| Well, I always tell my employees who are complaining about one problem or another, that when they're done complaining, they should try to be productive and suggest solutions. I guess that applies to me as well, so in the spirit of trying to be mildly productive and offer helpful ideas, I'll put myself in the shoes of a Chinese policy planner-- please feel free to use this for a separate topic if you want. I admit that I don't have all the information here and I'd like to have more accurate data. But if I were consulted to draft a population, immigration, development, environment and nutritional policy for China-- which stabilizes population but preserves economic growth and the environment (while encouraging investment from people like us)-- the following 5 ideas are what I would suggest: 1. Instead of the forced One Child Policy, set up voluntary measures to encourage small families instead. Help to improve education throughout the country even in the rural areas, encourage more people to study advanced subjects at university, to become wealthy, to start towns and cities. Better education and economic improvement naturally lead people to have smaller families, down to replacement level stabilization. Furthermore, this would help China to become wealthier with a better-educated population. 2. Invest in pro-environmental technologies like reforestation, renewable energy sources, enriched crops with nutrients (like the "Golden Rice" that has extra Vitamin A), more energy-efficient technologies that require less electricity to deliver higher output, re-utilization of industrial wastes, vaccines and desalination of seawater. Minimize pollution of water sources and reduce the amount of lead in pipes and homes-- which causes intellectual deficits and brain damage in children. The cleaner, less polluted and healthier China is, the more effective the Chinese economy will be. These will help China to have a firm, sustainable industrial economy and help to cushion the effects of rapid economic growth, while increasing health and providing for clean water, air, fruits, vegetables and grains for the population. 3. Provide more incentives for China's vast population of emigrants in the US, Europe and Australia-- including highly educated people who have graduated from top universities-- to return home to China and apply their skills to strengthening China's economy. Many of the "sea turtles" have been returning, but far too few. China has been losing too many of its best-educated and most capable young people abroad, and this, again, discourages us foreign investors from putting money into China. However, if more of these overseas Chinese are lured back in-- with e.g. offers for nice jobs with high pay, their own labs and start-up capital for companies-- then they'll boost China's economy tremendously, boost up creativity, help initiate Nobel Prize-winning work and innovative projects, and other big benefits. This sort of thing further helps to stabilize China's population in the best way, while maintaining strong economic growth. 4. Encourage educated Westerners-- as well as 2nd-generation and 3rd-generation Chinese and other Asian immigrants in the USA, Europe and Australia-- to work or even settle in China. Help to spread Chinese language education at Western universities and provide overseas scholarships to talented Westerners to study and work in Chinese schools and companies, especially if they're familiar with Mandarin. Again, this sort of thing can help to bring in further talent to help solve Chinese ecological and demographic problems more effectively. 5. Finally, and also very important-- try to provide incentives and rewards for immigration of skilled workers from elsewhere in Asia to study, train, work, settle and start families in China, and assume Chinese citizenship. In particular, developing countries like Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, South Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia and Burma have an enormous skilled talent pool that likes to go abroad for further education or even immigration, but current Chinese laws bar these skilled people from studying and working in China, where they could be a tremendous resource for the Chinese economy and their own. Vietnamese engineers, Filipino nurses and doctors, Thai businesspeople, Korean scientists, Burmese metalworkers-- I've met these people and lots would like to work in China, but because of Chinese immigration restrictions, they can't enter China or gain Chinese citizenship, so they go to Western countries in place of China. This is a tremendous loss of talent and human capital for the Chinese economy, which should instead be attracting such people. Instead, China should open up its immigration laws to skilled workers from other Asian countries, who could meet shortages in the Chinese economy while getting extra training in Chinese universities and businesses. Obviously, China would also benefit from further encouraging Chinese language acquisition in these countries. In turn, these migrants from elsewhere in Asia would help their home countries by sending remittances back home, while using their extra training and returning home (in some cases) or staying in China and helping to foster business partnerships between China and their home countries. I've read some other ideas like this, e.g. a "responsible family initiative" that's been floating around, but I think this sort of a proposal helps to both stabilize population and maximize economic growth while protecting the environment, health and nutrition for the people. Again, I'm just a guy with my own partial information set here, but I genuinely admire China and would like the country to succeed-- both for the country's own sake and as a potential market for foreign investment. China could really become a model country, an example of how to grow and develop successfully, and hopefully some of my own suggestions might prove helpful for this. |
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