In my opinion, this is good news.

World population can not grow indefinitely.

Natural selection prefers people who think otherwise, unfortunately.

Shocking how even on HN people are not aware that the world population will NOT grow indefinitely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348

Let me repeat myself: I think this is good news.

One way or another, the world population will not grow indefinitely. That's a fact. But the how, that's uncertain.

It is a lot better for us if the reason is not the ocean food chain has been disrupted.

With how we are progressing with medicine and building up 3rd world countries the world population will grow a lot more still.

Only in the short term. Lifting people from extreme poverty drastically reduces birth rates, accelerating demographic transition [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

On the first sentence I read "Communist Party" and "Brutal". Good job, Economist!

I mean, they literally call themselves the Communist Party? How else would you succinctly express them?

For example, Chinese goverment? As a former Economist subscriber, I know there's an intended wording bias on their articles.

Wait a minute, are you suggesting the communist party should not be called out for it's brutality in the first sentence, or that's somehow biased?

You do realize that a majority of the reason China's population is declining is because of the one child policy, right? Do you think that communist instituted policy is brutal?

Look, I'm all for fairness in reporting, but you have to call a spade a spade at some point, don't you?

ALL countries are brutal. That's how they work.

To look just at China for the brutality of its government is to hide your head in the sand.

The 'One Child Policy' has been discontinued for years. In my opinion, the sooner the world as a whole implements a 'one child per woman' policy the sooner the world will be able to reach a population level that is sustainable long-term, and halt the overuse of sparse resources like water, fish, soil, and start to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

This article is about China, so that's the context of this conversation. The point of the article is that the policy has lingering effects, which are being noticed now through the study of data points. Are you seriously suggesting a one child per woman policy, or is this in jest?

No, the current declining has nothing to do with the one child policy which has been removed for years. But the editors of the Economists obviously have more love for one-child-policy-topic than any real reasons.

Brutality, with Chinese characteristics!