You may have heard that China is sterilizing Uyghur women.

It's not just that. Ethnic and religious minorities all over China are, by hook or by crook, seeing their family aspirations thwarted, even as the government presses for more Han babies. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/30/chinese-communist-party-han-baby-boom-sterilization-ethnic-minorities/

China has pivoted HARD from its post-famine anti-natal stance of the last few decades. Rather than "reduce Han fertility but provide exemptions for politically sensitive groups," it's "increase Han fertility and repress politically sensitive groups as much as possible."

Good question! Here's an article on China's sterilization program in Xinjiang. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/01/china-documents-uighur-genocidal-sterilization-xinjiang/

We can see this looking at the change in birth rates by region. Regions with more minorities have had much steeper declines. What limited data I have suggests this is true within regions too: more minority-dominated counties have had bigger declines.

Nor is this just a mean-regression thing. Here's the same data, with some tweaks: I've included Macau, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and I've presented it as % change in crude birth rate, not just raw change. The trend still holds.

What's interesting is that Taiwan is one of the less-diverse parts of the Sinosphere, yet has had a very large decline in birth rates. This points to how oddly *positive* the change in Han birth rates on the mainland have been.

Some will look at Hong Kong and Gungxi and say that this disproves the rule: but I disagree. SARs may be different: the HK/Macau contrast is pretty clear, for one thing.

For Guangxi, I'm not as confident about what's going on. I know very little about Cuengh identity politics other than that the very name used "Zhuang" is derived from a series of ethnic slurs until it was laughably ret-conned by the CCP to mean "tough."

But I dunno about Cuengh ethnopolitics or their relationship with family policy or local governance or whatever.

If anyone can refer me to some good english-language articles about Cuengh identity politics and Guangxi's family policies I'd be super interested.

Anyways, my argument is that what's going on is that the CCP is having a change in their vision of their place in the world. The "China Dream," "Wolf Warrior" diplomacy, etc, it's all a shift towards more assertiveness.

The problem is that the CCP is writing checks they'll only be able to cash for a few more decades. They're about to enter severe and interminable demographic decline.

Here's what I mean. And I guarantee you CCP officials have seen a chart like this. The wild thing is, I'm not even including India as a potential US ally! If I did, China is already swamped.

The thing is, the chart the CCP is looking at is even scarier. Because they're looking at recruitable manpower. And for the CCP, a lot of minority fighting-age men are, uh, not seen as a *national asset*.

Since non-Han make up a larger share of the young and prime-age Chinese population, that means that if I limited the line to HAN Chinese fighting-age males it would fall EVEN FASTER.

And if I also control for, say, obesity (rising fast!), it's even steeper downwards. Add in rising outside-options for success besides the military. The CCP lets in businessmen now! Being a PLA officer doesn't even guarantee you a leg up in intraparty competition anymore!

The point is, China is entering an extremely steep demographic decline. While the US is also entering a period of demographic malaise, as are many of our allies, it's not NEARLY as severe.

The article is about birth rates. But a big driver of China's bad demos and the US+allies good demos is not births at all. It's immigration. A lot of Chinese people leave China and move to the US and our allies.

We should accelerate China's decline and secure our position and encourage the depopulation of Hong Kong. Issue millions of visas. Recruit'em. Knocking another million fighting-age males off China's line right now, and their children down the line, is significant.