Chapter 37 1. Don’t squeeze, it will explode if you squeeze again

According to scientists' calculations, the earth, on which human beings depend, has existed in the vast universe for 4.6 billion years.Human beings originated roughly 5 million years ago, known as "ancient ape man", and the earliest modern humans appeared about 50,000 years ago. It is estimated that in 1 million BC, the total population of the world was only 10,000 to 20,000, and the range of population activities would not exceed 14 million square kilometers.Due to the extremely low level of productivity, coupled with the frequent occurrence of famine, epidemic disease, natural disasters and wars, etc., it has brought huge disasters to the normal population production and proliferation, and the population growth is quite slow.At the beginning of AD, the world's population was about 300 million. In 1000 AD, it was 310 million. By 1650, the world's population had reached 500 million.The previous average annual population growth rate was only 0.3‰, and the life expectancy of people was about 20 to 30 years old.

The Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century greatly promoted the development of social productivity, coupled with a sharp drop in the death rate, and the population began to "grow fabulously". The "Communist Manifesto" vividly described that the bourgeois revolution "seems to use The spell calls forth a great population from the ground."According to the estimates of the United Nations, British demographer Saunders, Japanese demographer Minami Ryozaburo and Chinese demographers, the world population will reach 1 billion in the next 180 years, that is, in 1830; it will double in 100 years. That is to say, it increased to 2 billion in 1930, and the average annual growth rate of the population reached 0.7%; it took only 30 years to increase the population by another 1 billion, that is, it reached 3 billion in 1960, and the average annual growth rate of the population reached 1.4%. It took only 15 years to increase the third one billion population. By 1975, the world population exceeded 4 billion, and the average annual population growth rate reached 1.9%. The time for increasing the fourth one billion population was further shortened to 12 years. In 1987, the world population broke through the 5 billion mark; on May 29, 1996, the United Nations Population Fund announced that the world population had reached 5.8 billion; The World Population Estimation and Prospect Report announced that the total population in mid-1998 was 5.9 billion, which means that the current population growth is about 100 million a year. It is estimated that by the end of 1998 and the beginning of 1999 the world population will reach 6 billion, an increase of the third The time for 5 billions has been shortened to 11 years.

It took more than 8,000 years for human beings to go from a population of more than 1 million to 1 billion for the first time, and it took 100 years to go from 1 billion to 2 billion. After that, the time for the world population to increase by 1 billion gradually shortened to 30 years, 15 years, 12 years, 11 years, from which we can see the pressure of population growth. The Club of Rome commented on the growth of the world's population in this way: "Human beings have pushed themselves into the dock of the life court like cancer cells multiplying exponentially. Except for locusts, species that are as fierce and blind as humans are rare." Speech Although harsh, but also very vivid. In 1956, American sociologist Herzler described the growth of population in his book "World Population Crisis": "The world population suddenly increased by several fuses like a hydrogen bomb explosion." In 1970, American scholar Paul Ehrlich formally put forward the concept of population explosion in his book "Population Explosion": "If the momentum of population explosion is not effectively curbed, then mankind will face terrible disasters like atomic bombs and hydrogen bomb explosions."

Marx believed: "Population oppresses productivity." According to estimates, every additional worker requires at least 10,000 yuan in fixed assets.After entering the 20th century, with the acceleration of the rapid population expansion, countries around the world began to consciously control population growth.Since the first World Population Conference was held in Bucharest in 1974, the number of countries practicing family planning has increased from 27 to 100, and the contraceptive rate has increased from 10% to 55%.In the process of population control, developed countries generally do better than developing countries.Apart from differences in customs and habits, the most important reason for this difference is the difference in concepts.In developed countries, as technology advances and the organic composition of capital increases to a certain extent, the requirements for the technical and cultural qualities of workers have increased, and economic development has shifted from relying mainly on the number of workers to the quality of workers. It has also shifted from pursuing the number of children to pursuing the quality of children, and gradually shifting from more births and more births to fewer births and better education, thus triggering a revolution in the decline of fertility.According to data from the United Nations, the population growth rate in North America and Western Europe has dropped from 0.86% to 0.54%; the total fertility rate has dropped to 2.1 in the mid-1970s, and now it has dropped to 1.7, and will continue to decrease in the future.However, many developing countries still uphold the old idea that more people are more powerful, so population control is obviously inferior to that of developed countries.According to statistics, although the population growth rate of developing countries has dropped from 2.38% to 2.015, the average total fertility rate was 4.6 from 1975 to 1980, 4.2 from 1980 to 1985, and 3.6 from 1990 to 1995, which is also gradually declining. , but still much higher than that of developed countries. Among the 5.804 billion people in the world in 1996, 1.171 billion were in developed countries, accounting for 20.18%; 46.82% were in developing countries, accounting for 79.82%.The future population depends mainly on the population of developing countries.It is estimated that by 2025, more than 95% of the world's new population will be concentrated in developing countries.Rapid population growth and economic difficulties in developing countries continue to widen the gap between rich and poor. In 1960, the richest 20% of the world's population accounted for 70% of global income; by 1989, their share rose to 83%, while the poorest 20% of the population accounted for only 1.4% of global income.The reason is that the heavy population burden puts developing countries at an increasingly disadvantageous position in the world economic competition.

Although residents have national boundaries, the impact of the population explosion is global.The rapid increase in population not only leads to sluggish and unbalanced economic development, but if it continues to develop, it will exceed the carrying capacity of the earth, thus affecting the security and stability of the world. Scientists are already working on a proposition: how many people can the earth eventually hold?Is there a limit?Some biologists believe that the Earth is a finite system capable of supporting a finite number of people.They warn that if the global population exceeds 10 billion by 2050, it "will push the planet's water and soil and other resources to the limit of the heavy burden." They argue: "The planet is finite and natural systems are being pushed to their limits !"

The international community has generally recognized that the population will continue to increase rapidly, and the earth will not be able to bear it.The "Programme of Action" adopted at the Cairo Conference points out that mankind is facing enormous and urgent challenges, the basic resources on which mankind depends are being depleted, and environmental pollution is intensifying. Chronic poverty, social and economic disequilibrium, and crippling waste. Although scientists have different opinions on how many people the earth can support, the consensus is that more than 10 billion people have crossed the danger line.And now we are not far from this dangerous line.The Cairo Conference made three predictions on the population prospects: in the first scenario, if in the next 60 years, the current average number of children per woman is reduced from 3.3 to 2.1, then by the end of the 21st century, the population will stabilize at 11 billion In the second case, if the number of children per woman can reach 1.7 at the beginning of the 21st century, then the population will reach 7.8 billion by the middle of the 21st century, and then gradually decline; in the third case, if the number of children per woman Still more than 2.5, then by 2100, the world population will be as high as 13 billion, and by 2150 it will rise to 28 billion.From the above, we can see that although the pressure of population growth is heavy, the future destiny is in our own hands.China bears a heavy cross "The endless yellow skin is like the waves of the Yellow River, and the countless black eyes are brighter than the stars..."

These are two lines in a song, which are powerful and majestic when sung, but in real life, it is not so easy to look at the yellow skin like the waves of the Yellow River and the black eyes that are brighter than the stars. By the end of 1997, China's population had reached 1.236 billion. What kind of concept is this? More than 1.2 billion people stand on the equator and can circle the earth more than 50 times; more than 1.2 billion people open their mouths and swallow 780,000 tons of grain, 34,000 tons of meat and 36,000 tons of wine a day.If these things are all pulled by Jiefang trucks, it will take more than 200,000 vehicles, and they can be lined up one after another, from Beijing to Nanjing.

A population of more than 1.2 billion is too heavy a burden for a developing country. When Deng Xiaoping met with a foreign head of state, he couldn't help feeling deeply: "Our difficulty lies in the large population." China, this self-proclaimed "central power" that sees the world through the ages and proclaims its ministers, since Pangu opened the world, the monarchs of all dynasties have always told the world to spread the land and the people, and the virtuous ministers have always encouraged the people to prosper, and the people Living at home, I always look forward to a prosperous population and a full house of children and grandchildren.Confucius, a thinker and educator in ancient times who had a great influence on China, clearly advocated population proliferation.He said eloquently: "If you win the crowd, you will win the country, and if you lose the crowd, you will lose the country."The 5,000-year patriarchal and feudal traditional culture has infiltrated and nurtured, forming the unique Chinese concept of fertility: more children, more grandchildren, more blessings. "The land is vast, the resources are abundant, and the population is large", which once became the enlightenment textbook that the Chinese are proud of.

It was in this ideology that China's population expanded rapidly. During most of the primitive society, slave society and feudal society, China's population development, like the world's population development, was in a stage of high birth, high death and low growth, so the population growth was not significant. According to relevant data, in the Xia Yu period in about 2100 BC, my country had a population of only 13.55 million; by the Western Han Dynasty in 2 AD, the population of our country was only 60 million; until the end of Ming and early Qing in the first half of the eighteenth century Yeh, my country's population has only reached 100 million.That is to say, in the history of my country's population development, it has taken at least 3,800 years to go from more than 10 million to breaking through the 100 million mark.

The first heyday of my country's population development was the Qing Dynasty.The total population of the country exceeded 200 million, 300 million, and 400 million in 1762, 1790, and 1834, respectively, and the time required for each increase of 100 million people was 21, 28, and 44 years, respectively.This means that as early as the second half of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century, China created the world's population growth rate in the first 60 years of the 20th century, starting a century and a half earlier than the world's population.By 1834, it exceeded 400 million, thus laying the foundation for China's large population.After the base is large, even a low growth rate will snowball and bring about a large amount of growth.Our current population problem is precisely in this kind of trouble.

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, it has been the second heyday of my country's population development. In 1949, my country's population was 540 million, and in 1953 it reached 600 million.At that time, the world's population was less than 3 billion, and China accounted for one-fifth of the world's total population.If we could clearly see China's huge population base and high population growth rate (22‰ according to Mr. Ma Yinchu's calculation) at this time, perhaps we would not have such an embarrassing situation today, but at that time we not only did not know China's population crisis, on the contrary, uses the slogan "more people are more powerful" to keep the population in a situation of arbitrary expansion.The most ridiculous and saddest among them is the criticism of Ma Yinchu. Ma Yinchu is the president of Peking University, deputy director of the East China Administrative Committee, and a famous economist.As early as 1953, he began to study China's population issues. Through a large number of investigations, he found that since the founding of New China, the natural population growth rate of our country has reached as high as 22‰.He believes that in a few years, China's net population growth rate will reach 30‰. Based on this calculation, my country's population will reach 930 million in 15 years, and 5 billion in 50 years. From July 5 to 30, 1955, the Second Session of the First National People's Congress was held in Beijing.At the Zhejiang group meeting, Ma Yinchu gave a worried speech on the issue of population control in China.However, the reaction of the delegates at the time was enough to be compiled into a modern joke book: "The Soviet Union is Big Brother. If Big Brother didn't talk about this issue, we can't talk about it!" Ignorance is often the beginning of disaster. In 1957, just three months after Ma Yinchu's "New Population Theory" was published in the People's Daily, under the personal command of Kang Sheng, Ma Yinchu was fully criticized.If the critical articles at that time are displayed now, many people may laugh out loud, thinking that they are extremely funny, but at that time they were published in the organ newspaper of the Party Central Committee with high-sounding appearance: "It seems clear now that they deliberately used the population to problems, birth control issues, anti-communism, anti-socialism... The population issue has always been one of the most powerful weapons to paralyze the consciousness of the working class. As early as the end of the 18th century, the British bourgeoisie, through Malthus It’s done.” The People’s Daily also published an editorial with a ridiculous title: “Birth Restriction Will Destroy China”! "Six hundred million Shenzhou" criticized Ma Yinchu verbally and in writing.Kang Sheng still didn't let go of his hatred, and further instructed: "We must thoroughly expose and criticize him, and criticize Ma Yinchu just like criticizing the imperialist Acheson back then." After more than 40 years, when we look back at this period of history, we have to find painfully that an ignorant and wrong political movement has cost us decades or even generations. In 1963, China's population increased to 700 million; in 1968, it exceeded 800 million, an increase of 100 million in just five years; in 1973, it exceeded 900 million... From 600 million in 1953 to 900 million in 1973, it took 20 years A net increase of 300 million, this is the price of ignorance and madness: wrongly approve one person, wrongly increase 300 million. Mr. Ma Yinchu was finally completely rehabilitated before his death, but the increasing population could not make them disappear. On the contrary, as this population entered the age of marriage and childbearing, they multiplied again, pushing China's population to one after another. Peak: 1 billion in 1980, 1.1 billion on April 14, 1989, 1.2 billion on February 15, 1995, and 1.236 billion at the end of 1998.The longest period required for every 100 million population increase is 10 years, and the shortest is only 5 years.In the 50 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the population has increased by 700 million. Since 1973, China has adopted a strict family planning policy, and it has indeed achieved remarkable results. The population growth rate has dropped from the peak of 30‰ to the current low level of 10.06‰.However, due to the huge population base, a relatively low growth rate can still bring about a large amount of growth. Therefore, China's population continues to expand with a net increase of about 12 million per year.It is equivalent to adding a new Beijing city and a Tianjin city every year in our country, adding a new large county every month, and adding a small county every week; the average net increase of 44,000 people per day, the average net increase of 1,833 people per hour, and the average net increase of 1,833 people per hour. A net increase of 31 people per minute.In other words, every time you finish smoking a cigarette, more than 200 new lives are born in hospitals across the country.There is also a more popular saying among the people, which may be more visual and three-dimensional: a net increase of one platoon per minute, a net increase of one regiment per hour, and a net increase of one army every day! China bears a heavy cross! A public service advertisement on CCTV has made tens of thousands of children in China sing "Don't squeeze! Don't squeeze!" However, with so many people, is it okay not to be crowded?As long as we go to the streets or parks, movie theaters and any public places, there are crowds of people everywhere like mountains and seas.During commute time every day, the streets are full of bicycles flooding in like a tide. You can’t see which is the head and which is the tail. If you distract yourself, people will turn their backs on their backs—is it okay not to squeeze?A bus stops, and immediately a large group of people surround it, and if they hesitate for a while, they will be thrown behind the bus—is it okay not to squeeze?On the square of the train station, there is even a dark crowd, just like the ten-thousand-person meeting that was popular in the countryside back then. With so many people, it is crowded to sell tickets, to get on the train, and to exhaust the effort in the train. Squeeze out a place to stand on... The population density per square kilometer in the urban area of ​​Beijing has reached 27,000 people, and some districts have reached 30,000 people. How can it not be crowded? The daily floating population in Shanghai exceeds 2 million, which is equivalent to the population of a small country. How can it not be crowded? China's population control policy has achieved remarkable results. The population growth rate has dropped from 30‰ in the 1970s to the current 10.06‰, a drop of 2/3, which belongs to the category of low growth rate.However, compared with other countries, the total population base of China far exceeds that of other countries, which means that with the same low growth rate, China has a much higher growth rate than other countries.For example, with the same annual growth rate of 10‰, with a population of 1.2 billion as the base in China, the average annual population increase is 12 million.In contrast, Thailand's average annual population increase was only 640,000 based on 58.18 million in 1994, and the average annual population increase in the United States was 2.86 million based on 260 million in 1994.In other words, with the same annual growth rate, China's total population increase is 18.75 times that of Thailand and 4.19 times that of the United States. Therefore, although China has adopted a powerful family planning policy, due to the inertial effect of population development, China's population still has a process of continuous growth, and the future situation is still grim.It is predicted that from now on, women who were born during the baby boom period from 1963 to 1973 will also enter a period of vigorous childbearing.According to preliminary estimates, even if the current low birth rate and low growth rate are maintained, China's population will not reach its peak until 2030 to 2040, when the population is expected to be about 1.6 billion, and then decline slowly.That is to say, in the next 30 years, China's population will increase by about 400 million. This is still a very optimistic estimate. It is a prediction made on the premise of continuing to implement the current family planning policy. As long as we ignore or relax population control a little bit, the population will be out of control again, and the time for zero population growth will be delayed. , the peak population is far more than 1.6 billion.Therefore, we must not become slack just because the current population birth rate and growth rate have dropped to a relatively ideal level.In fact, the current population situation in our country is not optimistic.In some villages, the birth rate is still quite high, and the phenomenon of multiple births is serious.According to a survey, the rate of one child in rural areas is only 46%, and the rate of multiple children is still as high as 20.1%. In some local surveys, 62% of married women of childbearing age aged 30 to 49 have three or more children.In addition, China also has a "hidden kingdom" with an unpredictable population. A large number of "superbirth guerrillas" who wander around to escape family planning give birth to individual children in some remote corners of the city or at the junction of urban and rural areas. The "black children" who do not have household registration are not registered, so they do not enter our country's demographic data, which can easily give us an illusion. In addition, the poorer the place, the higher the fertility rate.According to a survey of 10 provinces and cities presided over by Comrade Tian Xueyuan in 1992, those with a per capita monthly income of 25 yuan or less had an average of 2.64 children, and those with a monthly income of 26 to 100 yuan had 2.37 children, and those with a monthly income of 101 yuan had 2.64 children. Those with a monthly income of ～100 yuan gave birth to 1.93 children, and those with a monthly income of more than 301 yuan gave birth to 1.79 children. The number of children a woman has is inversely proportional to the per capita monthly income of the family.The poorer you are, the poorer you are, forming a vicious circle, which makes China's population situation more severe and complex. Another feature of China's population situation that is different from other countries is the uneven distribution.Population geographer Mr. Hu Huanyong has devoted himself to research for decades, and proposed the famous Aihui-Tengchong geographical dividing line of population distribution: the northwest of the line accounts for 52% of the country's land area, while the population only accounts for 5%; the southeast of the line accounts for 48% of the country's land area. %, but 95% of the population.This basic distribution pattern has hardly changed in the past century, and it is still roughly the same today. If we analyze it more carefully, in 1995, the six provinces and autonomous regions of Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang, and Tibet located in the northwest had an area of ​​about 5.08 million square kilometers, accounting for 53% of the country’s 9.6 million square kilometers; and their population There are only 76.17 million, accounting for only 6.3% of the total population of the country, and the population density is 15 people per square kilometer. The 12 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the Central Government in the southeastern region that is close to the ocean, including Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Liaoning, Shandong, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan, cover an area of ​​1.334 million square kilometers, accounting for 14% of the country's land area. %; the population is 495.99 million, accounting for 40.9% of the national population, and the population density is 372 people per square kilometer. The remaining 13 provinces in the central region have an area of ​​3.19 million square kilometers, accounting for 33.2% of the country's land area; a population of 639.05 million, accounting for 52.8% of the country's population, and a population density of 200 people per square kilometer.In terms of population density, the northwest, central, and southeastern regions are distributed in a "three-level ladder" pattern: 1:13:25, and the difference between high and low is very large. The gap between the rich and the poor in the population fertility rate and the imbalance in the population distribution have brought greater difficulty to China's population control, and will also make China's population situation in a very tense situation for a long time.