China tried to play god by controlling their country’s birth rates and genders, now they’re backpedaling their butts off to avoid extinction. That sounds so strange but it’s true. Right now, China has a growing elderly population and shrinking birth rates. So the communist nation has once again stepped in to control its population.
This time, China moved to prevent men from getting vasectomies. Decades of government forced population control that led to countless deaths of perfectly healthy babies has China’s citizens understandably reluctant to procreate.
Twelve public hospitals in cities including Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou told the Post they no longer perform the procedure. Another six hospitals contacted by the Post still perform vasectomies, but one of them no longer offers the procedure to unmarried men.
“It’s a rather simple surgery in theory, but public hospitals will almost always turn patients away because we are aware of the risks involved in doing something that’s not explicitly okayed by the government,” a hospital director in Jingzhou city, Hubei province, told the Post. “The fundamental policy is that China needs more childbirths.”
The number of vasectomies performed in China has fallen from 149,432 in 2015 to 4,742 in 2019. Various couples and single men who spoke with the Post said doctors have turned down requests for a vasectomy, with some demanding proof that couples already have children before approving a request.
China’s fertility rate stood at 1.3 children per woman in 2020. The country’s once-a-decade 2020 census recorded a population increase of 72 million, or 5.38 percent, since the previous 2010 census, the smallest increase since the first census in 1953.
China established a one-child policy in 1980 to curb population growth, however, the policy was rescinded in 2016. The Chinese Communist Party announced in May that it would allow couples to have three children.
“This should be regarded as a crisis for the survival of the Chinese nation, even beyond the pandemic and other environmental issues,” Huang Wenzheng, a demographer at the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization, told the New York Times in May. “There should never have been a birth restriction policy in the first place. So it’s not a question of whether this is too late.”
There are growing concerns that China and the US might be headed to war but according to reports, It doesn’t seem like China can afford a war with anyone. Not just because the nation struggles financially, but they simply might not have enough people to survive a full-blown war.
I think that’s why the country seeks to undermine the US and other nations without causing a direct conflict. What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.
Erica Carlin is an independent journalist, opinion writer and contributor to several news and opinion sources. She is based in Georgia.
