Source: Reason
by Katherine Mangu-Ward
“In 1988, Peng Peiyun was assigned to China’s State Family Planning Commission. Her job was to implement the relatively new one-child policy. The Communist Party was sure that it knew how many people should be in the Chinese population to prevent famine and overcrowding — so sure, in fact, that it was willing to require abortions and sterilization under threat of violence. … Today, China’s population is shrinking, births are collapsing, and the same government that once punished pregnancy is now begging for it with subsidies, propaganda, and social pressure, all of which have so far failed to reverse the trend. Even after decades of highly directive engineering and violent enforcement, the ‘right’ number of people remains stubbornly out of reach. The same category error animates today’s immigration crackdowns in the United States. Population control is technocratic arrogance at its most intimate and brutal.” (for publication 04/26)
https://reason.com/2026/03/01/no-one-knows-the-right-number-of-people/