From China, just in time for Christmas

Nothing says Christmas like cheap junk from China. Unless it's one-sided advice.

The Copenhagen conference on climate change/global warming/upcoming apocalypse featured a Chinese official who earnestly counseled attendees on the importance of population control as a remedy for what ails us all.

Quoting from an article in the China Daily (12/10/09):

"Population and climate change are intertwined but the population issue has remained a blind spot when countries discuss ways to mitigate climate change and slow down global warming, according to Zhao Baige, vice-minister of National Population and Family Planning Commission of China (NPFPC) .

Although China's family planning policy has received criticism over the past three decades, Zhao said that China's population program has made a great historic contribution to the well-being of society.

As a result of the family planning policy, China has seen 400 million fewer births, which has resulted in 18 million fewer tons of CO2 emissions a year, Zhao said.

She admitted that China's population program is not without consequences, as the country is entering the aging society fast and facing the problem of gender imbalance.

"I'm not saying that what we have done is 100 percent right, but I'm sure we are going in the right direction and now 1.3 billion people have benefited," she said.

She said some 85 percent of the Chinese women in reproductive age use contraceptives, the highest rate in the world. This has been achieved largely through education and improvement of people's lives, she said.

And forced abortion, incentives to snitch on your pregnant neighbor, and imprisonment.

Oh, and let's not forget the orphanages throughout China crowded with abandoned babies (mostly girls) whose mothers could not safely or legally keep them.

For more on China's wonderful family planning program, Google the name Wei Linrong. Linrong, at 7 months into her pregnancy, was carted off to hospital by government officials and forcibly injected with poisons that resulted in a stillbirth.

The Virginia-based non-profit Population Research Council reports that of the more than 13 million abortions performed in China every year, most are forced and are the direct result of China's "one-child" policy.

Is this really what the world should embrace?