Lotsa People

I was working on a lesson today about the differences between China and the USA. The first thing I covered was population. There are 1 billion, three hundred million people here. There are three hundred million people in the USA. That's one billion more people than we have. That's a lot.
The government recognized this as a major problem some time ago and implemented the one child policy-basically non farm families can only have one kid. When you think about the fact that the backwater, minor city I live in has almost as many people as New York City, and that there are several cities with 20 million people, you start to get the picture.
The one child policy is not a perfect solution to the problem, but when you see the stress on the food production, resources, and environment, you can understand where the government is coming from. There are issues that come from having one kid. One is that Chinese culture has placed a preference on male children, so you have female fetuses aborted. This has led to a lopsided boy to girl ratio that will soon become a lop sided man to woman ratio. The government has since outlawed this practice.
There is also the fact that kids are growing up without siblings. Combine this with massive homework and lack of play time and they are missing out on some socializing that is an important part of their development.
In spite of these problems, I think it is forward thinking on the part of the government here, and will ultimately pay off.
Countries like Mexico and The Philippines, are big breeders. The result is a population that is overflowing their boundaries. The countries are too poor to support them, so they go wherever they can find work.
The planet cannot support this excessive population growth. If we don't voluntarily dial back our breeding, we will find ourselves forced to take actions like the Chinese government has done.