The Morning Rant: Minimalist Edition

One of the many glories of Western culture has been the transition from a brutal world in which the value of a human life is measured in sacks of corn or a goat, to one in which the individual -- the most basic unit of society -- has intrinsic value and an immutable place in the structure of the culture. Yes (as the many detractors of Western culture will scream), it is not perfect. The road has been bloody, as a cursory reading of recent history will show, and it is still incomplete, as the abortionists prove; we still do not see all life as having value.

But compared to non-Western culture it is a very different and better world.

The "One Child" policy of communist China has been well documented by the western media, but they have sanitized it to a degree that is shocking. This is the same power structure that is currently running China, so any protestations from the apologists of communist/socialist brutality and inhumanity that this was a long time ago ring hollow.

The Hundred Childless Days

Thirty years ago, Guan County, Shandong Province launched the “Hundred Childless Days” campaign under the aegis of national family planning, known in the West as the “one-child policy.” The birthplace of the “Boxers” was deemed to have too high a birth rate by the provincial government. County officials sought to correct this by ensuring that not a single baby was born between May 1 and August 10, 1991. As local accounts attest, authorities in the area went to extraordinarily inhumane lengths to be the “best” at reproducing the least.

In what some locals called “the slaughter of the lambs,” women across Guan County were rounded up for forced abortions or induction of labor; one local official claims that these “procedures” were sometimes no more than a kick in the stomach from an out-of-town mercenary. Children who did make it into the world were reportedly strangled, and their bodies tossed into open pits. The families of pregnant women were publicly shamed in reprises of the Cultural Revolution.

Under the one-child policy, local officials in China were responsible for implementing broad guidelines from the central government about family planning quotas, leaving little oversight of how localities reached their target birth rates. In some extreme cases, such as in Guan County, this led to gruesome abuses. While the “one-child policy” was loosened to a two-child policy in 2015, its lingering effects will only be felt more acutely in the coming years. As China’s population ages and may be shrinking, the economic and social repercussions wrought by a generation of curtailed births are only just beginning to sting.

The current Chinese dictators are using very similar policies to try (and fail) to control the spread of Wuhan Flu. In fact, brutality is the first step in most of their policies, and they have bought off the Chinese people with prosperity. But that is tenuous today, and may very well crash back to levels China has not seen in a generation. Their demographic calamity has already occurred, and there is nothing that can be done to repair the damage.

China faces a series of awful decisions in the next generation, and while it is delightful to see, the repercussions will be felt world wide.

Does anyone doubt that their traditional brutality will not be used to minimize the effects of these decisions on their ruling class?

[Hat Tip: Jay Guevara]

posted by CBD at 11:00 AM

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