经济学人下载:中国人口,出乎意料的人口危机

The new census data show that little progress is being made to counter this troubling trend. Among newborns, there were more than 118 boys for every 100 girls in 2010. This marks a slight increase over the 2000 level, and implies that, in about 20 or 25 years’ time, there will not be enough brides for almost a fifth of today’s baby boys—with the potentially vast destabilising consequences that could have.

新的人口普查数据表明解决这个问题的努力收效甚微。2010年新生儿的男女比例大于118:100，这略高于2000年的水平，并且暗示着在未来20到25年的时间内，中国现阶段出生的5分之1的男孩将找不到他们的妻子，并且还会伴随着潜在的巨大不稳定后果。

The census results are likely to intensify debate in China between the powerful population-control bureaucracy and an increasingly vocal group of academic demographers calling for a relaxation of the one-child policy. Their disagreement involves not only the policy’s future, but also (as so often in China) its past.

这次人口普查结果很有可能会激化中国国内存在于持有特权的控制人口的官僚阶层和不断增长的呼吁人口统计学专家之间的辩论，这些学者呼吁放松独生子女政策。他们之间的辩论不仅会从设计政治远景，也将触及过去，而这在中国并非鲜见。

One of the academics, Wang Feng, director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Centre for Public Policy, argues that China’s demographic pattern had already changed dramatically by the time the one-child policy began in 1980. The total fertility rate had been 5.8 in 1950, he notes, and had declined sharply to 2.3 by 1980, just above replacement level.

担任布鲁金斯—清华公共政策研究中心的主任的王丰作为学者派之一，认为中国的人口模式在自1980年独生子女政策实行以来已经发生了巨大改变。他解释说，1950年总生育率为5.8，而1980年巨幅下降至2.3，略微高于人口更替水平的底线。

Other countries achieved similar declines in fertility during the same period. The crucial influences, Mr Wang reckons, are the benefits of development, including better health care and sharp drops in high infant-mortality rates which led people to have many children in order to ensure that at least some would survive. By implication, coercive controls had little to do with lowering fertility, which would have happened anyway. Countries that simply improved access to contraceptives—Thailand and Indonesia, for instance—did as much to reduce fertility as China, with its draconian policies. Taiwan, which the government in Beijing regards as an integral part of China, cut its fertility rate as much as China without population controls.

其他国家自此期间的人口生育率也表现出了大幅下降的趋势。王丰认为这很大程度上是归结于福利条件的改善，包括更好的医疗保障以及婴儿早夭率的大幅下降，而从前婴儿早夭率居高不下使得许多家庭为了保证能有孩子存活下来而尽量多生。他暗含的意思也就是中国对人口的严格控制于低迷的生育率之间并无直接联系，生育率下降是历史的趋势。而像泰国和印度尼西亚这样的国家仅仅是通过提高避孕用品的普及度，也在降低出生率方面取得了和中国通过严格控制获得的同样效果。而中国政府称为其领土不可分割的一部分的台湾，尽管没有采取人口控制，也取得类似的效果。

The government denies the one-child policy was irrelevant. It insists that, thanks to the policy, 400m births were averted which would otherwise have taken place, and which the country could not have afforded. Ma Jiantang, head of China’s National Bureau of Statistics, insisted “the momentum of fast growth in our population has been controlled effectively thanks to the family-planning policy.”

中国政府肯定了独生子女的存在价值。政府坚持称正是由于这项政策，中国才避免了4亿人口的负担，否则中国就会多出国家疲于应对的4亿人口。国家统计局局长马建堂坚持称“多亏了独生子女政策，人口快速增长的势头得意控制”。

There are many reasons for the government’s hard-line defence of its one-child policy. One is a perhaps understandable view that China is unique, and that other countries’ experience is irrelevant. A second is that, though the policy may not have done much to push fertility down at first, it might be keeping it low now. A third is that, if controls were lifted, population growth might rise. In fact, there is little justification for such fears: in practice, the one-child policy varies from place to place; it hardly applies to China’s minorities and is more lightly applied in rural areas—and there is no population boom in those parts.

中国政府对于独生子女政策的笃信处于很多原因。其中一个可以说是也许能令人理解的原因是中国的独特性，也就是其他国家的经验不能照搬。另一个原因是，独生子女政策虽然并没能在一开始降低出生率，但它可能保持现在低出生率水平。此外，如果放松控制，人口增长率可能再次上升。实际上，这些担心完全是多余的：正在实施中的独生子女政策在中国各地的各不相同的，同时它也很难应用于中国的少数民族和农村地区，而在这些地区并没有人口急速发展的趋势。