around too. And one of the reasons why China announced recently that it would be another decade before it appeal that's one child policy, is because they're afraid of another baby boom, and what they're trying to do is create a small family culture in the country. Gotcha. But surveys like these suggest that that's they've been successful in doing that, right. I think it's up for review next year and no to two thousand is it's up for review next year, But I don't know if that means anything's gonna I think they said this summer in July that it is going to be another decade before they repealed it. And there were a lot of people after remember the earthquake in such Uan province, Yeah, killed what like ten thousand kids, Yeah, and a lot of people's only child. That's your only child. It's a long kid. And what happens if you were fifty and when your child died, because you know, you wait a long time to get married and you your s O L thank you government. Uh, you know, I know plenty of Americans who think that it's the responsible thing to do to only have one child. I've heard people say that as a human it's like irresponsible to have two and three kids these days. Well, yeah, the toll we exact on the environment in or adding to the strain on the carrying capacity of agriculture. Supposedly, the agricultural techniques we have now can support a global population of ten billion. So we have a little ways to go. But who knows what will happened before then, how how much technology will advance? Um, we may turn to soilent green who knows? Um, do you know there's two women out there walking the planner right now, at least two who were sterilized before they ever had kids because they wanted to say the environment. Uh they're both English. As far as I know, I remember reading about that. Yeah, thank you pointing that out to me. Has nothing to do with China's one child policy. But yeah, so Chuck doesn't look like they're appealing it. They did make some they did for those people who were still in reproductive age following the earthquake who lost kids. They were um, making exceptions, right, but ultimately it's it looks like steady the course with the child the one child policy. So if, okay, if you want to read anything more on China's one child policy, We've got an article on the site appropriately entitled what is China's one child Policy? I'm pretty sure if you just type in one child it will come up in the handy search bar at how stuffworks dot com. Uh, and let's do listener mail Josh's listener mail time, And I'm just gonna call this Uh from Austin. Are our young fan who had a dream about us. And I've tried not to read dream emails because that encourages people to send in their dreams. And we've gotten a lot of hey that had this weird dream, but this one was about us, so of course I'm gonna read it. My name is Austin, I'm fourteen, and I'm your fan, and I live in Atlanta. And it makes it show so much better because you're located in Atlanta. True, you know, he feels at homeless. Uh. He's been listening for a while. He loves us, and he's just starting high school this year and his podcast has been a lifesaver in ap biology. Anyways, finally had my first dream about you. First first dreams. Uh, this is a good one, though. He awakes from bed and he notices that he's fallen asleep while listening to the podcast. It sounds like reality so far. Uh. He walks outside and there's a small red plane with a huge banner that reads all hail Chuck and Josh. I'm looking dream. Yeah, we sent that plan over your house, buddy. I'm a little confused about it, and even more so when I arrive at school and see that there is a bronze statue in your honor because you guys save the economy with our audiobook. Yeah, how about that? Um. However, it takes a gloomy turn from here. After a day of many questions and much confusion, I finally put together the clues. After saving the economy, you both take charge and become dual dictators of America. He require everyone to be educated by your podcast, and only your podcast, as made by the Stuff Amendment actually amended the constitutions. And we institute a half child policy, sure, half job policy. Uh, and we all must obey your command immediately. China declares war on us because you try to expand your band uh podcast to their country. We had a guy that wrote in by the way, it said it was not banned. No, the blogs, band, not the podcast. Okay, good to know. The rest of the dream is a bit foggy and I wish I could remember more. However, it seems to be a theme that the dreams that people right in end up being true and the unlikely chance that this does happen. Please remember me as a fan that's from Austin. In Atlanta and Austin. We will definitely remember you. We will. We will remember you when we take power and crush you. If you have a super cool dream about me and Chuck, or if you want to comment on China's one child policy, or um you have more than ten children more than ten, send us an email about it to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and that's of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot com home page. M brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you