Essay on Overpopulation in China: Challenges and Strategies

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of overpopulation in China, examining its historical context, causes, and far-reaching effects. The essay delves into the factors contributing to China's high population, including increased access to amenities, improved food production, reduced death rates, and advancements in medical technology. It explores the detrimental consequences of overpopulation, such as resource depletion, unemployment, rising costs of living, environmental degradation, and potential for conflicts. Furthermore, the essay outlines the measures taken by the Chinese government to control population growth, including the one-child policy and birth control programs. The essay concludes by emphasizing the need for serious reforms to address overpopulation and highlights the importance of policies, urbanization, and higher education in achieving sustainable population goals for China. The essay also projects the population growth and its effect on economic and social burdens.

RUNNING HEAD: OVERPOPULATION IN CHINA
Overpopulation in China
Name
Institutional affiliation

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INTRODUCTION
China is the most populated country in the whole world having a population that is almost half of
the world wide population. China faces many economic and social problems that are caused by
overpopulation. The overpopulated regions are seriously degraded lands, pollution and
detrimental conditions of living. The relationship between the resources and population is
dynamic and one affects the other. In the 18 nineteen eighty seven-china went through economic
reforms that allowed the formation of private business and rural enterprises, liberalized foreign
investment and trade, these resulted to high affluence as they had ways and freedom of getting
money from setting their business. This enabled them to have more children because they can
provide for them.
Figure 1: Map showing overpopulation in China

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DATA
Table 1: Historical china population

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Table 2: Projected china population
DISCUSSION
Causes of overpopulation
Availability of amenities and social facilities: the government of China has provided people with
some facilities that enable the population to increases because everyone can access water and
food. Getting resources have been easy and according to some reports, coverage of tap water
and gas has increased. Medical coverage has been improved to include the workers'

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compensation and birth insurance which in turn lead to more birth rates, low death rates,
increased population and overpopulation (Lal, 2019)
Production of food: scientific research and technological improvement introduced more efficient
agricultural production leading to more crops throughout the year, more seed that are resistant
and also pesticides. Improvement of livestock and fishing methods has also increased or
contributed to more food products that lead to overpopulation (Lee, 2014).
Death rate reduction and increased birth rates: the population boom when the number of births
are more than the number of death rates. There are many technological advances in the Chinese
medical department that enable them fight many diseases to lower death rates. Birth rates have
been increasing for the past years and it is projected to increase in the coming years as long as
the resources are available.
Advanced medical amenities; the advances in terms of technologies in china is the biggest reason
why the population balance has been disturbed. Medical science is able to discover diseases and
deal with them. A combination of increased supply of food and mortality tipped the balance and
caused overpopulation (Burnett, 2016).
The urge to overcome poverty: for thousands of years, few people had more money to live a
luxurious life. Most of the people faced poverty and preferred to have large families to balance
high rate of infants’ deaths. Families who have been through natural disasters and poverty
require many children so that they can work together and create wealth and this causes
overpopulation.

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Advancement of technologies for treating fertility: with the recent technologies that are advanced
and can help the couples who were not able to give birth to undergo methods of fertility
treatment and have children have contributed to the high population in China.
High Immigration: People prefer to migrate to china ta access to some facilities such as
education, medical, employment, and security. The end results are usually overcrowding. The
number of individuals entering the country is more than those leaving the country, this gives rise
to high demand for resources, clothes, food, homes and energy (KAINZ, 2015).
According to the tables above, china population has been increasing and it’s projected that the
population will continue to increase then it will reach a point where population will start
reducing.
Effects of overpopulation
Depletion of natural resources: Nature can provide a limited amount of food, water, and space
which when in the opposite of the population needs becomes depleted. More numbers of
environmental degradations have been experienced in china because of overpopulation
More people led to overuse of natural resources unsustainable for example cutting forests
without replacing, hunting wildlife unsustainably and also polluting the environment.
Overpopulation leads to unequal and uneven distribution of natural resources and this when
coupled with the fact that resource consumption is high more than the planet can generate leads
to depletion (Russell, 2011).
High rates of unemployment and the rising cost of living: A high number of works exist for the
few numbers of vacancies and this can lead to a high rate of joblessness in the future. This can

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increase the rate of social revolt and crime. Overpopulation also leads to a high cost of living
whereby there are fewer resources, less water, and food.
Environmental degradation: Overexploitation of resources such as oil, coal, natural forests,
water ecosystems and other protected resources to meet the demands of billions of people have
negative impacts on the environment. More industries that are developed to meet the need of
many people in terms of job, food and urbanization interfere with the quality of environment.
Many vehicle both personal and public emit dangerous gases such as greenhouse gases. Increase
in the emission of carbon dioxide have contributed to global warming, acid rain, acidification of
water bodies, melting of sea ice and climate change (Saunders, 2010).
War and conflicts: overpopulation in china have put more pressure on the available resources
that should be used for industrial development. Conflicts over resources such as water have
caused tension in the country that could lead to war. It causes the spread of many diseases,
starvation of children and also poverty.
Technological advances: A high number of people led to more research, innovation, and
development in the quest for solutions to the need of the population. For example, China have
been inventing technologies from construction to communication and information technologies
for sustainability and also the emergence of smart cities to improve the living condition is good
for rising population (GOLLEY & WEI, 2015).
Measures that are being taken
The government of China had many methods of controlling the growth of the population. In the
past years, china stated the policy that every family will be having only one child. This policy
also highlighted that citizens must be given a birth certificate prior to giving birth to their

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children. The policy also give the citizens who are complying some benefits. Those who doesn’t
comply are taxed fifty percent of their income. (Shen, 2010). The pregnancies that were not
planned or acquired without authorization were being terminated.
Other measures that are used by the government of China to reduce overpopulation include the
programs and strategies of birth control. Sterilization was made mandatory for everybody with
more than two children and above. All these programs have less success because they are
difficult to implement (Fang, 2018).
CONCLUSION
Serious reforms should be done to ensure that the population of china will not grow
continuously. Good policies, urbanization and higher education will help China to reach the
targeted goals of the population. China has noticed the benefits of collaborating with other
authorities to gather information about the total population and help the government to
implement the policies. Projected population growth of china is approximated to be 1.8 billion by
2025. This number will rise continuously and the economic and social burdens will continue to
affect everybody living in china.

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REFERENCES
Burnett, P. (2016). OVERPOPULATION, OPTIMAL CITY SIZE AND THE EFFICIENCY OF URBAN SPRAWL.
Review of Urban & Regional Development Studies, 28(3), 143-161.
Fang, C. (2018). Population dividend and economic growth in China, 1978–2018. China Economic
Journal, 11(3), 243-258.
GOLLEY, J., & WEI, Z. (2015). Population dynamics and economic growth in China. China Economic
Review, 35, 15-32.
KAINZ, H. (2015). SEXUAL MORES, ETHICAL THEORIES, AND THE OVERPOPULATION MYTH. The Heythrop
Journal, 49(3), 361-369.
Lal, A. (2019). Fertility management and concern with overpopulation in Mainland China. Eugenics
Quarterly, 11(3), 170-174.
Lee, H. (2014). Climate-induced agricultural shrinkage and overpopulation in late imperial China. Climate
Research, 59(3), 229-242.
Russell, H. (2011). Overpopulation. BMJ, 3(5826), 591-591.
Saunders, C. (2010). Causes and Impacts of Overpopulation. Foreign Affairs, 9(4), 646.
Shen, J. (2010). Population growth, ecological degradation and construction in the western region of
China. Journal of Contemporary China, 13(41), 637-661.