Happy Lantern Festival!

[cashew]

It is officially the last day of New Year's!

Sweet dumplings! Lanterns! Uh...apparently also traditionally the day when Chinese girls are finally allowed outside the house to go meet guys. This is why a bunch of romance poetry is written about lanterns, because girls get one day of freedom to scope out potential love interests.

It's honestly shocking how the Chinese population managed to grow at all during the imperial era... (Hint: they had marriage laws that punished families for not making enough babies. Again, I'm very glad all that shit is behind us now. Except for how there's a few crazies left in government who want to bring back those marriage laws to counter the current population decline and it's like...wow. Glad they're still fringe at the moment. For now. 🤞)

(OT: I wish rulers would figure out that the way to deal with population decline is to import more immigrants. Like...FFS, there's so much labor that we could be bringing in.)

Comments

[tanithryudo]

I mean, not just talking about the US's issues with immigration, but also Europe and such. I guess it also matters where the immigrants are coming from, and why they are immigrating.

[cashew]

With Europe, it's not immigration that's the issue. It's refugees. The problem with refugees is that the influx is sharp and intense and refugees aren't really part of the workforce nor can they speak the language. Getting them up to par language-wise is going to take a lot of effort (as opposed to illegal immigrants who already have language skills, but don't have legal labor protection thus are the most heavily exploited labor class).

Like, in China there's already a substantial amount of Vietnamese/Thai/Filipino illegal immigrants working the lowest paying jobs. It's part of how manufacturing is able to keep the cost low. Letting those guys get legal residence and have babies in China and putting those kids through the Chinese school system to generate more labor isn't going to really upset anything system-wise. Once those kids have been fully brainwashed (because let's be real, Chinese education is basically PUA), giving them a way to become "loyal Chinese" is a quick and easy way to expand the population without forcing people to make babies.