The issue is, as I mentioned in my earlier <http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/some-thoughts-on-community-informa tics-in-china/> blog post what they call in China 1 to 6... Which is that the one child policy (combined with increasing life spans) means that one off-spring is now potentially responsible for 6 retirees--parents plus two sets of grandparents. It is seen as a major problem for the very rapidly upcoming future. That combined with very rapid urbanization (leaving the older folks behind in the villages) is a potentially quite explosive set of social issues... The one child policy has recently been reconfirmed I believe, so the issue isn't going to go away at least for a couple of more decades but rather likely to become more acute. Mike
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011 1:29 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] China law to make children visit parents At 13:48 06/01/2011 -0800, Mike Gurstein wrote: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12130140 But not only to visit parents but to care for them mentally and physically we learn! Now that China is copying its way, technologically, into Western consumerism, it is also discovering our fault lines -- including governmental inadequacy (and ineptitude) in coping with welfare for the old and the needy. The Confucian duty of caring for one's parents was fine with multi-generational families on their own plots in older times, and when 95% of the population hardly stirred more than 5 miles from their places of birth. It is rather reminiscent of Tudor England when the same phenomenon was occurring -- when young adults started forsaking their parents in the countryside and migrated into the new townships even if they couldn't find work there. In those days, by a decree of 1536, their ears were cut off. (More exactly, one ear was cut off. If they remained without a job or didn't return to their parents, the other ear was cut off. If they still persisted, they were executed.) It was a short-lived policy, however, and the butchery disappeared within a generation. So, I suspect, will China's neoConfucian proposal. Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/ <http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/> 2011/01/ <http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/>
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