China's one-child policy

We had talked some in class about the demographics of China, specifically when it comes to men outnumbering women. I kinda wanted to find something about that.

I ended up finding this article from the Economist. It's a few years old, but it's probably still relevant. It talks about the one-child policy and the effects it's had, but it also brings up the possibility that the policy was not entirely necessary. Apparently the birth rate was already getting lower by the time the policy was enacted. In addition,  specific academic mentioned in the article argues that there are other ways to lower the birth rate. "Countries that simply improved access to contraceptives—Thailand and Indonesia, for instance—did as much to reduce fertility as China, with its draconian policies." It is also mentioned that "in practice, the one-child policy varies from place to place; it hardly applies to China's minorities and is more lightly applied in rural areas—and there is no population boom in those parts."

Obviously this isn't everyone's opinion, but it does seem to make sense.  I'm taking a geography class right now, and we've talked about how people in developed countries tend to have fewer children than those in less developed countries. There are many reasons for this, but since China has developed so rapidly, it makes sense that they would follow the same pattern. I don't think I know enough about the issue to form an opinion, but it's interesting to see the arguments being made.

So here's some news from China: apparently, their government wants to abolish the goals for conviction and arrest that police are currently held to.

This was news to me - I didn't know that China had something like this in place. But apparently, the police there are evaluated largely on how many arrests lead to convictions, and how many trials result in guilty verdicts. That seems like a really bad idea, because then what's the point of having a trial? The article I found also notes that because of this, police are reluctant to arrest anyone for minor crimes unless they're sure they can get a confession out of them. Similarly, they've been known to use torture to get confessions, regardless of whether the person in question actually committed the crime. 

This kind of practice has been in place since the 90s, but apparently the Chinese government realized that it's a bad idea, so they're aiming to rethink the way they evaluate their police. The article says that this has to do with a lot of recent convictions being overturned upon further investigation. China isn't exactly known for having a fair legal system, but hopefully this will make things a bit more reasonable when dealing with day-to-day crime.

The article in question can be found here.