China’s population collapse is a national crime

Author: Su Xiaokang

[Note: China has reached a turning point in its population, beginning to decline. This is the consequence of seventy years of absurd population policies, caused by national errors—namely, the CCP leaders’ ‘head-slapping decisions.’ There were two instances: the first was Mao Zedong’s ignorant indulgence, which caused the population to jump from 500 million to 1 billion in 38 years; The second was Deng Xiaoping’s “one-child policy,” which killed 400 million babies. The population problem was the most exemplary example of how under this regime, Chinese people were worse than slaves—livestock, at the mercy of others. In 27 years, I was invited by the Pacific Forum (CSIS) and wrote an analytical article. 】

First, population pressure is the root cause of all crises in China

1. 1.4 billion: the total population of China that has been concealed

According to information I obtained from within China, the total population that government officials privately know has actually reached 1.4 billion, meaning the government’s publicly announced figure of “1.2 billion people in 1995” was concealed as 200 million.

This concealment would include the following implications:

a. The Chinese government is dishonest to the world on population issues;

b. The exact population figures of China are a mystery; in fact, the government lacks statistical power

c The Chinese government’s concealment is mainly aimed at maintaining so-called “stability” domestically;

The international community and the West still view today’s China as having “1.2 billion people,” but it will all be an illusion.

2. Where did population control policies fail?

A. The effectiveness of applying the planned economy model to population control is questionable

Regarding the state’s role in population control, China underwent an absurd transformation. After 1949, the regime initially implemented an indulgent population policy, known as Mao Zedong’s so-called “more people make things easier.” For twenty consecutive years, the population growth rate remained above 20% per 1,000, and in 38 years, the population grew from 500 million to 1 billion, creating a world-unprecedented type of population reproduction with high birth rates and natural growth rates. This process developed into the 1970s when a sudden and severe measure cut it off in half: the so-called “national policy” of the Chinese government’s mandatory “one-child policy” and a natural population growth rate not exceeding 12%. The question is: can an irrational natural process be successfully reversed by another extreme radical artificial measure?

A fundamental difficulty China faces in applying a centrally commanded planned economy model to population control is the lack of the function of “mathematically manageable,” which is reflected in:

— Inaccurate demographic statistics used as the basis for the plan;

— The impossibility of replacing the natural pace of population growth with artificially imagined planned data;

— Using central directives to rigidly specify the growth rates of local provinces to summarize the falsity of national growth rates.

The

Chinese government implements a population control “Five-Year Plan” every five years. The “Seventh Five-Year” population plan formulated in 1985 called for population control at 1.113 billion after five years, but 1990 statistics showed the plan was exceeded by 30 million. Peng Peiyun, director of China’s Family Planning Commission, analyzed the reasons for failure and said that the Seventh Five-Year Plan underestimated about 13 million people during formulation. The “Eighth Five-Year” population plan and the ten-year population plan formulated in 1991 also called for keeping the population within 1.3 billion by the end of this century, but in August 1995, the Chinese government issued a “White Paper” announcing the population had reached 1.2 billion.

There are two unverifiable factors involved: First, is the publicly available figure of 1.2 billion real? Second, the “Eighth Five-Year Plan” is a continuation of the failed “Seventh Five-Year Plan” approach, with highly uncertain consequences. One clear factor is that the key to China’s population policy is controlling the structure of so-called “women of childbearing age,” but during this period, the number of women in the peak fertility period reached over 120 million. No matter how strict the controls, they could not suppress the number of unplanned births, which they had anticipated.

The second difficulty in China’s population control is the strict control policy, which lacks the necessary education level and knowledge. The Chinese government’s propaganda and preaching face 260 million illiterate and semi-literate people (accounting for 22.27% of the total population, most of whom are rural women), with extremely little effect. This factor is both the reason for public resistance to the family planning policy (the basic motivation for resistance comes not only from strong and invisible traditional habits but also from a more primitive urge to have children), and also the main reason for the policy implementation becoming rough. This manifests as grassroots officials enforcing the policy and so-called “family planning task forces” deep into rural areas, imposing forced abortions, economic penalties, and preventive fallopian tube ligation on all women of reproductive age who violate the policy (pregnant or giving birth without fertility quotas). Policy deviations and reactions during this process are commonplace.

In short, treating childbirth as an economic activity and controlling it through state planning is questionable, much like China’s failed planned economy. In recent years, China’s annual births have been around 21 million, a net increase of 14 million, and this growth rate will reach about 17 million per year (relative to a medium-sized country) toward the end of this century. The Chinese government estimates that once it surpasses 1.3 billion, the total population is expected to be between 1.5 and 1.6 billion by the middle of the next century, and if uncontrolled, it could reach 1.8 billion. At that time, China’s population issues will truly become a global dilemma.

b. The anti-humanitarian and anti-ethical dilemma of population control

China has no Western population theory, only traditional views on childbirth that have been practiced for thousands of years. This view places the passing of children and lineage as the top responsibility in life. The saying goes, “Of the three unfilial acts, having no descendants is the worst,” which remains a fundamental value among the people in this century. These basic values were supported by China’s rural natural economy, namely that backward production methods were mainly sustained by increasing labor. The smallholder economy and the patriarchal clan system both placed great emphasis on traditional customs such as prosperous descendants, preference for sons over daughters, and raising children for old age. Completely changing ethical concepts before changing production methods is bound to cause strong social upheaval. The unprecedented ethical dilemmas occurring in human fertility in China are:

— People choose to have children or not in fear of having children;

— Childbirth became illegal for the first time; pregnant women fled en masse to avoid forced abortions, hiding in mountains and marshes

— Artificial gender elimination led to the rampant trend of drowning female infants, causing an imbalance in the gender ratio between girls and girls. According to publicly available data, such as the 1987 population sample survey, the mortality rate for girls was higher than that of boys. In rural areas, one-year-old girls accounted for 47.15% of the total population (less than 48.33% of females), with a gender ratio of 112.1 to 100. However, demographers familiar with rural conditions privately estimated that drowned baby girls plus “overbirth babies” who were forced to abort number in the millions nationwide each year;

All of the above are well-known, but there are also things that the outside world rarely knows:

— The crisis of doctors’ professional ethics, including: forcing women to have abortions, and even using drugs to kill babies over seven months old who survive abortions

— A medical consequence of mass abortion: widespread use of stillborn infants in anatomy, organ transplantation, as well as the development and use of drugs and nutritional supplements

— Those born without planned quotas are called ‘black children’ among the public, losing basic rights to survival including rations; Families with children who exceed the planned birth plan often leave their hometowns and wander elsewhere, leading to the emergence of ‘black villages’ and ‘black tun’ in many suburban cities in China to avoid family planning participants.

What I want to say is that the limited control effect of China’s population policy is achieved by depriving people of basic human rights, harming traditional values, and sacrificing countless lives—the cost is terrifying.

2. The history and reality of overseas migration

1. Inland and marine

Immigration to the Pacific region in China has been a thousand-year-old historical trend, dating back at least to the sixteenth century. This involves a feature of Chinese history: it was the gradual transition from inland Asia to the sea. The Han Chinese faced enemies in the Han and Tang empires were nomadic peoples from the northwest, known as the ‘Hu people.’ This pressure lasted for a thousand years, constantly pushing the economic and cultural center of Han civilization southward. By the Southern Song dynasty, China’s economic center was already south of the Yangtze River. The biggest difference from the north’s economic center was that overseas trade was highly developed, and this trade was inseparable from developing the South Pacific region. From a cultural perspective, ancient China showed a trend of transitioning from inland civilization to maritime civilization. Under this trend, a historical habit of migrating to the Pacific had already formed. Many Chinese people in Southeast Asian countries were descendants of early immigrants.

However, this historical trend paused during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The Ming imposed a sea ban because Japanese pirates, known as ‘Wokou,’ harassed the coast, while the Qing continued the policy because the Qing government was a northern nomadic people. This pause is especially significant, as it has led to the transformation of normal overseas trade and immigration due to the sea ban into smuggling and smuggling. Therefore, smuggling and smuggling have a history of three to four hundred years in China. The Ming and Qing dynasties were relatively autocratic dynasties in Chinese history. In coastal provinces, especially in Fujian and Guangdong, people migrated abroad to escape autocracy and poverty, which became a historical habit. For example, before the seventeenth century, Taiwan was basically an empty island; it only began to develop after a large influx of Fujianese settlers from the late Ming and early Qing dynasties.

In the past two decades, due to the weakening control of the Chinese Communist regime, the tide of coastal migration from China has resurged.

2. Deterioration of living space is the fundamental reason for modern Chinese migration

The

space suitable for human habitation in mainland China is very limited. Plains and hills account for only 22%, arable land accounts for one-tenth of the national territory, and in the past decade, the population has increased by over 100 million, while arable land has decreased by more than 55 million mu. In the bumper year of 1990, per capita grain consumption was 780 jin, one-third of developed countries. Per capita forest, grassland, and freshwater resources are one-ninth, one-third, and one-quarter of the world average, respectively. Only 47% are habitable humid or semi-humid areas. The per capita forest area is 11% of the world average. The national labor force is about 100 million, with illiteracy or semi-illiteracy accounting for 22.27%. In cities, the living area per capita is 8.8 square meters. There are 5 buses per 10,000 people, 23 hospital beds, and 15.6 doctors.

The

August 1995 white paper “China’s Family Planning” anxiously warned that if China cannot alleviate the enormous population pressure on resources, ecological and environmental degradation in the coming decades will threaten the living conditions of the vast majority of Chinese people and the sustainable development of society. Of course, it avoids a bigger concern: what threats will the survival of hundreds of millions of people pose to the survival of peripheral countries and regions, and what unpredictable catastrophic consequences will it bring to stability in Asia and the world?

Such resource conditions become even scarcer under population pressure; as the population increases, arable land decreases, and per capita grain holdings cannot increase; The surplus labor force in rural areas has been increasing year by year, with no way out.

Thus, the Pacific became the only way out. Eight provinces and regions with birth rates above 24 per thousand (Xinjiang, Henan, Hainan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Fujian, Ningxia, Qinghai) are not only a blind spot where population growth is hard to control and predict, but also the origin of internal population movement on the mainland. Coastal areas are also sources of overseas migration. From a geographic distribution perspective, the mainland’s population density increased from west to east, reaching its highest density along the southeastern coast, making it the area with the greatest pressure on living space. Therefore, natural population dispersal into the Pacific region is almost inevitable. High-populated areas in the northwest, such as Xinjiang, may spread westward, and the three northeastern provinces may also expand northward, but the two provinces near the East China Sea—Fujian and Zhejiang (mainly Wenzhou)—have already begun large-scale immigration through various smuggling methods into Southeast Asia, East Asia, North America, Europe, and Oceania. A more direct driving force is the pressure of living space in these two provinces and the surplus labor force in transition, which has triggered a renewed historical “gold rush.”

Of course, there were two other factors behind the “gold rush”: first, the economic rise in East Asia and the Pacific Rim driven by demand for cheap labor; second, the rise of immigration brought huge profits to triad organizations in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Chinese communities in Europe and America. These illegal “human trafficker” groups had gradually developed international expertise since the “refugee wave” in Vietnam in the 1970s.

However, the reasons for the large number of urban migrants in China to the West differ slightly from those in rural areas: mainly a psychological breakdown under an authoritarian system.

3. The aftereffects of psychological breakdown among Chinese people

The Western world has long overlooked a psychological phenomenon produced by China’s “reform and opening up”: the longing for freedom and prosperity in Western developed countries, a longing that was impossible in the past Mao Zedong’s era. So, leaving China for the West became a fashion in Deng Xiaoping’s era. People achieved this goal through their own abilities: rural youth relied on illegal immigration, urban students depended on studying abroad, middle-aged intellectuals relied on visits and exchanges, and girls married into “foreigners.” This phenomenon in China differs from the “refugee wave” in Vietnam in the 1970s. It is not a form of flee directly threatened but a planned “mass exodus” composed of population pressure, lack of human rights, economic incentives, shattered ideals, and other factors. It is somewhat similar to the flight of East Germans to West Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall, except it occurred between China and the entire world.

Analyzing this psychological phenomenon is not something this article can do. I will only offer a few references:

— In the early 1980s, China resumed its policy of studying abroad in the West, sparking the initial “going abroad craze.” These students who went to the US and Europe were regarded by Chinese as “lucky ones who escaped hardship.”

—In the

mid-1980s, Deng Xiaoping’s reforms were frustrated, people could not bear rising prices, and China was filled with a fear of ‘sinking ships,’ and the mentality of ‘escaping the sinking’ began to emerge. This not only fueled a frenzy among university students to study abroad, but also triggered smuggling out of coastal areas

— The 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and its political reckoning were the most direct triggers of the “Great Exodus.” The “political escape” of pro-democracy activists also lured the entire population to legally or illegally “go abroad,” with large numbers traveling through Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia, then rerouting to Europe, North America, and Australia. The methods were like “crossing the sea with each one showing their skills”: some impersonated “pro-democracy activists,” some paid for fake passports from Thailand, Malaysia, and other countries, and of course, many farmers simply stowed across the country. Illegal smuggling syndicates for profit also began soliciting “business” in China during this period, including selling fake passports to lure stowaways. It should be noted that Western countries offering ‘political asylum’ to Chinese people due to the June Fourth incident is also a huge temptation, which will be discussed later.

3. Government actions

1. The Chinese government’s ‘refugee politics.’

As mentioned above, the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident was a turning point—not only because the wave of pro-democracy activists fleeing after June Fourth marked the beginning of the ‘Chinese immigration wave,’ but also because it marked the beginning of the Chinese government’s ‘refugee politics.’

It should be noted that prior to this, the Chinese government’s consistent policy was to control people’s free travel abroad. Judging by its cooperation with the Hong Kong government to stop illegal immigration into Hong Kong, it is not a deliberate “refugee exporter.” This changed after June 4th.

This wave of exodus was used by the CCP as a political tool, with the main evidence being Deng Xiaoping’s conversation in Shanghai on the eve of spring 1991, in which he said: “If the West continues to insist on economic sanctions, it might as well ease up coastal areas, letting those who want to flee escape escape and follow in Vietnam’s footsteps.” This is the first time the CCP leadership has used the concept of ‘refugee politics.’

It is worth noting that Deng Xiaoping directly cited Vietnam’s precedent. The “refugee wave” in Vietnam in the 1970s was a brutal act by the government openly exploiting “population export” for profit and to ease domestic conflicts. Since 1978, how many Vietnamese have illegally crossed into the South China Sea? How many have died? To this day, it remains a mystery, but two numbers are known: over 1.5 million people were resettled abroad, while about 40,000 remain in refugee camps in Hong Kong and Southeast Asian countries. The Chinese government is well aware of the pressure this disaster created by the Vietnamese government on the entire world. They believe this pressure can force the West and the international community to yield to them, because no one but them can control the Chinese to “flee” like the Vietnamese did. Deng Xiaoping continued his previous statement, saying: “If the Chinese Communist Party loses control over China, over 100 million Chinese will flee to Indonesia, 10 million to Thailand, and 500,000 to Hong Kong.”

We have no data to confirm this. Is this just a threat, or has the Chinese government really “relaxed its approach to coastal regions” in recent years? But one thing is certain: if China’s top leader Deng Xiaoping dares to speak this way publicly, then coastal local governments at all levels will dare to do so. At least this approach will not face criticism from the central government and is also a way to ease local population pressure. Therefore, governments at all levels in China at least “turn a blind eye to the smuggling of people abroad.”

“Loose and loose” is a kind of game that can be tacit, indulgent, or even manipulated. Since 1990, China’s smuggling to the West has surged, making it a ‘refugee-exporting country,’ showing that the Chinese government has indeed ‘relaxed,’ because if it hadn’t relaxed, it would have been impossible for so many people to escape.

2. Testing grounds: Hong Kong and Taiwan

There are also two instances that can be considered ‘pine and pine pride.’

First, regarding Hong Kong—the wave of mainland Chinese “fleeing to Hong Kong” has never ceased over the past thirty years. The Chinese government has an agreement with the British Hong Kong government that stowaways can be repatriated. However, after June Fourth, Hong Kong civilians helped pro-democracy activists escape, so the Chinese government deliberately “sent” criminal prisoners across the border to commit crimes in Hong Kong, forcing the British Hong Kong government to reach an agreement to “repatriate” the pro-democracy activists.

Second, regarding Taiwan, mainly organizing harassment by fishermen, the CCP’s ability to do so is evidence of its ability to “release” Hou Dejian from the sea back to Taiwan in 1990. Hou Dejian is a Taiwanese singer who moved to Beijing in 1988 and was detained by the Chinese government for his involvement in the Tiananmen Square incident. On June 18, 1990, Beijing police escorted him to Fujian, and in the early morning he was sent to international waters on a border patrol boat (Public Security Border Defense No. 231); Meanwhile, Chinese border guards had arranged for a Taiwanese fishing boat named Jin Yuanfa No. 6 and ordered its captain to smuggle Hou Dejian back to Taiwan. This fishing boat hid Hou Dejian at the bottom of a warehouse and sent him near Yilan Harbor in Taiwan, where he could switch to a smaller boat to avoid border inspections and land safely. This incident shocked both the government and the public in Taiwan, with people questioning the government: Beijing police can so easily ‘send’ a person into Taiwan—what border defense does Taiwan have? Beijing’s choice to send Hou Dejian, Taiwan’s ‘star singer,’ is undoubtedly sending Taiwan: I can send Hou Dejian, and I can send even more people!

I give this example to illustrate that the Chinese government’s intention to exploit ‘refugee politics’ is still in the experimental stage. Although China’s southeastern coastal regions have a history of migrating to the South Pacific, the government’s social control and border defense capabilities are sufficient to prevent a “mass exodus,” but also enough to create deliberate “refugee exports.” This ability is reflected in:

— Comprehensive border defense and anti-smuggling capabilities;

— Paramilitary militia organizations of coastal fishermen;

—In this maritime area, the collusion between officials, civilians, and the underworld lies under the cover of civilian smuggling.

In fact, in recent years, there have been multiple incidents where the CCP has tried to use fishermen to harass Taiwan to gain political bargaining chips, which is precisely the political backdrop of the disputes among fishermen across the strait. This method is expected to be frequently used in the Taiwan Strait and even farther waters. The further development model might be:

—Official equipment conditions for illegal crossing

—Officially approved civilian piracy

— Officially provided equipment for civilian armed harassment

— Militia armed actions directly used to support tactical objectives

— Armed boat people in regular naval battles

In summary, the waters of the Western Pacific near mainland China will serve as a release site for the mainland’s space crisis. The mainland regime is at a delicate stage where it cannot resolve this negative factor but can leverage it. In the longer run, even if direct deployments from Beijing fail, local forces will use this power for political and economic gain, which would be even more disorderly.

3. A Temptation: Misconceptions in U.S. Immigration Policy

As mentioned earlier, Western countries have provided “political asylum” to Chinese people due to the June Fourth incident, which has become a temptation for today’s “refugee wave” in China. This “temptation” mainly comes from two aspects: first, Chinese intellectuals wanted by the Chinese government receive asylum in Western countries, and their numbers are very small; second, President Bush’s “Presidential Protection Order” allows any citizen of the People’s Republic of China in the U.S. before April 1990 to reside long-term in the U.S., regardless of whether returning home poses a political threat. According to this law, it is said that 100,000 Chinese who obtained “green cards” entered the U.S. The vast majority of these people did not participate in the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident in Beijing, as they were students or scholars studying or visiting the United States.

The second point above is misinformation for Chinese people. Because these 100,000 people obtained U.S. green cards for the purpose of “political asylum,” but in reality, returning to China poses no danger. After 1992, most of these Chinese students who received U.S. “protection” returned to China to pursue various careers. To attract them back, the Chinese government not only refrained from pursuing the “protection” they received but also offered them various excellent treatment. This sends a strong message to all Chinese people:

— “Political asylum” is the best way to obtain a green card

— The U.S. offers “political asylum” to any Chinese person, as long as you are in America;

— They believe the only problem they need to solve is how to get to the United States, no matter how.

I believe that from the ‘Golden Adventure’ to every smuggling ship in the Pacific targeting the United States, they are tempted by this misinformation. American politicians ignore a basic common sense: China is a country with low levels of education and legal awareness, and people have developed a habit of lying in a long-term authoritarian society, from intellectuals to farmers. The “Gold Rush” in Chinese history was a traditional way for “illegal immigrants” to work abroad and earn money; those who went abroad had no concept of “immigration law.” The West’s “political asylum” gives them hope to “fight” legitimacy. According to the Western concept of “political and religious persecution,” any Chinese person can find (or fabricate) countless “legitimate” reasons to seek refuge in the West, ranging from faith, political persecution, one-child policy, to homosexuality.

Although the United States is an immigrant country, it is also a Pacific nation. When the billion-plus nation across the Pacific treats it as a potential immigrant target, America’s response is far more than just strengthening border defenses; what truly needs to be reviewed is the immigration policy itself.

（For Pacific Forum CSIS，29 May, 1996)