{"id":145850,"date":"2012-11-04T16:58:13","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T00:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=145850"},"modified":"2020-09-30T16:53:57","modified_gmt":"2020-09-30T23:53:57","slug":"online-poll-favors-ending-of-one-child-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2012\/11\/online-poll-favors-ending-of-one-child-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Online Poll Favors Ending One-Child Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"
David Wertime at Tea Leaf Nation analyzes the\u00a0recent online poll\u00a0that shows overwhelming support for ending the one-child policy among China’s\u00a0weibo<\/em> users:<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n The debate on China\u2019s one-child policy has gone very public. A recent poll on Sina Weibo, a popular microblogging platform in China, asked the question, \u201cDo you support allowing two children?\u201d And it\u2019s a 1984 Reagan-versus-Mondale style blowout. Out of 30,006 votes cast, 71.7% support abrogating the one-child policy, and only 28.3% want to keep it.<\/p>\n […]\u00a0When reading the survey results, however, the standard caveats apply: Those using Chinese social media tend to be younger, richer, and more educated than the Chinese population at large. Furthermore, only a small subset of that subset has chosen to participate in the poll. But the younger, richer, and digitally active Chinese who use social media regularly are many of the same people who will be making policy in the coming decades, and also making choices about whether or not to have children\u2013and perhaps how many.<\/p>\n The most-read post on this debate appears to have come from Charles Xue, a well-known angel investor and web commenter. Xue\u00a0describes how, \u201cIn the 50s\u2026we blindly followed the Soviet Union, which had lost many people in the second world war and so encouraged births on a wide scale. They had few people and much land. The Dean of Peking University at that time, Ma Yinchu, felt that China had many people and not much [arable] land, with limited resources and primitive agricultural methods.\u201d Xue describes how Ma thus suggested a limit of two children per household to keep birth rates normal.<\/p>\n […]\u00a0Now, thirty years later, \u201cthere are 20% fewer 20 year olds than there are 30 year olds!\u201d The saddest part, according to Xue, is the\u00a0shidu\u00a0<\/em>or \u201clost singles\u201d families, Chinese slang for couples from the 50s and 60s who lived through great hardship, had their one child, then lost their one child to illness or accidents and are now forced to grow old with no one to care for them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n See also\u00a0Report: China Should End One-Child Policy via CDT<\/a>. Read more on China’s one-child policy<\/a> via CDT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" David Wertime at Tea Leaf Nation analyzes the\u00a0recent online poll\u00a0that shows overwhelming support for ending the one-child policy among China’s\u00a0weibo users: The debate on China\u2019s one-child policy has gone very public. A recent poll on Sina Weibo, a popular microblogging platform in China, asked the question, \u201cDo you support allowing two children?\u201d And it\u2019s a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1061,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2,14744,14745,14746,100,5],"tags":[446,2155,96,357,4667,659,14820],"class_list":["post-145850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-level-2-article","category-level-3-article","category-level-4-article","category-politics","category-society","tag-aging","tag-demographics","tag-family-planning","tag-one-child-policy","tag-online-public-opinion","tag-population-control","tag-weibo","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n