Human history generally goes the same way everywhere. The basic trends are more or less similar in pace among all peoples, although it may not be noticeable at the level of life of a particular generation. China was not the only one facing overpopulation. How did you solve the problem? Before the industrial age, first of all, through various expansions: the Crusades, the Arab campaigns, the conquest of America, and others. Or "simply" emigration. A very characteristic example here is the origins of the formation of German diasporas in Russia, and especially in America: somewhere, suddenly, in some states, for some reason, there was a lot of free land, and the local poor headed there, to the edge of the world. Why didn't the Chinese use this universal method of "dropping extra people"? They were used for a long time and actively, which is where the "huaqiao" - Chinese communities in many countries - appeared. And not only in Malaysia or Singapore, but later in the USA. An unknown fact: workers from the Chinese empire worked both during the construction of the Suez Canal and during the creation of the transcontinental railway system in the United States. And not only there. For me, the strongest impression from a trip to Cuba ten years ago was that the guide to the CE Guevara memorial turned out to be a Cuban, but with a surname like "Hua Qiao". I asked - where does the name come from? "This is how our people have been brought here since the XNUMXth century!"
Even more effectively than depopulation, the Chinese used the intensification of their own agricultural technologies. Again from Serhiy NEFEDOV's article: “During this period, water wheels for raising water and bamboo aqueducts became widely used; this made it possible to develop the slopes of the hills for crops. Most of the pastures were plowed, and the peasants could no longer keep working cattle, they harnessed themselves to the plows - it was at this time that a special plow for plowing by people appeared, the "wooden ox". After plowing, the peasants cultivated the land with hoes, loosening every square meter with great care... Up to 50 quintals of grain were collected per hectare per year! High harvests of Chinese peasants caused surprise and admiration among European travelers of the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries."
Even today, with all modern agricultural technologies and fertilizers, the average yield of rice in the world is 60 centners per hectare. Many inventions were made by the Chinese in other areas of agriculture and food production in general, amazingly rationalizing all this. Characteristic illustration: this method of fishing was widely used, when a tamed pelican was put on a ring around its neck and released into the lake, it filled its beak with fish, but could not eat it, the ring was in the way. It was necessary to return to the owner, who took most of the catch. Very symbolic. Or another story: in the XNUMXth century, in one of the provinces, the Chinese built a bamboo "pipeline" from the natural outlet of gas from the depths of the earth to its surface and led it to the brick kilns. There was nothing like it either in Europe or in the USA at that time (the XNUMXth century, however!). Although such stories of survival were not formed in some generalized national experience, each community apparently survived independently as best it could. Why? One more question about Chinese specifics. Before Dan's reforms. Then everyone generalized, and in such a way that everyone around still cannot come to their senses.
In our country, it is customary to say about a person who works hard and a lot all his life, "hey, like papa Carlo" . No Carlo could imagine how much "Daddy Liu" plowed.
But all these records and ideas only weakened the problem of overpopulation without solving it, there were still more Chinese than could adequately feed the "wooden ox" and all kinds of "pelicans". Industrial development did not solve the problem either: in the XNUMXth century, the country had dozens of industrial cities with a population of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, many craft villages with tens of thousands of inhabitants, and yet - " the cities could not provide work for all the hungry and beggars. Hunger came more and more often" . At the end of the XNUMXth century, the dignitary HUNG Liangzi presented the court with a treatise warning of future disasters, in which he formulated the main problem of all Chinese history: "The amount of land and housing can increase by 2 times, in the extreme case by 3-5 times, while the population will increase by 10 or 20 times... Does nature know how to deal with overpopulation? Floods and droughts, diseases and epidemics - this is what nature offers us as medicine...".
Interestingly, at least the Manchu rulers of China knew other ways. For example, among the subject Mongols, they were very supportive of Lamaist monasteries - after all, monks were not allowed to have families and children! The authorities gave the clergy of Mongolia the opportunity to live peacefully, to expand, in return they received a demographic decline of the once dynamic ethnic group. Why did the same Manchus not transfer this practice to the actual Chinese, the Han? Maybe they understood that it was useless - there were too many of them at first...
All the foreigners who closely observed the Chinese, whether in the Celestial Empire itself or in the diaspora, wrote about one thing: their incredible capacity for work and the habit of being satisfied with little. For example, the Austrian traveler Ernst von HESSE-WARTEG talked about millions "skilled and undemanding workers". Russian officer BOLHOVYTYNOV: they "ready to sell their labor for nothing" . The famous French geographer of the XNUMXth century Elysee Reclu explained the widespread anti-Chinese sentiment in Australia as follows: there "they are trying to get rid of the yellow-faced newcomers, who are too hardworking, excessively moderate in their needs, too thrifty, and most importantly - too easily satisfied with a meager fee for skin. ".
Maybe this is not metaphysics, but biology: the experience of "two oxen" throughout life, if it is reproduced for many generations in a row, does it consolidate the qualities that Warteg, Bolkhovitinov and Reklu wrote about somewhere at the "cellular" level? Natural selection. natural social engineering. One can only guess, since none of the existing nations has a comparable length of experience.
And that's it ...
As a result, as you know, the Chinese state found other "cures for overpopulation" than floods and epidemics, introducing the "One family - one child" policy. Why, contrary to the tradition of the cult of a large family, was it not immediately accepted by the nation? Probably, because even the deep consciousness of the Chinese people was already ripe for this previously unthinkable step before DEN Xiaoping's reforms. And when the departure from the economic orthodoxy of the communists, the transition to the market merged with the Chinese efficiency and organization, with the ever-shrinking demographic pressure, and then also with modern technologies, the whole world saw the Chinese miracle - the rise of the country, incredible by historical standards.
But not even 50 years have passed since China faced another problem - today the Chinese are the fastest aging nation on earth, and in 2022, I repeat, their number has decreased. It has been several years since the authorities realized this threat and liberalized the demographic policy. But, as the Russian demographer Yuri Krupnov writes, society does not respond to the state's proposal to give birth more, and a situation of pessimism arises, which is very seriously transmitted to the markets. "The surge of the last 40 years was made at the expense of demographic and ecological loans from future generations", - remarked the scientist.
And so - what's next, will a Chinese born in the country, the second economy of the world, with a very serious level of prosperity, being the only child in the family, be able to "pull out" from somewhere from the historical and mental depths those qualities that made his ancestors for centuries - the Chinese?
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We invited the famous Chinese scholar, doctor of historical sciences, director of the Institute of Asian and African Countries of MSU Oleksiy Oleksandrovich MASLOV to discuss this interesting topic. .
— Oleksiy Oleksandrovych, has the population in China really decreased? Can you trust the accuracy of Chinese statistics? ?
- It has decreased, it's true. There are also dozens of indirect verification methods, in addition to what official statistics indicate. For example, electricity consumption, number of mobile phones switched on. All this confirms the decline. Moreover, the Chinese authorities themselves, both the central and regional statistical bureaus, have long said that this will happen soon.
Why did this happen? In my opinion, there are three reasons. The first, obvious one is the result of the "one family - one child" policy, reducing population growth by uneconomic methods. And while many Chinese continued to have more than one heir while hiding it, the long and consistent policy paid off. The second reason is the rapid urbanization of recent decades. Until the Deng Xiaoping period, the population was distributed as follows: 80% of Chinese lived in villages, 20% in cities. Today, 64–65% are citizens. Naturally, they live in the urban cycle, that is, they go to work regularly, they have to leave their children with someone, they need nannies, these are additional costs, and in general, raising heirs in cities is an economically difficult task. In the villages, for example, there are free schools near the grandparents, and in the townspeople, in addition to the fact that you objectively have to pay a lot for a lot, there is also an informal competition for status - who can keep their child better. And it turned out that a family can contain one or two children, and there are many who have none. And the third factor of population decline: the evolution of the female mentality. Chinese women began to marry later and changed the priority of values: "career first, then children." Moreover, there was even a "child free" movement, which is completely unusual for the traditional view of China.
— If the authorities predicted a decrease in the population, they probably somehow prepared for it?
— Yes, the state analyzed this process well and, in my opinion, made wise conclusions.
How could one respond to this unprecedented challenge in Chinese history? There were two options. The first is to stimulate the birth rate, in other words, to pay extra for the birth of children. The second is to say that we are now passing through the peak of the number of elderly people due to their statistics of 300-350 million (which is about the same now), but then when this generation passes their lives, the population will level off. And we will bet not on its growth, but on improving the quality of education. In order for the economy to be efficient, that is, high-tech, it is not the number of workers, but the quality of heads that is needed. And China's transition to a modern technological model of the economy, which is talked about a lot, is largely related to demographics. Roughly speaking, even a million poorly educated people will not be able to assemble a computer, and one well-educated person will be able to. Here, on the understanding of this, the entire current policy of China was started, which is very competent. China has been preparing for this for a long time, after all, in recent decades, as soon as this trend was noticed.
— But China's successful surge would be impossible without cheap labor. Now this factor is leaving. No matter how much you invest in education, something must be done about it .
— The Chinese labor force has aged noticeably, this is reflected in its price, and China in this matter loses significantly to India, Vietnam, Indonesia and even more to Africa. But for all the importance of price, China competes with competitors not on price, but on quality. And here his rivals are not India or Bangladesh, as before, but Japan, South Korea, the USA, Europe. And his chances in this fight are very high. Why? So far, despite all the growth, the cost of production in China is lower than in developed countries. It is 40-60% higher than in other Southeast Asian countries, but about 30% lower than in Europe. Plus two more important points. The first is the speed of introducing innovations. For example, it will take two years or more to bring a new medical drug, even the most popular one, to the market in the USA. This is a test, a test. In China, it is now being implemented in 2-3 months, while following all the necessary procedures. Or research and development works, R&D - in China, their cost is even lower than in Russia, and by thirty percent. Despite the fact that the salary in China is on average higher than in Russia.
— How can it be ?
— There are very few overhead costs in China. For example, if a company works in the field of advanced technologies, it receives a grant from the state and a full exemption from income tax for at least 2-3 years after the invention is introduced. That is why many people rush to innovate. Of course, someone loses, but the state gets two positive points: firstly, it is a colossal number of startups and, accordingly, competition, and secondly, the cheapness of developments. In Russia, as well as in the USA, although taxes are optimized, they are still quite large.
— The Chinese leadership realizes that it is necessary to try to increase the birth rate, or what society has come to, the authorities have accepted ?
— I think that they humbled themselves with that. After all, it is also important that if you increase the birth rate, then a large population will not always quickly bring a great economic effect. Here is an example of India. They copy the Chinese model in many respects, open, for example, free economic zones. And there is no effect that can be compared with the Chinese one. Why? The quality of the workforce is lower than in China. The basic features of the Chinese mentality, in particular the high motivation for work, will not be affected by the current demographic trends, it does not happen so quickly. And if something changes, it can be positively adjusted by a high level of education.
Illustrations from the book "Earth and People". General Geography", Elysee Reclue, St. Petersburg, 1900.
Author: Yaroslav Razumov
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