It's important to remember there are other news stories out there besides the fading pandemic panic narrative and the Canadian Revolution.
In this instance, China serves up an obscure demographic statistic that illustrates why authoritarianism is inherently self destructive: marriages and births are on the decline.
Last year, Chinese mothers gave birth to just 10.62 million babies, an 11.5 per cent drop from 12 million in 2020, with the national birth rate falling to a record low of 7.52 births for every 1,000 people in 2021, from 8.52 in 2020.
Nationally, the number of marriage registrations in the first three quarters of last year dropped slightly from the first nine months of 2020, but it was crucially 17.5 per cent down from the same period in 2019.
To understand why this is happening and what caused the decline, one need look no further than China's monstrous “One Child” policy, and its impact on China's birthrate.
Note: the graph needs to be read right to left, instead of the traditional left to right.
China made family destruction official government policy by outlawing multiple children in a household. Now that they want to reverse course, they can't.
Invariably, the fascists sow the seeds of their own destruction.
Republic of Korea birth rate 6.902/thousand, Japan birth rate 7.109/thousand. Both lower than China. source: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/birth-rate . The declining birth rate is a worldwide trend, not unique to the most totalitarian countries.
The difference is that China orchestrated their birthrate decline, and now want to reverse it. Japan and Korea (and Germany) are a more or less natural socioeconomic evolution as a result of their rising out of the middle income trap. China has not yet made that transition, yet their birthrate is deliberately albeit suicidally low
As a general rule, rising incomes and greater prosperity lead to fewer babies.
But even Japan and Germany are cautionary tales. Both countries have fertility rates below the replacement rate, and their societies are visibly in decline (Germany can't even afford to field a functional military, which makes their antics with Putin darkly comical).
Over the longer term, demographics really is destiny.
Republic of Korea birth rate 6.902/thousand, Japan birth rate 7.109/thousand. Both lower than China. source: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/birth-rate . The declining birth rate is a worldwide trend, not unique to the most totalitarian countries.
The difference is that China orchestrated their birthrate decline, and now want to reverse it. Japan and Korea (and Germany) are a more or less natural socioeconomic evolution as a result of their rising out of the middle income trap. China has not yet made that transition, yet their birthrate is deliberately albeit suicidally low
As a general rule, rising incomes and greater prosperity lead to fewer babies.
But even Japan and Germany are cautionary tales. Both countries have fertility rates below the replacement rate, and their societies are visibly in decline (Germany can't even afford to field a functional military, which makes their antics with Putin darkly comical).
Over the longer term, demographics really is destiny.