Supply and Demand

Unlike some of the world's other major polluters, the Chinese government takes population control seriously; so much so that people can be expelled from the party, or barred from government employment, elective office and being political advisers, if they have more than one child per family. The Independent notes that the policy of permitting an extra child to rural couples whose first-born is a girl has "boosted a traditional preference for boys". A hundred and eighteen boys are now being born for every hundred girls; this means, of course, that the next generation will have a healthy market for marriageable females, which should reduce the motivation for "forced abortions and female infanticide". According to the Independent, the one-child law was "seen as" a way of reining in population growth, rather than actually being one; but it appears to have worked rather well, reducing the average birth rate from six children per couple to less than two. The rich and famous are happily breaching it, of course; but the immunity of the better-off to mere legal obligations is no more unique to the corrupt, repressive and inefficient Chinese Communist system than it is to the lily-white shores of free-market Albion.