China Has a Problem III

who's your daddy?

The Beijing central government surprised Chinese citizens in late 2024 by releasing an upgrade to the Marriage Law. The upgrade included affirmation that parents must financially support their children in youth and that children must financially support their parents in old age.

Social media post re China’s Marriage Law updates.

But most nonplussing to netizens and exciting considerable comment was a new provision mandating that in certain circumstances a man must pay child support to his ex-wife for a child he did not father. An additional change: if a man has paid the bridal dowry and the woman then subsequently breaks off the engagement, she must return at least 40%, meaning she can keep more than half of it.

The legal, historical, social and cultural background involved, based on five millennia of history, is far above my pay grade, but the new rules clearly reflect a further shifting of Chinese norms towards the yin, the feminine 方面 fangmian aspect of the classic Confucian yin-yang balance. In Part I of this series, I discussed the onset of this shift, how Chinese society has largely absorbed western progressive values, with the predictable consequence that population decline would soon follow.

In Part II, the focus was more on exploring implications economic and social, particularly with respect to the attitudes of young Chinese people as expressed in the current phenomenon of 摆烂bailan, ‘let it rot.’

Western population decline has attracted considerable attention at a wide variety of levels in recent years. The term ‘western’ no longer simply refers to nations white and of European descent, but has broadened to include every country embracing the technology, ideology and values of neo-liberal progressivism, including feminism, oligarchic capitalism, net zero, carbon taxes, a digital economy, equality, all underpinned by the now ubiquitous smart-phone and social media.

Most fascinating is how the various analyses fail to zero in on any convincing legitimate cause of or solution to the problem of deficit human reproduction. For example, Russian efforts to mitigate the onrushing demographic apocalypse provide a textbook illustration of failing to see the forest for the trees, as I’ve detailed elsewhere. Another example is Hungary, which will soon begin offering financial incentives to women who give birth. Numerous other countries have already attempted similar palliatives, without success.

For an overview of the issues, consider the following video. As with all such discussions though, it does not penetrate deeply enough to uncover the entirety of the problem.

Economist Patrick Boyle nibbles dangerously closer to the edges of reality, but doesn’t quite reach the obvious logical conclusion.

However Boyle does make several excellent points worthy of attention. The first is that the smart-phone, with its almost infinitely fast information velocity, is responsible for the sudden recent world-wide dissemination of western values, even in countries whose governments explicitly reject those values (China, Russia, Indonesia and others).

The second is the growing political rift between young women, who are veering to the so-called ‘left,’ and young men, increasingly ‘conservative.’ (I use quotes here to emphasize that these are labels of convenience, rather than accurate descriptors. An off-topic example: Germany’s AfD political party, routinely labeled ‘far-right’ conservative, and in danger of being banned by the current government despite considerable strength in polls, is led by a white lesbian single mother in a relationship with a black woman from Sudan – hardly conservative in any traditional sense of the word.)

A third point emphasized by Boyle and others is that men and women both still want to have children, yet nations around the world are experiencing a ‘failure to couple,’ to marry and procreate.

The comments under these videos are instructive. From the Chinese male perspective, marriage looks like a bad deal. Dowry, high-paying employment, long work hours, expensive assets such as house and car are a minimum requirement, especially demanding for those who aren’t in the top 20% or so of 高富帅 (tall, rich, handsome). Divorce rates, though rising, are still relatively low in China (~12%), but de facto ‘no-fault’ divorce is already becoming a source of social friction.

From the South Korean female perspective, it’s only reasonable for women to give up on ‘trying to teach men basic human consideration, basic human decency,’ since men are incapable of civilized or conscientious behavior. The two-parent family and societal patriarchy are abusive institutions which deprive women of freedom and human rights and treat them like chattel.

Currently some 8 billion humans exist on planet Earth. Despite plummeting fertility rates, people will not cease to exist any time in the foreseeable future. But it’s worthwhile to ask: what comes next? Commitment to the debt-money financial model dictates that the economy (and effectively the population as well) must grow and consequently, as many countries are discovering, social benefits, particularly government-funded pension and retirement benefits, depend on growth as well.

When a citizen pays into any government’s social security or pension plan, the money does NOT go into a fund which saves and invests the money, as with a private plan. Instead it goes into general government revenue and is spent in the current year. There is no large investment fund holding and growing the money people are required to contribute. In reality, the payments anticipated by retirees depend on the contributions of future workers, who also must pay the overhead involved – bureaucrat salaries and benefits, office space, etc. This is therefore a Ponzi scheme, and it dies if there aren’t enough future workers.

Many have noticed the frantic rush by western countries to absorb as many immigrants as possible, regardless of compatibility. The overwhelming demand for economic growth is the primary imperative - the Great Replacement conspiracy is unlikely a significant motive, just a second-order consequence, or feature depending on perspective. The immigrants come from the few countries still reproducing at sufficient rates to provide them. The western world’s welfare state bureaucracies are doing the only thing they can think of to assure their own comfortable retirement and the continuity of the system. The accompanying cheaper labor and higher asset (housing and stock market) prices are sufficient to assure the complaisance of the ruling classes.

Japan has largely resisted the immigration surge, although the government there appears to be now over-ruling the will of the people. China does not currently appreciate or desire imports of other ethnicities and cultures – the number of foreigners studying and working in the country has fallen substantially in recent years.

For China the long-term outcome is predictable once social harmony, a prime imperative for the Mandate of Heaven, begins to fracture and the necessity for change becomes too obvious to ignore. The Confucian traditions of family and filial piety which have stood the test of time will rebound, perhaps even in slightly unpredictable fashion, if only because government is able to impose them, and more importantly because the people will accept them. China will probably get crazier for a time but in the end will not fall. I’m considerably less sanguine about the fate of nations in the classic western world.