{"id":51,"date":"2005-04-12T23:38:33","date_gmt":"2005-04-13T03:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/2005\/04\/12\/pro-natal-official-takes-over-in-h"},"modified":"2005-04-12T23:38:33","modified_gmt":"2005-04-13T03:38:33","slug":"pro-natal-official-takes-over-in-hong-kong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/2005\/04\/12\/pro-natal-official-takes-over-in-hong-kong\/","title":{"rendered":"Pro-Natal Official Takes Over in Hong Kong"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a68'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>PRI Weekly Briefing, 11 March 2005<br \/>\nBy Joseph A. D&#8217;Agostino<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nThe month after he urged Hong Kong couples to have more children, Sir<br \/>\nDonald Tsang became acting chief executive of Hong Kong following the<br \/>\nretirement of Tung Chee-hwa.&nbsp; &#8230;<br \/>\nTsang, a Catholic with two sons, could easily be its choice.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nIn a major departure from the Communist Chinese government line, which<br \/>\nenforces a one-child policy on mainland Chinese, Tsang urged Hong Kong<br \/>\ncouples to have three children apiece in order to counteract falling<br \/>\nbirthrates and an aging population.&nbsp; He said on a Radio Television<br \/>\nHong Kong program last month, &#8220;Hong Kong has one of the lowest total<br \/>\nfertility rates in the world and we need to think about how to resolve<br \/>\nthe problems discouraging people from having children. . . . I think<br \/>\neach couple needs to give birth to at least two children to reach the<br \/>\npopulation replacement level.&nbsp; Three will be the best.&#8221;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&#8230; Perhaps even China&#8217;s anti-family Communist leadership recognizes<br \/>\nthat Hong Kong is in dire straits.&nbsp; In the meantime, the nearby<br \/>\nsovereign city-state of Singapore has implemented a host of financial<br \/>\nincentives to persuade its low-fertility population to have more<br \/>\nchildren.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nHong Kong, with a population of 7 million, has a fertility rate of .94<br \/>\nchildren per woman, far below the 2.1 children per woman required to<br \/>\nmaintain an even population level.&nbsp; Hong Kong&#8217;s rate is even below<br \/>\nthose of Italy and Spain, whose people are fast committing national<br \/>\nsuicide with fertility rates slightly above 1.<br \/>\n&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PRI Weekly Briefing, 11 March 2005 By Joseph A. D&#8217;Agostino &nbsp; The month after he urged Hong Kong couples to have more children, Sir Donald Tsang became acting chief executive of Hong Kong following the retirement of Tung Chee-hwa.&nbsp; &#8230; Tsang, a Catholic with two sons, could easily be its choice. &nbsp; In a major [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":359,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[783],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-development"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}