Recently, I discussed about overpopulation with a friend on Weibo. This is the second time for me to discuss this topic after 2008. What I learned this time is that not all people think overpopulation is a big problem. This time, my friend think that we should not suppress human urge and instead focus on development in technology and make the urge a driving force of society evolution.

I think, human being as part of nature, is still governed by natural’s laws. If human population keeps growing without limitation and without any nature enemies, nature itself will interfere in two ways: disease and warfare. Such interfere will not be able to work around regardless whatever efforts from human beings. When you look into all kinds of problems of our society today, particularly those problems in China mainland, you can always see the phantom of overpopulation. Overpopulation, of course, is not the root causes of many problems. But because of the huge amount of population in China, it always moves things into worse situation. In college, I learned one interesting thing about dilute solution and it’s called “colligative property”. What it means is that when the solution is dilute enough, many physical properties of the solution only has something to do with the concentration of the solution and are independent of what kind solvent it has. Overpopulation has some similarity here. When population grows to a certain point, many society problems arise regardless of social systems and cultures.

Rationality is major driving force in the evolution of human society. The natural needs of human should be satisfied, but it does not mean we should do this without any limitations. Needs of human could exceed a reasonable extend and this has to be regulated by rationality. The boom of Western world after renaissance benefited from the liberation of humanity, including agreement in satisfying more human needs. However, this is not equal to acceptance of satisfying any human needs without any regulations. Oriental worlds, particularly China, was declining in the same historical period. It certainly has the cause from denying some basic facts of humanity and natural needs of human. Similarly, it does not mean that any regulation of human needs is wrong. At present, China still needs more emancipation of ideology and humanity. However, it does not imply that the need of breeding more generations can be uncontrolled. The One Child Policy is heading to a correct direction, which aims reduce overall population in a natural way to a point that is no longer hindering society evolution. This direction is beneficial to all human beings. Meanwhile, the problems in enforcing the One Child Policy, particularly the problem of using brutal forces, must be prevented. The reasoning that One Child Policy is fundamentally wrong because of those problems in enforcement, is not responsible.