In 1979, China introduced its "one-child policy," the most drastic population control measure in world history.  Although it was eventually modified to allow rural parents, and then all parents, to have two children, the policy was carried out with single-minded ferocity, including forced sterilization and abortion.  Ironically, China is now facing a stunning population deficit from which there may be no turning back.

It's probable that American leftists kind of like China's stringent birth control policies.  After all, Democrats view humans as a blight upon the planet.  There's a whole movement out there that is ensnaring teenagers who promise not to have children until climate change is alleviated.  This is probably a good thing.  Can you image Greta Thunberg as a mother?

Her children would be irreparably damaged.

But I digress.  The point is that the Chinese Communist Party, which has the power that the American Democrat party dreams of, imposed zero population growth on its people.  These things, however, have a habit of getting out of hand.  One of the problems was that the Chinese engaged heavily in sex-selective abortion.  Normally, 106 boys are born for every 100 girls.  In China, however, there are 130 boys per 100 girls in rural regions with an overall average of about 119 boys per 100 girls.

This imbalance does not portend well for the future, and in China, the future might be now.  The Chinese currently have the lowest replacement rate in the world.  For a population to remain stable, the replacement rate needs to be 2.1 children per woman.  For it to grow, obviously, there need to be more than 2.1 children per woman.  (America's rate is only 1.8 live births per woman.  Israel, by contrast, has 3.0 live births per woman.)

For a long time, Japan was holding the record for the world's lowest replacement rate, with 1.4 live births per woman.  However, according to an article in the Epoch Times, China has had a catastrophic collapse in its birth rate:

The National Bureau of Statistics of the Communist Party of China stated at a press conference on Jan. 18 that it would be postponing the release of China's birth data for 2020. But according to data released by some local governments, the mainland's population appears to be declining, and at an alarming rate in some areas where the births have dropped by more than 20 percent.

[snip]

According to Liang [Jianzhang, the founder of China's leading travel website Ctrip.com and professor at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management], Guangzhou city's population saw approximately 195,500 births last year, a decrease of 9 percent from 2019; Wenzhou city saw approximately 73,230 births, a year-on-year decrease of 19.01 percent; Hefei city saw a decrease of 23 percent compared with 2019; and the birth population in Taizhou city decreased by 32.6 percent. No jurisdictions have yet to report an increase in the birth rate.

To put this into context, for the first three quarters of 2020, the birth rate in the United States declined approximately 5 percent, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. A Brookings Institute report found that during the Spanish Flu epidemic, birth rates in the United States fell by 12.5 percent.

In other words, even as China is expanding its territorial ambitions to have outposts throughout the occupied continents, it may be losing the one thing it really needs to make that happen: manpower (and womanpower).  More than that, it's going to have the same problem that truly bedevils Japan and that's becoming an issue (and raising medical costs) throughout the West: an aging population without enough young people to care for it.

China is America's geopolitical enemy.  It's simultaneously expanding and contracting, and I can think of few things more dangerous than that disequilibrium — and all this is happening with Joe R. Xiden (sic) in the White House.

Image: Happy Chinese Family by 伟 郭 from Pixabay