how did china become so populated? (country, safe, place, people)
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i've heard that they have a "one child" policy to stem the growth, but how did it get to be over a billion ppl? did everybody have like 15 kids prior to the "one child" policy?
You have to look at Chinese's 5000 years old history. In the past, Chinese emperors, noblemen, and rich men had concubines. The richer and higher their position in society, the more concubines they had, so one household will have a litter of kids running around, legitimate or not. This was combined with their believe that more children meant more blessings. This is because Chinese culture (to this day) believes that senior citizens should be taken care of by their grown children when they grow old (this includes parents, grandparents & older relatives who have nobody to rely on). So children were their parents' retirement safety net, and they played it safe by having many kids, in case a few couldn't make it because of illness, fatal accidents, or just didn't turn out to be capable of taking on such financial & moral burden. This believe actually were held by most Asians, not just Chinese, in the past.
A bit off topic, although modern chinese finally realizes that many kids doesn't always bring more blessings, they still hold on to the believe of respecting and honoring their duty to take care of their elderly, even after some of them immigrated to western countries. That's why you'll be hard pressed to find Chinese senior citizens in old folks' homes in the US or Europe. It's considered dishonorable and ungrateful to do such a thing to your parents in Chinese culture.
I also wanted to point out that US is not far behind in the list of world's most populated country either. We are no. 3 behind China & India on the list.
I also wanted to point out that US is not far behind in the list of world's most populated country either. We are no. 3 behind China & India on the list.
True, but China and India both have approximately 1 billion people. We've got about 300 million. That's far behind by my standards.
I heard that it was 350 million. At the rate things are going they will hit a billion in just a few years (50) Wow Fortunately I won't be there at the time.
I heard that it was 350 million. At the rate things are going they will hit a billion in just a few years (50) Wow Fortunately I won't be there at the time.
According to the U.S. POPClock Projection at the time I checked it, the US population was about 303,887,285. We will be far from hitting a billion in 50 years -- This study projects the US population will hit 438 million by 2050. Our fertility rate as of 2007 was 2.09 children per woman, which is just above replacement level, and yet is high for an industrialized nation. Immigration keeps our population boosted, but second-generation immigrants tend to have smaller and smaller families, just like their long-settled peers.
Poor countries tend to have extremely high fertility rates due to a number of factors: little or no access to birth control, traditional societies that emphasize a woman's place in the home, high mortality rates among children prompting parents to have lots of kids in order to get a couple that will live, etc. China, because of their One Child Policy, has been trying to keep a cap on their population. Now that they're quickly catching up with the rest of the world, their birth rates will probably fall naturally as more people prefer to live in urban enviroments, marry later, and have fewer children. China's population has been projected as about 1.4 billion by 2050, far outstripped by India's exploding population of about 1.6 billion by 2050. To give you some idea of how huge India's population is today, as of the 2001 India census there were 66,508,008 people in the state of Andhra Pradesh! That's one state! California, the most populous US state, only has 36,553,215 people! You'd have to add California and Texas together to equal or surpass Andhra Pradesh.
Birth rates have less to do with it than how long people have been living there, and how much population the land can support.
You're comparing a country that's been around for a few hundred years to nations that have been around for thousands of years. India and China were one of the first places to adopt civilization, reading and writing, and build cities and empires. They have fertile sub-tropical river valleys that can support a huge number of people, especially in the case of India. These two countries have always constituted a sizable proportion of the total number of people in the world.
The historic birth rates for the U.S. and China going back the past 200 years aren't much different. It was only a generation or two ago that most American families had 5-6 kids. They were higher before, and have come down now. China actually has a lower fertility rate than America does today. India's has also come down sharply and will continue to decrease.
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Fortunately I won't be there at the time.
