Many have criticized advocates for population control, and here we will be discussing China's implementation under the communistic leader Deng Xiaoping.of its One-Child Policy in 1979. The law applies only to the urban Chinese, as the rural population has less need for population control - they use less resources and have a higher rate of infant death due to malnutrition and lack of healthcare. As of 2004, infant mortality in rural China was about 25 per 1000, more than double the urban infant mortality rate of 10. But what do the figures say about China's population growth? The current estimates are that due to this policy China now has 300 million less people! This can be viewed in two different lights. On one hand, that is 300 million people that China's rule of law has indirectly killed by not allowing to live. There are many logical fallacies in this, but its focal point is that these are children that parents were not able to enjoy raising and bringing in to their family. On the other hand, that is 1) 300 million people that are not taking away resources from other citizens across the world, many of whom are already deprived of necessary resources, and 2) 300 million people who are not potentially suffering due to stretching of resources. Either way we look at it this reveals a couple problems currently underway in our societies. We are coming to the realization that we do in fact have limited resources to use on this planet; and we are using the resources we have quite inefficiently and wastefully in many parts of the world.
Now onto the ethical dilemma. We do not have to define here what the ethics are, for most of us can agree that killing people is wrong and that making people suffer is wrong. Those both have exceptions, but let's apply them to innocent people to turn away from those potential problems. What we do have to define, is not what the morality is, but when this morality is applied. Is it more wrong to deprive families of the miracles of child-raising and the family expansion that is so ingrained in our species, than to cause the suffering of many more people in the future due to stretched resources? In one case we are harming people now, in the other case we are harming possibly many more people in the future.
The course of humanity's thoughts on morality have evolved from individual morality, how to change oneself to be let in to Heaven, live a holy and virtuous life, move up to the next strata in your next life, etc. From there we moved to the morality of nations as we began to pass laws and regulations on our behavior, and thoughts at most times. After a long time we came to the argument of cultural relativism - understanding that morality might be dependent on the culture in which it was born and is applied. Still we have a universal morality etched in our Universal Declaration of Human Rights written by almost every country's, or at least governmental representatives.
But that is slightly besides the point. Over generations humanity has moved from dimension to dimension in defining and applying morality. The first dimension - a line, this is the individual and their movement through life. The second dimension - a plane, this is a group of people and their society. The third dimension - a sphere (our planet), this is the acknowledgement and combination of various cultures' codes of morality. All of these have their basis in space. What we are moving towards now is a realization that our morality needs to span time as well. Is killing one person now less moral than killing two people in the future? Because in many cases we will not be around to either gain or suffer from such consequences in the future, they seem irrelevant. But from a moral standpoint, is time not just another means of separation, any different from geography? If we are to understand morality as universal, must that universality span not only space but time as well? Or if morality is not universal, then will cultural relativism begin to apply to the culture's of the past and the future? Surely an American culture is different now than it was one hundred years ago, just as it will be different in another one hundred years. Is understanding American 19th century culture not a form of cultural relativism. We look in condemnation upon those culture's a thousand years ago that sacrificed people, but in that culture was it not morally relevant? Were those sacrifices not made to bring rain and great harvest and thus benefit to future populations? These are all questions that are evolving in our moral debate, and by simply acknowledging them we are furthering our knowledge and understand about our condition, and that of humanity.
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