It feels strange to me why they're not just getting rid of the limit at this point. Especially since they already seem to have trouble getting couples to have two children.
Consider if something unlikely happens that completely changes the dynamic of families, e.g. a cultural shift where women stay more at home and have more babies. If the average family started having more than 3 children, they would consider bringing back this system, which could cause big social problems, as it costs more social capital to bring back an unpopular system than to simply maintain it.
https://qz.com/africa/1963566/how-many-chinese-workers-are-t...
Any policy defined in terms of "X children per couple" or "X children per woman" is, by definition, exponential growth.
When X is 3, it's very rapid exponential growth.
Per this argument, I would think that an exponential function is different to something experiencing exponential growth. One of them is a definition, the other is a description. They aren’t really interchangeable when it comes to communicating a point.
> not growth, forget about exponential.
This is really weird phrasing, since you're on much stronger ground saying "not growth" [arguable] than you are "not exponential" [flat wrong]. I just pointed out that defining results in terms of "X children per woman" will always necessarily produce an exponential curve. That's the definition of an exponential curve. If you want to distinguish between "growth" and "decay", you can say so, but you're still stuck with labeling them "exponential growth" and "exponential decay".
This is technically correct, but also purely academic. If I called the function f(X) = 5 in an analysis exam "exponential", then I would be laughed out of this exam, and for a good reason.
> This is really weird phrasing, since you're on much stronger ground saying "not growth" [arguable] than you are "not exponential" [flat wrong].
"not A" implies "not (A and B)". That's all I meant.
That's not true at all; you'd have to look at the context. If you called it an exponential function as part of a discussion of exponential functions, you'd raise no eyebrows.
Even if you were doing it in a weird way, it's unlikely you'd get laughed out of the room; math exams are not known for penalizing you for being correct.
The 3 children per woman limit is still the smallest number that accommodates for the 2.1 average required for replacement level. To achieve equilibrium and avoid rapid growth the limit must be set to 3 and then hope that the average will be drawn down enough by the women who can't/won't have children for various reasons.
Not advocating for this policy, and I am not considering how well it works in practice and the morality. This is just a reductionist model.
I don't want anyone tell me, how much children I can or should have.
We got to make sure the work life balance is in order for people to have the time and money to afford a family and give adequate support like daycare etc.
But apart from that, I really don't like some buerocrats in some buerau somewhere calculating the "correct" number of births. That regulates itself. There is immigration and emigration. There is automatisation (elderly care), better medicine, so older people can tend to themself longer and less need of a "dumb" workforce etc. etc.
Trying to calculate it and declare meassures based that, can only fail in my opinion.
Stuff like this can and does result from bureaucrats / policy-makers deciding what an ideal number of children (for the well-being of the society) is. You say "that regulates itself", but clearly the things you listed (work-life balance, economic prosperity, daycare, etc.) are not self-regulating. You also mention specifically that this matter doesn't need centralized solving, but that's different from what you went on to say, that the factors that go into determining how many children are had are self-regulating. A decentralized approach does nothing to guarantee that.
Whether you like it or not, the government has a large influence over all of these matters. Choosing to not regulate them is a choice that will affect how they turn out. Likewise, the very structure of the economy and social systems will affect these things. A government can not avoid determining what those are like, whether by the government's active influence over them, or its more laissez-faire approach. When you have a monopoly on violence, you cannot truely recuse yourself from what happens in the society around you, and if you lack a monopoly on violence then you aren't really a government.
Because you know, what worked best for us? All the things that are not regulated, like grandparents watching over the childs or teenage babysitter. The very well regulated state kindergarten?
It was a nightmare so far, even though we have a quite good kindergarden compared to the various stories I heard so far of what is possible, as well. And sure, Corona was not helping with that either, but I know quite some people in social jobs and I listen to their stories since way before corona.
Attacking both sides of a problem is sometimes necessary for effectively dealing with it.
And yes, it didn’t apply to rural areas as well.
I had a friend in China who lived in Shenzhen and has 3 children, he essentially just payed two fines (not even sure how much it was).
„I paid a 50000 yuan fine for you just so you could live! Now do your homework!“
Every parent spends lots of money on their children. It should be a gift, not a dept.
As a very broad generalisation, it's usually less educated couples that go for the far higher numbers.
Cell division is globally and locally restricted in the body in ways single cellular organisms aren't. We have "growth hormone" which encourages or suppresses division at certain periods of life and even certain periods of day and night.
And uncontrolled growth we call "tumors" and "cancer" and it leads to the rapid decline and death of the multicellular organism, and with that, the death of all those cancer cells as well.
So who knows what the future holds. Maybe that's not a China thing. Maybe it's a society thing, that we've not wised up to yet.