“Promoting natal care” is not “paying for natal care”. “Preferential purchase policies” is not “paying for housing” either.
The major cost of raising a child here is education. It’s the gigantic elephant in the room and it’s the one that is not going away in any of these initiatives. If they don’t deal with that, they’re not going to get people having second children in any numbers, not to mention third.
Unfortunately it seems the people coming up with these solutions are vastly out of touch with the real world of parenting in China. They’re treating it as an “incentive” thing when it’s an “existential” thing. Almost every parent I know in China wants a second or third child. Yet most of them are not getting them because they can’t afford it. Until that divide is bridged, China’s population will continue running headlong into a wall of demographic collapse.
I don’t know much about cost education in China, could you elaborate more on this. Given that the government is pushing for domestic technological development and independence it would seem that making education accessible would be an important part of that.
Public education in China, after primary school, is free, but largely shit. (My son is in a public middle school and one that’s even well-regarded! I get to see the processes and outcomes with my own two eyes.) The teachers tacitly assume that the parents are shoving their children into so-called “cram schools” anyway, so they don’t do much of anything in the public school. They act like an enormous babysitting service. Even the recent ban on schools-for-profit hasn’t changed this. It’s just caused some problems for the larger cram schools for a while until they creatively reworded things so they’re not “for profit” despite profiting greatly.
So if you want your children to succeed in what is arguably the single most competitive work environment in the world, you send your children to extra classes or to private schools. (The people with the real money do both.) So while technically you can go through your schooling all the way with minimal cost (outside of books, uniforms, etc.) in reality, if you want your child to actually have a meaningful future, you spend through the nose to cause permanent mental and emotional scarring by making them live lives from dawn to dusk (and beyond!) slaving away at classes and homework.
And this shit costs. A lot.
My wife and I just bought a new home: a really nice four-bedroom apartment that’s conveniently located near a major commercial and transportation hub in Wuhan. That new home cost us less than my son’s education has thus far … and he’s only in grade 8 (starting next semester). We have a minimum of four more years of (more expensive) education to get him through senior middle school, and then the REAL costs start pouring in: universities don’t even have the pretense of a free path. You pay through your nose from day 1, and again, if you want the diploma that is issued at the end to have any meaning, you pay for the expensive “famous” universities. A degree, for example, from Wuhan University (ranked ~8 nationwide) or Huazhong University of Science and Technology (~10) will carry a whole lot more weight than a degree from Hankou University (~650). Can you guess which ones require you to basically mortgage your soul to pay the fees? (This is also handwaving over the whole exam thing. The pressure cooker that kills a scary number of children each year by suicide.)
And this isn’t likely to change because the government knows that the Chinese will pay anything to get their children educated. Chinese veneration of education predates the People’s Republic of China by a couple of millennia, after all. And until the rather out-of-touch senior Party members, who’ve never had to make any meaningful sacrifice to fund their children’s educations, figure out that this is the single largest expense any child-rearing involves there won’t be a lot of third children, and indeed not very many second, even.
I’m sure your analysis is quite accurate for your financial demographic, but it’s a bit of a stretch to claim that people in general won’t have more kids because education is competitive. This is largely a problem for upper class people as opposed to majority of the population.
I’m going to guess your financial situation is a tad better off than the median given what you’ve described about it already. You’re also twisting what I said, which isn’t that people don’t care about their children being well-educated, rather that not being able to afford tutoring won’t prevent people from having kids.
Meanwhile, you’re making lots of assumptions there yourself. I grew up in USSR, people very much valued having education for their kids there. Those who could afford it got additional tutoring, but that was also a small percentage of the population.
My situation puts me firmly in the middle class in Wuhan. This puts me way ahead of the countryside, of course, but that’s true of most anybody fortunate enough to have a Wuhan hukou.
And you are (with me increasingly thinking it is wilful) misunderstanding what I am trying to get across. So this will be my last attempt before I write you off as a wilfully ignorant ideologue, no different than an American conservative except your lunacy has you falling to the left, not the right.
People here educate their children. Period. They go through (to western eyes) insane lengths to do so, like village uplifts that were so common in the '90s and early '00s. As a result raising a child here is painfully expensive. If you go into practically any household that’s not in the 1%, you will find that education is the single largest expense, higher even than housing, for most people. (Yes the 10% have access to more and better, yes, so do the 25% and 50%. But almost everybody in China spends whatever they can on educating their children.) Because of this people do not perceive themselves able to afford a second (not to mention third!) child.
My colleagues. My wife’s colleagues. My neighbours. My wife’s extended family (but for one wealthy couple). They all express a desire to have a second child. None of them are having second children. Because it is too fucking expensive. And in that spread of people we have people who are in such dire poverty they need to save water drips that don’t register on the metre to wash clothes and bodies, as well as the solidly middle class and a couple up in the upper middle class (who used to be 1% but … had a bit of a fall).
Until that is directly and thoroughly addressed in some way by policy, no amount of peripheral incentives like the ones mentioned above are going to do anything. They’re pretty much pissing into the ocean. The problem is that the people forming these policies are badly disconnected from regular people. They’re straight-up in the 1% and don’t understand just how much of a looming elephant education is.
You can disagree. I will cheerfully ignore you, then, as the literally ignorant person you are. When boots on the ground are telling you what is, your well-read, bookish theory of what should be is not a good counter.
“Promoting natal care” is not “paying for natal care”. “Preferential purchase policies” is not “paying for housing” either.
The major cost of raising a child here is education. It’s the gigantic elephant in the room and it’s the one that is not going away in any of these initiatives. If they don’t deal with that, they’re not going to get people having second children in any numbers, not to mention third.
Unfortunately it seems the people coming up with these solutions are vastly out of touch with the real world of parenting in China. They’re treating it as an “incentive” thing when it’s an “existential” thing. Almost every parent I know in China wants a second or third child. Yet most of them are not getting them because they can’t afford it. Until that divide is bridged, China’s population will continue running headlong into a wall of demographic collapse.
I don’t know much about cost education in China, could you elaborate more on this. Given that the government is pushing for domestic technological development and independence it would seem that making education accessible would be an important part of that.
Public education in China, after primary school, is free, but largely shit. (My son is in a public middle school and one that’s even well-regarded! I get to see the processes and outcomes with my own two eyes.) The teachers tacitly assume that the parents are shoving their children into so-called “cram schools” anyway, so they don’t do much of anything in the public school. They act like an enormous babysitting service. Even the recent ban on schools-for-profit hasn’t changed this. It’s just caused some problems for the larger cram schools for a while until they creatively reworded things so they’re not “for profit” despite profiting greatly.
So if you want your children to succeed in what is arguably the single most competitive work environment in the world, you send your children to extra classes or to private schools. (The people with the real money do both.) So while technically you can go through your schooling all the way with minimal cost (outside of books, uniforms, etc.) in reality, if you want your child to actually have a meaningful future, you spend through the nose to cause permanent mental and emotional scarring by making them live lives from dawn to dusk (and beyond!) slaving away at classes and homework.
And this shit costs. A lot.
My wife and I just bought a new home: a really nice four-bedroom apartment that’s conveniently located near a major commercial and transportation hub in Wuhan. That new home cost us less than my son’s education has thus far … and he’s only in grade 8 (starting next semester). We have a minimum of four more years of (more expensive) education to get him through senior middle school, and then the REAL costs start pouring in: universities don’t even have the pretense of a free path. You pay through your nose from day 1, and again, if you want the diploma that is issued at the end to have any meaning, you pay for the expensive “famous” universities. A degree, for example, from Wuhan University (ranked ~8 nationwide) or Huazhong University of Science and Technology (~10) will carry a whole lot more weight than a degree from Hankou University (~650). Can you guess which ones require you to basically mortgage your soul to pay the fees? (This is also handwaving over the whole exam thing. The pressure cooker that kills a scary number of children each year by suicide.)
And this isn’t likely to change because the government knows that the Chinese will pay anything to get their children educated. Chinese veneration of education predates the People’s Republic of China by a couple of millennia, after all. And until the rather out-of-touch senior Party members, who’ve never had to make any meaningful sacrifice to fund their children’s educations, figure out that this is the single largest expense any child-rearing involves there won’t be a lot of third children, and indeed not very many second, even.
I’m sure your analysis is quite accurate for your financial demographic, but it’s a bit of a stretch to claim that people in general won’t have more kids because education is competitive. This is largely a problem for upper class people as opposed to majority of the population.
Again, assumptions.
I’m not upper class. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
And the assumption that it’s only the upper class that wants their children well-educated betrays very western assumptions about how people think.
I’m going to guess your financial situation is a tad better off than the median given what you’ve described about it already. You’re also twisting what I said, which isn’t that people don’t care about their children being well-educated, rather that not being able to afford tutoring won’t prevent people from having kids.
Meanwhile, you’re making lots of assumptions there yourself. I grew up in USSR, people very much valued having education for their kids there. Those who could afford it got additional tutoring, but that was also a small percentage of the population.
My situation puts me firmly in the middle class in Wuhan. This puts me way ahead of the countryside, of course, but that’s true of most anybody fortunate enough to have a Wuhan hukou.
And you are (with me increasingly thinking it is wilful) misunderstanding what I am trying to get across. So this will be my last attempt before I write you off as a wilfully ignorant ideologue, no different than an American conservative except your lunacy has you falling to the left, not the right.
People here educate their children. Period. They go through (to western eyes) insane lengths to do so, like village uplifts that were so common in the '90s and early '00s. As a result raising a child here is painfully expensive. If you go into practically any household that’s not in the 1%, you will find that education is the single largest expense, higher even than housing, for most people. (Yes the 10% have access to more and better, yes, so do the 25% and 50%. But almost everybody in China spends whatever they can on educating their children.) Because of this people do not perceive themselves able to afford a second (not to mention third!) child.
My colleagues. My wife’s colleagues. My neighbours. My wife’s extended family (but for one wealthy couple). They all express a desire to have a second child. None of them are having second children. Because it is too fucking expensive. And in that spread of people we have people who are in such dire poverty they need to save water drips that don’t register on the metre to wash clothes and bodies, as well as the solidly middle class and a couple up in the upper middle class (who used to be 1% but … had a bit of a fall).
Until that is directly and thoroughly addressed in some way by policy, no amount of peripheral incentives like the ones mentioned above are going to do anything. They’re pretty much pissing into the ocean. The problem is that the people forming these policies are badly disconnected from regular people. They’re straight-up in the 1% and don’t understand just how much of a looming elephant education is.
You can disagree. I will cheerfully ignore you, then, as the literally ignorant person you are. When boots on the ground are telling you what is, your well-read, bookish theory of what should be is not a good counter.
You’re clearly very upset, so there’s really no point continuing this. We’ll see what actually happens soon enough.