Is this reform?

Or more authoritarian madness?

Welcome to China Uncensored, I'm Chris Chappell.

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This week, China announced a new three  

child policy! That's up from the  two child policy launched in 2016.

Reuters says this three-child  policy is a major policy shift.

The New York Times says China  is “relaxing the policy”.

And the Washington Post calls  it “a further unwinding of its  

once-draconian regime of population control.”

Amazing. Every word of what they said is wrong.

The Chinese Communist Party is not unwinding  its once draconian regime of population control.  

It's still there. Did you miss the  part where they called it a policy?!

The Party is still telling people  how many children they can have.  

And the “family planning system” they set  up four decades ago is still in place.

The family planning system was  set up for the One Child Policy,  

and it's caused, “tens of millions  of abortions and sterilizations”

...with the “corrupt and brutal  family-planning officials  

[who] demolished the homes of some who resisted”.

Where, “Women had their menstrual cycles  recorded on blackboards, for all to see.”

And the three child policy certainly isn't,  

“a tacit recognition of the damage  done” as the Washington Post says.

Because the Communist Party will never  admit it did anything wrong. Even silently.

For instance, have you heard  about the Hundred Childless Days? 

It happened here, in Guan  County, Shandong Province.

Locals also call it the slaughter of lambs.

In 1991, when you were watching  Rugrats , this Chinese county  

“was deemed to have too high a birth  rate by the provincial government”.

And so local officials marked 100 days where no  one was allowed to give birth. Think about what  

that means. Anyone who was pregnant was forced  to have an abortion. It didn't matter if it  

was their first child. It didn't matter how far  along into the pregnancy they were. Baby, gone.

Even if a woman had already  given birth, it didn't matter.

“One local official claims that these 'procedures'  were sometimes no more than a kick in the stomach  

from an out-of-town mercenary. Children who did  make it into the world were reportedly strangled,  

and their bodies tossed into open pits.  

The families of pregnant women were publicly  shamed in reprises of the Cultural Revolution.”

Now that's socialized medicine  with Chinese characteristics.

What the Chinese Communist Party will never do  is give Chinese people freedom. The freedom to  

decide for themselves how they think they  should live, even in their private lives.  

And when the Party tells people what's best  for society—the Party always screws things up.

You see, back in the day, Chairman  Mao Zedong had the great idea that  

a huge population would be good for China.  Well, not so much for China, but for him.

He said he wasn't afraid of nuclear war  because, “China has a population of 600 million;  

even if half of them are killed, there  are still 300 million people left.”

And so in the early 1950s, the Party began a mass  political campaign to encourage people to have  

babies. They limited access to birth control.  And surprise! There was a population explosion.

But then, oh no, there was a population  explosion! Time for a mass political campaign.  

The One Child policy started in 1979, and the  Party claims it prevented 400 million births.

But then, oh no! The population is shrinking!

I know, let's have a mass political campaign  

to encourage people to have more kids! And  in 2016, that meant the Two Child Policy.

But even so, “Births have  dropped for four straight years.”

Wow, sounds like the two child policy didn't work.  I know! Let's have a mass political campaign.  

If the people didn't like the two child  policy, they'll love a three child policy!

This poll from state-run Xinhua asks, “Are  you ready for the three child policy?”  

20,000 out of the 22,000 answers  said “I won't consider it at all.”

Wrong answer! The poll was quickly deleted.

There are deeper societal problems in China  

that aren't going to be solved just  by letting people have more kids.

Some Chinese men are literally  choosing vasectomies over kids.

There's a lifestyle called “Double Income, No  Kids,” or DINK, for couples who don't want to  

have children. And it's an increasingly  popular thing with Chinese millennials. 

Yeah, after decades of the one child policy,  

Chinese people today don't want more  kids. They kind of want no kids.

One problem is, “Intense workplace competition,  inadequate child care and widespread job  

discrimination against pregnant women have made  childbearing an unappealing prospect for many.”

Again, those things aren't  solved by a three-child policy.

China is still a relatively poor country.  

900 million people—that's more than two thirds of  China—live on less than five dollars a day. Still.

A lot of parents had to leave their  kid behind in the countryside,  

so they could move to cities and make enough  money to send back home to support that kid.  

They couldn't take their kid with  them, because of China's hukou system,  

which controls where people are allowed to  live. Yes, the Party controls that, too.

The New York Times interviewed one man who's  living the DINK lifestyle, vasectomy and all,  

because “[His] parents were factory  workers in southern Guangdong Province  

and rarely came to visit  him in Hunan, his hometown.  

They never developed a relationship with  him, even though he was their only child.”

So now he doesn't want kids.

This is a big problem for the Communist Party.  

“Demographers have long warned that the  rising number of Chinese people choosing  

not to have children is a major reason  for the country's shrinking population.”

So the real problem here is that the Party is  still letting people *choose* not to have kids!  

Clearly the only thing to do is to *require*  people to have more kids. Problem solved.

And now it's time to answer a question from a  member of the China Uncensored 50 Cent Army,  

fans who support us and our efforts to expose the  

truth about the Chinese Communist Party  on the crowd funding website Patreon.

Nikolay asks,  

“Chris, Can you speak Mandarin? I would love  to hear you saying "Taiwan is a country."

Nikolay's question is in response to an episode  we did on Monday about John Cena. He got in  

trouble with the China market for calling Taiwan a  country in a Mandarin interview he gave in Taiwan.

Now, obviously my Mandarin  cannot compare to John Cena.  

However I do speak a little. But unlike John Cena,  I can say “Táiwān shì guójiā.” (台湾是国家) And I won't  

even apologize to the Chinese  Communist Party for saying it.

Thanks for your question  and your support, Nikolay.

And a big thank you to everyone who supports China  Uncensored on Patreon. We could not do this show  

without you. So thank you for joining us in the  fight to expose the Chinese Communist Party to  

the world. If you're interested in joining, head  over to Patreon.com/ChinaUncensored. You'll get  

a bunch of cool perks, including the chance  to have me answer your question on the show!

Once again I'm Chris Chappell, see you next time.