>The best way to "control" population growth is...

Then provide some level of govt incentive to reach that goal, it's still coercion (or if you prefer, manipulation), even if the incentive is 1st order positive effects, and the stated goal/result is a 2nd or 3rd order effect.

Thinking about it, I keep coming back to preditory lending/selling tactics or dark-pattern manipulation (except the UI is your life choices) as comparisons, but I haven't worked out exactly why, yet, other than it bothers me in a similar way. Moreso, since it's government.

It's a coordination problem. Everyone wants to act in the way that maximizes their happiness/success/utility, but in doing so acts in a net-negative way. One of the premier purposes of government is to solve coordination problems. Why is it unethical for the government to solve this coordination problem?

Or, more concretely, why does my right to have a dozen children trump my children's right to have sufficient resources left to them to live a happy life?

People are free to use or not birth controls if they want or not children, same for the education. People aren't tricked in reducing the amount of children they have. Data in developed countries seems to point that when people are better educated and have the tools to decide for children, they get them later in life and in less quantity (without considering other factors, such as religious communities that have more children per woman than average).

How would your opinion change if that correlation were found to disappear in the coming decades? Or if it actually began to reverse (for example as populations shift to being more urban where kids are expensive and access to assisted reproduction depends on wealth)?

But what I was originally going to say is that the language gets really fuzzy really fast. Like you could argue that sex education is a form of persuasion (though I wouldn't say coercion) and is easily argued as a form of population control. But I think many of us would call that beneficial. I'd say the same with free/cheap and easy access to forms of birth control. I'd say that enables more choice. But if we're talking about a counseling center that guilt trips someone into having the child or not having the child I'd call that coercion and I don't think that's right. But others would call that persuasion and education. So I think this gets messy really quick and a bit of expanding on the thought for clarification is needed.

I used the word "coercion" intentionally, although it's not exactly right.

Just as "coercion" implies "force or threatening," "persuasion" implies an "un-forced, freely-made choice." And that is a big part of what I'm questioning depending on particular circumstances.

At what level of deception or trickery or lies-of-omission, does the free-choice become the illusion-of-choice?

Hypothetically, in Xinjiang, if (and I get that this is an extremely unlikely "if" for obvious reasons) if we presume the actions are exactly the same (provide/offer/compel education), and the end results are exactly the same (results in suppressed Uighur birthrate, but educated),

Then does the government's good or bad intent matter?

What's the difference between these scenarios, if

1) China govt being honest and trying raise the QoL in Xinjiang to be equal with the rest of China, or

2) China govt lying, and using education as a pretense because of the low birthrate result that they desire?

Giving the state arbitrary powers to limit population growth is a form of violence. Having a state sactioned sterilization on excess children is just as horrific as a war, without any of the spoils of war.

The problem lies in the fact that the gov is the last body left to resolve our deepest conflicts as we are no longer free to commit acts of violence on our own behalf. Making it through life used to be materially difficult and death was far more common. Living in our current heaven-like atmosphere has far darker implications for the age-old conflicts.

It's sterilization, so that Uighur families can't have children.

EDIT: HN won't let me respond, probably due to the automatic moderation controls kicking in on this article, so here's an example of the forced sterilization policy indiscriminately targeting all Uighur women: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/04/muslim-minorit...

The more boring explanation is the simpler one I think; that they're bringing policies toward minorities in line with policies toward the majority -- i.e. ending a form of "affirmative action" they used to have.

You can argue that population control of _any_ kind is wrong and cruel, and I think that's a totally defensible argument, but there's a rhetorical sleight of hand going on here where people equate China's controversial population control measures (that have been ongoing for decades) with the elimination of a particular ethnic minority, Nazi-style.

It's a culture- and religion-based form of oppression. The ethnic Uighur people are Muslims, for the most part. They form a distinct subculture within China. The Communist Party sees their nonconformity as a threat to social harmony. That's why, in addition to forced sterilization and forced birth control, the government has imposed forced re-education in concentration camps.

Their goal is to destroy the Uighur population's distinctiveness as a subculture in China. It is deliberate ethnocide (by forced internment) and genocide (by reproductive suppression).

Which makes you ask, what's the difference between Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups like the Hui? Well, the biggest as far as I can tell is the influx of new, extremist ideologies like Wahhabism that are actually quite _incompatible_ with the indigenous culture. The reasons why that happened seem complex, but maybe you can say it's an unfortunate outcome of US and Russian meddling in the region over decades.

It's absolutely true that there's increased security and surveillance targeted at Uyghurs in the region, I've seen a lot of videos taken by travelers from the area that confirm that. There's also a coordinated and systemic program of re-education, as admitted by Chinese authorities. I'm sure there is a non-zero amount of abuses as part of this whole program, but I don't think that's the same thing as genocide. & I think the stated reason in their propaganda for _why_ this is all happening passes the smell test... Otherwise, wouldn't they be repressing Hui Muslims as well?

(Also see Tibet -- people said the same thing about Tibetan culture 20 years ago, but it's pretty well-understood now that there were foreign-funded separatist elements back then)

The policy has historically allowed exceptions for ethnic minorities, but looking at news stories they have been physically putting birth control devices in Uyghur women without consent too. The state perfected its art of surveillance by testing on minorities; it's no surprise they also perfected some other human rights violations from experience with Han people.

(There are cheap condom programs, but the entire country just doesn't talk about sex. You get few safe sex talks, and all these stuff end up as balloons for kids and hairbands. Combined oral contraceptives are cheap and OTC, but the culture is heavily against "unnecessary use of western medicine", especially for the cheap ethinylestradiol/levonostrogel kind because "cheap means bad". So you end up with good women's bodily autonomy on paper and terrible execution, even without the violations.)

What about government policies that persuade women to have more children? Are those ethically ok?

Except, you missed the part where, if someone's free to run up the score with 4, 6, or 10 children...they also have the freedom to watch them starve if they can't support them.

I don't know that better planners should be forced into subsidizing bad family planning/no family planning.