Yes, of course China needs the one child policy. To understand why, just travel to the cities and the villages to see how much pressure the big population has put on environment. To survive, China just has to greatly slow down the population increase rate. On this issue, China has no other choices.

Absolutely. China is wise to have a population policy. The US should take a lesson. The US is the 3rd most populous nation, after China and India, but ahead of Indonesia, with the highest population growth rate of the developed nations and among the top 8 overall. The US does not want to talk about population stabilization - to the point of neurosis. The US also has the highest immigration rates of any other nation. The US is projected to have over 1 billion folks at century's end. At that time, I bet China will will be eclipsed by the US.

Another facet of this issue - is the adoption of Chinese children by American couples. 99% of these kids are girls, so it seems. Meanwhile the next generation of China will be overwhelmingly male. And where will these Chinese men look for wives? Well, they're all in the US, Canada, Europe, etc. It will be interesting - and I can't say I'm looking forward to it.

Having just returned from China I was overwhelmed by the amount of people everywhere- there are somewhere like 4 times our population living in a country slightly smaller than the US- the living conditions for many are terrible- with choking pollution on some days that must be slowly killing many of the city population. Hopefully this current generation (whose focus is on upward mobility and joining the rest of the world in raising the lifestyle through education and hard work in skilled jobs) will be choosing to have fewer children and delay childbearing until later in adulthood as has happened in the rest of the world. The current population appears to be unsustainable for the resources of the land.

Perhaps China should have left it up to individual families to decide if they choose to limit their children to only one. Although personal choice has not been a strong point in communist countries, maybe encouraging it would make families more aware of the issue of overpopulation and their responsibility to limit it.

The U. S. is very blessed to now have a few million bright and beautiful children, mostly girls,
adopted into our culture. Perhaps the young and middle aged men now seeking female companionship and spouses will want to join our culture, also. That would have a devastating effect on China, but only increase the positive heritage of the Chinese in other cultures. In any case, these children add richly to our diversity and strengths and China has mssed the boat to have let them all go.

I wouldn't underestimate China. And as far as "missing the boat", I am more impressed with the fact that China has convinced us to raise their next generation of young women, at our own expense.
Do we call this "outsourcing"? Have we been blessed or have we been conned? I frankly can't tell.

Yes, I agree to have one child policy but the only problem with it is that the parents what's only a boy to keep the family name so, If the couple has a girl what does the parents do to the child? They will either an abortion or put up for adoption. It works sometimes but this makes the parents to make a very hard solution. But in the long run the population should slow down and then once it stablize then the govt. can change the policy to having two or three child no more than four. I think that will work and the parents will be more happy.

I completely understand why china implemented the 'one-child' policy. From an ecological standpoint of view, the 'one-child' policy is one of the most effective way to slow down the burden, we, humans have placed on nature. Theoretically, it's a policy that would have benefited the country's economy and the global environment. However, the 'one-child' policy has produced some serious side effects as well.

The theory behind the 'one child' policy isn't wrong. However, the actual implementation of the policy is too heavy-handed, and in many ways unfair and unjust.
Rewarding people with short and long term economical gains for having less children would have had better success in controling the growth of the population than forced abortions.

Why not implement such a policy in the US?

I think the US is far too liberal for such a policy to take place without stirring a fair share of commotion.

I think that nearly everyone agrees that the 'one child' policy is a treatment for China's overpopulation, but I wonder its the side-effects outweigh its remedial value. The 'one child' policy, though it may not be the primary cause for gender selection, definitely contributes to the absurdly high selective abortion rates in China. Although I am not anti-abortion, I do think that gender selection is, to some degree, immoral, and that both feminists and anti-abortionists should be offended.

The Chinese government should take further initiative and try to tackle the problem of gender selection with overpopulation collectively by possibly implementing the 'one child' policy in conjunction with discouraging abortions (possibly giving tax breaks or something of the sort to couples that have daughters - I know this is wrong on so many levels, but it's just an idea).

I hope I didn't offend anyone...

What are your thoughts?

Actually, there are very very few "selective abortions" in china b/c mother's don't know the sex of the child they are carrying. It's actually ILLEGAL to give an ultrasound to tell/share the gender of the child to the birth parents, so the women carry the baby to full term THEN make the choice (or have the choice made for them) to give up their daughter...

I'm Looloo the girl in part I about only child ,I didn't found anything special to be a only child before I had this interview,it's just too common to be a only child!all my classmates around me are like that,what's more,it's weird to have sibling,it's kind of pity that I havn't experience the chlidhood play with sibling.
it has benefit for the country to control the population in the short term,but for the individual child and family,not really!especially it has the promble with develop children's personality and to be indenpendant as well.
anyway,it's a tough topic,I am quite interesting about how foreigner think about this issue.

First all, i totally support the one child policy in our country. being a foreigner, you may have no idea how condens our population is. i don't want to see my country being the first country in the world exploded by the overpopulation without any restriction for example India,i am not saying India should be blaming without any specific approch to curb the their population problem.

look around china.we are homing 16 most polluted cities out of the 20 in the world.we should more concerntrate in economy and environmental construction instead of lifting the ban of birth control policy.
i think one day ultimately the one child policy will being bolished,but not now.we need stick to it no matter what pressure we facing right now.

NO! Like the United States, we educate people! Women in the U.S. are waiting until they are older and more established to have children. Education is key!!! Not selling off your little girls into a world of rapist men or women who would choose not to marry a guy that bought her. Men are disgusting pigs in China, the Government should be ashaimed to think only so selfishly and hurt so many people. Boys of these men should be sold into the world of rapism and slavery....then just maybe they will see how it feels and how laws should be changed to protect innocence.

I agree the U.S. (and the rest of the world) needs to pay attention to the population explosion. It's driving the current economic and environmental crisis. The earth cannot support unlimited growth. Until we address the "taker" mentality that drives continual expansion and resource depletion throughout the globe, we will not solve the complexity of problems that will determine the survival of the human race

I think china's goverment is really messed up