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China Boasts of Having Prevented 400 Million Births in 30 Years

By John-Henry Westen and Hilary White

BEIJING, March 22, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - China's Minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission boasted Tuesday of having prevented 400 million births in the past three decades.  In an interview posted on China's government website, Zhang Weiqing explained that their population control policy has achieved in 30 years what has taken developed countries 100 years to accomplish.  "The goal of ensuring Chinese people a relatively comfortable life would not be achieved if we had 400 million more people," Zhang said.
 
China's touted one-child policy has been denounced by a multitude of governments (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/mar/05030107.html ) and human rights organizations (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/may/05052706.html ) for its coercion and brutality.  Forced abortion and forced sterilization, and financial penalties for going over the birth quota are commonplace, yet despite these realities, the United Nations Population Fund continues (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/feb/06020202.html ) to participate in the Chinese population program, a decision which has cost the UN organization substantial funding from the United States. (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/sep/05091905.html )
 
Asia News reported yesterday that China, despite international outcries, fully intends to continue its coercive population control policies. In an argument that will be familiar to western population controllers, the Chinese government linked low population with economic development.
 
In addition to its slowing population growth by abortion, China’s population is aging. With 400 million fewer children, people in China aged 60 years or more rose by 0.76 per cent compared to the number of children aged up to 14 years which fell by 2.62 per cent.  
 
The gap is also increasing between the numbers of men and women with China’s traditional preference for boys. The census found there were 106.3 men for every 100 women, a drop of 0.44 per cent from five years ago, with 51.53 per cent of the population male and 48.47 per cent female.
 
China’s birth rate has recently dropped below the replacement level in 1990 of 2.1 children per woman to 1.8.

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