Chapter 9

I found it interesting that the one child policy was a response to Mao Zedong's effort to increase the population of the nation. Basically, it was going back and correcting what a prior leader created. Also, the 4-2-1 problem leaves one child supporting two parents and four grandparents. The children underneath the policy have immense amount of pressure to support their family which was a product of Mao Zedong's policy. There was a population boom and now all of these people are getting old, and with the one child policy there is an immense imbalance in the average age of the population. There are very few young people per old people and these young people are left paying the  social security of the older people. Basically, the government is either taking more pay from each person or they are going to have to lower social security. With the decrease in children being born, there is not enough money making adults. Which can possibly in large part be blamed for the immense stress felt by Chinese youth and middle aged people as was exemplified earlier in Dodson's book and in the film Last Train Home.

Personally, I feel that in an effort to make China a super power it neglected the long term affects. They forced communism by breading communists in a sense. I find this to be not surprising by frustratingly unfortunate. If I was in this situation I would feel incredibly forced against a wall in that I have no choice but to pay the debts of bad decision making in the past. In America the equivalent was definitely the baby boomers. My generation may be left with paying the social security of the baby boomer generation, however probably not on as grand of a scale as in China. As far as I know we do not really have a "population policy" in America. However, it is very difficult to have many kids in this country considering how expensive everything is. The government will provide more welfare for more families with more kids, however not the extent of 1920's China.