The Chinese government seems to be convinced that China's diminishing population is a bad thing.

The only putative reason cited in this article is that taking care of old people will be a lot of work. Yes, it will, but younger adults could take care of more old people if they are taking care of fewer children. Anyway, In 30 years, robots will do a lot of that work. In addition, a larger fraction of people over 60 will be able to work. The natalists do not respond to these points.

I suspect that an additional unstated reason is that a bigger population could make China more powerful internationally. That is not a moral justification to increase any country's population.

Some claim that the one-child policy had no significant effect after 1981. Others claim that continuing it reduced the birth rate even more. Those claims cannot both be true.

Now that Chinese are becoming somewhat prosperous — which they deserve, as everyone does — China is starting to drive worldwide production of some goods, much as the US and Europe do. That is part of why we are exhausting our planet. We need to reduce the Earth's human population to achieve sustainability.

So we need to reject the idea that the population must not fall.