FINALLY, SOME ANSWERS TO THE GLOBAL BABY SHORTAGE

THERE ARE GLIMMERINGS of an answer to the worrying global baby shortage. But they are not being found in liberal places.

The offering of government incentives to inspire people to have more children have largely failed—but now it’s clear that a few exceptions have seen a small measure of success: four examples are given below.

The “big picture” answer is surprising simple: governments should skew the incentives to prompt very young adults, in their late teens or early 20s, to have a more classic outlook (get a job, find a partner, set up a home, have children) rather than an overly modernistic one (explore your individuality, find personal fulfilment, worry about everything else later).

WEST AND EAST SHARE THE PROBLEM

In modern, progressive, secular societies, most people marry late or don’t get married at all, and have zero, one, or two children. Most western countries follow that scenario, as do the most westernized East Asian societies (South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore). All suffer from falling populations.

But since time immemorial, men and women married in their teens or early 20s and had children before 25. This is still true in conservative societies with strong faith traditions, such as the African nations, Afghanistan, the Central Asian nations, Pakistan, and so on.

FOUR PLACES ARE SEEING SOME SUCCESS

How to encourage a return to this classic family lifestyle? The Chinese province of Zhejiang started to offer cash to couples who married, but only if they were below the age of 25.

Hungary decreed that women who have their first child in their 20s will be exempt from income tax. But if they reach 30? Forget it.

Russia made a similar offer of freedom from income tax to its women, but only if they had their first baby by 25.

Israel has long been experimenting with policies which give child grants to couples which only kick in after their third or fourth child, forcing parents to “start early” and opt for a big family.

In all four cases, limiting benefits to younger adults have led to positive results.

What is the effect of making couples marry and procreate earlier? It seems to “snap” them back into the traditional parents model—and once they have one child, many of them choose to have more.

The Zhejiang model can be tried elsewhere in China—but it’s a big country with very diverse populations, which means there’s no guarantee of success.

MODERNISM IS ANTI-EVOLUTIONARY

The finding should not be a surprise. It’s long been known that people who follow a more traditional pattern of life have more children. Steve Jones, a London-based professor of genetics, made a stir in the early 2010s when he pointed out that societies with widespread atheism tended to fail to have the necessary 2.1 children, thus eventually wiping themselves out. Modernism, it seems, is anti-evolutionary.

This doesn’t mean you have to follow a particular religion or even believe in God or a god. Chinese people are generally not monotheists but traditional family structures are strongly imprinted in their thinking.

Making use of this knowledge in a modern context is what humanity needs, and targeting incentives to young adults, with a Leonardo Di Caprio “deadline” of 25 seems to be an answer. You can’t force people to adopt a more conservative or traditional or spiritual attitude, but you can encourage them to marry earlier, have their first child earlier, and then see what happens.

This suggests that places like Hong Kong, which is simply offering cash lump sums to people who have babies with no stipulations for age, won’t solve its problem.

But the finding is also a challenge for mainland China’s present government, which is having to work hard to reverse earlier leaders’ negativity towards the country’s own history.

AN INTEREST IN HISTORY

The good news is that modern Chinese, even young ones, do have an appreciation for their community’s cultural past, even to the extent of wearing hanfu traditional clothing. The hostility of western countries has made many young Chinese more nationalistic.

MARRIAGE MINIMUMS IN CHINA

Ancient records show that the Chinese government decreed in or around 680 BC that men should be able to marry from 20 and women from 15.

During periods of instability, such as from the Wei Dynasty onwards (AD 266) the government worried about the low birth rate, and minimum marriage ages were revised downwards – boys could wed at 15 and girls at 13.

The more stable Song Dynasty (from 960 AD) saw the age revised slightly upwards to 16 for men and 14 for women.

Today in China, it’s 22 for men and 20 for women—although there is much discussion about lowering it to 18 for both.

Clearly, the findings from China’s own history, plus the modern results being filed from Zhejiang, Hungary, Russia and Israel, indicate that allowing people to start earlier would be a good idea.

Lai See(利是)

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Behind closed doors, new US leader Donald Trump is thinking about pulling naval troops out of the South China Seas.

Washington is considering making an offer to remove the large number of American military forces lurking around China's coast, and in turn asking Beijing to drop the number of Chinese coast guard vessels in the area, according to a report in Bloomberg.

"Removing American military forces nearby, in exchange for fewer Beijing-owned coast guards patrolling the area is currently under proposal…" the news agency said.

GOOD FOR PEACE, BAD FOR BONGBONG
The step would be good news for those who want peace between the two superpowers.

But it would be a huge embarrassment for pliant Philippines leader "Bongbong" Marcos, who the US has been using to create conflict in the waters, which the Western mainstream media then reports as if it was China creating conflict.

The push to ratchet down the tension comes from John Andrew Byers, a history professor who has been appointed deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia.

Byers has long been known as an advocate for moving away from the prepare-for-war-with-China attitude of the Biden Administration, and supported by many on the Republican side.

'A LEADER OF HIS TIME'
In a co-written essay in The American Conservative last September, Byers argued that it would be smarter to move away from such a war, even if it could be won.

"But this 'fact' of U.S. superiority does not mean that it can or should attempt to militarily conquer its weaker rival," he wrote. "We live in a nuclear world. Secure second-strike capabilities make great-power conquest impossible without global annihilation.

"A second Trump administration should embrace a Cold Peace with China, exercising foreign policy restraint—one guided by a narrow definition of the national interest, economic nationalism, and penchant for viewing world politics in geoeconomic rather than geostrategic terms. If he remains true to his instincts, he will be a leader of his time."

It is that last statement – that Trump could be 'a leader of his time', taking his place in history, for removing the US from its warring proclivities - that has apparently caused the unpredictable leader to give ear to a peace-mongering academic.

HOSTILE TO PEACE
Yet Byers may have an uphill battle to halt a war that the US has spent years preparing. Many Trump officials have been anxious to attack China, including national security adviser Mike Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the President's choice for Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, and advisor Elbridge Colby, who had advocated for a conflict centred on Taiwan to be used as a tool to weaken China.

The hawkish, right-wing Lowy Institute said last week that the move towards peaceful engagement in the South China Seas was "troubling".

Bloomberg writer Karishma Vaswani also seems oddly dismayed by the idea of less confrontation in Asia, and urges Trump to convene a summit "to build partnerships that deter China's expansionist ambitions". This point of view harks back to the discredited argument that China wants to take over Asia-Pacific, and suggests a lack of understanding of how the Chinese think.

A more insightful view comes from writer Jacob Dreyer, who told this reporter that he thinks the US is "headed to a Monroe doctrine style 'zones of influence'." In that scenario, the USA maintains "hegemony over its backyard" but generally leaves China and Russia to do their own thing on their side of the Pacific, which the US sees as “near abroad”.

That rings true—and provides hope. For people in East Asia, tired of the endless demonization of China and general warmongering of the western media, Trump, for all his hostile bluster, is at least thinking about moving in the right direction.