Last night I watched a documentary on Amazon titled "One Child Nation" , made by a young woman from China who has become an American. In the movie she learns how China's one child policy ,which was in effect from the seventies till 2015 ,affected her own family. An aunt gave birth to a girl, then managed to give the child over to a baby broker who sold her cousin to an orphanage, who in turn sold her to a western family seeking to adopt. The aunt felt she had no choice . If she raised the girl she would never have the honor of raising a boy. Many other female babies were not so lucky. They were left to die in public spaces and by the sides of the roads.
The penalties for not complying with the One Child policy were draconian. If you attempted to have one more child than the state permitted you would be chased down ,arrested ,hog tied, and brought to the midwives whose responsibility was to abort surplus babies and sterilize the mothers. They did the job efficiently and without mercy, sometimes delivering live children that they would suffocate.
Even the filmmaker's mother defends the policy, saying that before it was implemented there wasn't enough food for everyone and China could never have raised itself out of crushing poverty without that policy. Everyone in this long chain of evil from local Communist party officials, to midwives, to baby brokers, to the mothers themselves said the very same thing to her microphone " we had no choice ". One person reminded her that all of these actions were to protect the collective. Individuals acting for themselves destroy the collective and after that you have nothing.
That's one way of thinking. It's not mine of course. Many equate individualism with selfishness. Many believe collectivism is always preferable, and that capitalism is exploitation. Few of them bother to notice that our innovators and entrepreneurs are rarely selfish people themselves, or that even if they were it does not stop the businesses or innovations they have created from benefiting us with better jobs, more choice, better products and lower prices. If that's selfishness, give me more of it! Producers are not selfish. Takers are. That's not a paradox. It's to be expected.
What else can be expected? Maybe that the ruling party that forced millions of abortions and sterilizations upon it's people over decades would not have much of a problem arresting and detaining doctors and journalists in Wuhan while they were spreading the message that a deadly new virus was passing from person to person in that city. The actions the CCP took in December and January were aimed primarily at covering up news they were uncomfortable with rather than informing the world about the danger that was coming it's way and cooperating with international virologists and epidemiologists who may have been instrumental in containing the threat at a time when that was still possible. By the time party officials took containing the virus as seriously as containing knowledge of the virus ( January 23 ) it was already too late.
Considering the enormity of the offense I expect China to pay a high price for its perfidy. You cannot have a nation with the disdain China has for human rights on the fast track to becoming the worlds leading superpower. That would be disastrous. Something had to give ,and it already has. Japan is bringing it's industries out of China and back home again, the U.S. ,Australia, and the E.U. will likely follow. Boycotts may follow. I've highlighted two examples of that disdain. If I had space enough I could list dozens more.
The CCP may not survive the backlash. Without a market to sell their goods outside of China their much vaunted economic growth is headed for a grinding halt. President Xi could loose his job. The party that has ruled China since 1949 , responsible for the deaths of tens of millions, could find that karma is a bitch. That's worth celebrating. The Chinese people deserve better.
The Covid-19 virus and it's knock on effects is the most significant event in history since the second war war. There are consequences. There are lessons to learn. I've learned this at least from my own experience, that our lives have been built on assumptions, and most of those assumptions no longer hold true. It's time to for a major rethink. Empires are falling. Let's not join them.
The penalties for not complying with the One Child policy were draconian. If you attempted to have one more child than the state permitted you would be chased down ,arrested ,hog tied, and brought to the midwives whose responsibility was to abort surplus babies and sterilize the mothers. They did the job efficiently and without mercy, sometimes delivering live children that they would suffocate.
Even the filmmaker's mother defends the policy, saying that before it was implemented there wasn't enough food for everyone and China could never have raised itself out of crushing poverty without that policy. Everyone in this long chain of evil from local Communist party officials, to midwives, to baby brokers, to the mothers themselves said the very same thing to her microphone " we had no choice ". One person reminded her that all of these actions were to protect the collective. Individuals acting for themselves destroy the collective and after that you have nothing.
That's one way of thinking. It's not mine of course. Many equate individualism with selfishness. Many believe collectivism is always preferable, and that capitalism is exploitation. Few of them bother to notice that our innovators and entrepreneurs are rarely selfish people themselves, or that even if they were it does not stop the businesses or innovations they have created from benefiting us with better jobs, more choice, better products and lower prices. If that's selfishness, give me more of it! Producers are not selfish. Takers are. That's not a paradox. It's to be expected.
What else can be expected? Maybe that the ruling party that forced millions of abortions and sterilizations upon it's people over decades would not have much of a problem arresting and detaining doctors and journalists in Wuhan while they were spreading the message that a deadly new virus was passing from person to person in that city. The actions the CCP took in December and January were aimed primarily at covering up news they were uncomfortable with rather than informing the world about the danger that was coming it's way and cooperating with international virologists and epidemiologists who may have been instrumental in containing the threat at a time when that was still possible. By the time party officials took containing the virus as seriously as containing knowledge of the virus ( January 23 ) it was already too late.
Considering the enormity of the offense I expect China to pay a high price for its perfidy. You cannot have a nation with the disdain China has for human rights on the fast track to becoming the worlds leading superpower. That would be disastrous. Something had to give ,and it already has. Japan is bringing it's industries out of China and back home again, the U.S. ,Australia, and the E.U. will likely follow. Boycotts may follow. I've highlighted two examples of that disdain. If I had space enough I could list dozens more.
The CCP may not survive the backlash. Without a market to sell their goods outside of China their much vaunted economic growth is headed for a grinding halt. President Xi could loose his job. The party that has ruled China since 1949 , responsible for the deaths of tens of millions, could find that karma is a bitch. That's worth celebrating. The Chinese people deserve better.
The Covid-19 virus and it's knock on effects is the most significant event in history since the second war war. There are consequences. There are lessons to learn. I've learned this at least from my own experience, that our lives have been built on assumptions, and most of those assumptions no longer hold true. It's time to for a major rethink. Empires are falling. Let's not join them.
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