In the 2015 Clarke article, "How the one child policy changed China", the author suggests that the long term effect of severly limiting one's family to the number of children a married couple may have throughout their marriage is problematic.  Clarke goes on to say that by the year, 2050, one quarter of Chinese citizens will be over 65 years old.  There are tremendous ramifications that will occur with 25% of the adult population being 65.  For starters, labor is taxed and China who is industrializing and growing at a feverous pace cannot count on these citizens to be part of the work force.  Another heavy casulty of a quarter for the Chinese is healthcare.  China is a Communist government and citizens have health care needs provided by the government.  As a person matures. healthcare costs for individuals rises not declines.  

As an Economics teacher, we study different governments.  I plan to have my seniors research United States healthcare and Chinese healthcare policies for a comparision and contrast evaluation.  My 12th graders are getting ready to graduate, and this type of research will hopefully, open their eyes to the importance of taking care of yourself as much as possible.  I am hopeful that this research will educate my students to push back chronic disease and promote a healthy lifestyle.  China has healthcare that is provided, but what happens to a person who is over 65 years old with a chronic condition and 25% of the population is the same age?  

Philosophically, I would like to pose to my students the question, "How would you like to be told that you could only have one child"?  The article does not address this issue, but Clarke did mention that famine was a real problem because of overpopulation.  The author pointed out that the Great Chinese Famine ranging from 1959 to 61 killed about 15 to 30 million people.  As a result of a student survey, the overwhelming majority of my students come from families that have at least two children with many having more than one sibling.  My question to China government is, "What is the plan for economic growth when 25% of your population is over 65"?

I share the usefulness of this article with Margaret.  Very fascinating article on the impact of the 1979 "one child policy" following the 1949 policy of encouraging the Chinese people to have many children.  The charts and graphs are really helpful and I will be 'borrowing' those for my lectures and student hand out articles on China for my AP World History classes.  We cover all of the Chinese dynasties, revolutions and republics, but information like this is helpful in connecting to past decisions leading to the ones recently enacted.  From the earliest dynasties to the modern era of China there is often a major concern and major strains concerning national resources in proportion to the population. 

Most every dynasty had to deal with a food to population issue.  Most tried land reforms, government food storage or granaries, food distribution and other measures to feed the population.  Dynasties like the Han, Tang, Ming and Qing will lose the "Mandate of Heaven" to lead the people then chaos and rebellion will lead to the collapse of each, primarily due to massive famine hitting large populations.  There were more people than the resources of the land or government could support.  Throughout China's history there always seems to be a tension between a large and growing poplation, which is often many times larger than other civilizations at any time period, and the access to food and resources.  Each dynasty issued policies to try to deal with a famine, drought, plague or other lack of resources.  Now it seems the problem is a growing older population coupled with a low birth rate to be the future care of this older group.

China in the 21st century seems it is no different, but since the 1979 "One Child" policy was inacted the issue was to keep the population down and now that they got it down the growing retired population needs to be supported by a younger working generation.  The graphs and info in this article are perfect to add to materials even in the earlier dynasty units, as it gives students the larger picture of China's continual struggle to find good land for agriculture, food and other resources to sustain their population and at the same time, a large enough working population to keep the overall population going.  

I was unaware that there were over 500 Confucian schools funded by Xi Jinping inside the U.S.!  As I read this article I was thinking that he was sounding like a “Neo” Neo Confucian leader. Almost as if he has set in motion many of the ancient ideals of order, behavior, efficiency, loyalty and a new form of filial piety to the party or system… or to himself.  A militant, expansionist confucian school.

He is definitely aggressive in the areas of  economic growth, technological expansion, infrastructure building and military expansion.  It is interesting to wonder how far this can keep going as the Council of Foreign Relations does in this piece by Elizabeth Starr.  The push back on Xi may just be by his own people, especially those with limited internet access or those affected by family disappearances or revoked passports.

Certainly many are benefiting from Xi’s policies, including U.S. firms and those in Korea, Japan and India that are working with Chinese firms, but how long will all these nations and corporations tolerate or accept his China first attitudes?  Will it go too far?

Building islands and expanding the military is one thing in the South China Sea, but setting up bases in other regional hotspots or entering into territories that have been overseen by other powers may be too much for the other powers of the world… and not just the U.S.  Russia, the E.U. or others may grow tired of losing influence, money or intellectual property and call out China and Xi’s “China First” policies. It is a curious dilemma since everyone’s economic future are tied together.

Starr does raise some good points to question if the traditional U.S. policy to ‘lead by example’ will be enough to convince China to be a bit more democratic or to at least respect copyrights or others property, intellectual or otherwise.  Our current administration is trying to pressure with tariffs, but will that be something that will even make Xi blink?

The article 

• China's New Revolution, 2018 was extremly interersting to see how China's new reforms  using the new technology to revamp the new censors to protect the power of the party. 
• In the international setting China is taking advange of the void the  US has left when, we (USA) started looking into nationalist ideals rather than globalist ideals. Due to such circumtances now China has the ability to set the rules of how globalization is going to shape up in the near future. 

I'm interested in the topic of land use and issues of territorial dispute in modern China. From the creation of land through the redirection of the river sediment to the larger projects of land reclamation happening in the South China Sea, China continues to grapple with it's natural boundaries. While from a distance China may appear to have eschewed empire building because iterations of "China" have existed in similar geographic footprints, it is clear from the demograpic diversity and geograpic size of the modern nation that empire building was plausible goal. How does this look today? Are geograpic/territorial disputes and regional power balance natural responses to the territorial limitations China faces? How does this fit in to the China dream?

The intensive cultivation of land, particularly in the eastern and south eastern river basins, and the growth in population is a familiar pattern that can also be found in the medieval period. Improvements in various technologies that dramatically increase yield lead to bursts in economic activity and urbanization. These jumps in growth of both population and economy seem to occur several times historically. I'd like to know more about the establishment of the Peoples Republic and the related population spike and the famine and reactive policies that followed. 

How do the one child policy, ethnicity, and the hukou system intersect?

I have the benefit of arriving late to the party here and I must say that the level of discourse and thoughtfulness displayed by all of you is truly impressive!

In our introductory session last week, Phillip mentioned that he’s interested in how members of ethnic minorities (e.g, non ”Han” Chinese people) are treated in China.  I share this interest.

I teach all social studies subjects at a large school for the deaf in NYC.  Most of the profoundly deaf students at my school are children of color who live in poverty.  Many of these students are immigrants or the children of immigrants. While our students learn written English in school, their primary language is ASL.

One huge challenge my students face is that they share no common language with their parents. The effects of this lack of communication in the home are devastating. My school does everything within its institutional power to remedy these effects. Yet sadly, my students continue to lag behind their hearing peers with respect to English language literacy, critical thinking skills, and world learning.  Most of our students leave high school reading at or below the 3rd grade level as measured by standardized tests. In other words, they graduate while they are still learning to read, not reading to learn.

From experience, I know that subject matter that somehow relates to my students’ experiences as deaf people is more likely to motivate and interest them.  Viewing and reading this week’s materials made me think about how my students are members of an ethnic and linguistic minority. Many adult deaf workers also struggle economically.  So, Chan’s footnote at the end of the hukou system article caught my attention: Chan mentions that some scholars have drawn an analogy between the hukou system and apartheid in South Africa.  This got me thinking.

The U.S. and other countries have a sad history of applying eugenics theory to the deaf.  I’m curious about the interplay between China’s “one child” policy, the hukou system, and ethnicity.  Is this interplay racialized? How do these policies affect China’s ethnic and linguistic minorities? I’ve heard anecdotally that China has sometimes allowed members of selected minorities to have more than one child.  Today, given uprisings among the Uighurs in Xinjiang Province, for example, how has the CCP applied its fertility, mobility, and economic policies as a measure of oppression against these groups? I see this inquiry--comparing the political, social, economic, and geographic status of some of these minorities--as a way for my students to better understand their role in our society.