Uhm, yeah, tasteless humor aside, the Chinese do have a odd system for developing names, however, it's not that idiotic pots and pans thing. (If you think that's funny, I bet you forward lots of obnoxious old jokes to all your poor friends via email, don't you?)

The Chinese can use virtually any common words to create a given name, although there is marked preference for words with ostenatious meanings, such as "Great Wealth" or "Outstanding Supreme."

Surnames, on the other hand, are limited to around a few hundred. Doing the math on this, it's not hard to figure out that no matter what happens, with more than a billion Chinese, there's no solution to this problem.

In a unique extension o...

Uhm, yeah, tasteless humor aside, the Chinese do have a odd system for developing names, however, it's not that idiotic pots and pans thing. (If you think that's funny, I bet you forward lots of obnoxious old jokes to all your poor friends via email, don't you?)

The Chinese can use virtually any common words to create a given name, although there is marked preference for words with ostenatious meanings, such as "Great Wealth" or "Outstanding Supreme."

Surnames, on the other hand, are limited to around a few hundred. Doing the math on this, it's not hard to figure out that no matter what happens, with more than a billion Chinese, there's no solution to this problem.

In a unique extension of this problem, the Chinese harbor and intense horror of incest, on a much greater level than the West. (After all, we're the culture that spawned Ashley explaining to Scarlet that he must marry his cousin, because only a blood relation could truly understand him.)

Since the Chinese lack the pragmatic sensibilities of the Wilkes clan, they view it as taboo to marry someone with the same surname as you, on the principle that they are members of the same family line. Add this to the gender imbalance, and the fact that Chinese society doesn't produce very many gentlemen these days, and it adds up to not-so-good romantic prospects for a whole bunch Chinese young men.

Many of these problems are the same in Korea, and in fact, much more acute.

A clarification of the One Child Policy, as Heinz669 alluded, it is not what people think. Most forced abortions and sterilizations actually took place before the plan was formalized around 1989. The formal structure of the One Child Policy is enforced through tax and social service penalties, which are left up to local governments to enforce, thus allowing great lee-way for local interpretation and experimentation.

Also, a husband and wife who are both only children is allowed to have two children, effectively limiting the policy to one generation at a time. Ethnic minorities are also allowed two children to assuage fears that the Hans were attempting to breed them out of existence. (Note:...

A clarification of the One Child Policy, as Heinz669 alluded, it is not what people think. Most forced abortions and sterilizations actually took place before the plan was formalized around 1989. The formal structure of the One Child Policy is enforced through tax and social service penalties, which are left up to local governments to enforce, thus allowing great lee-way for local interpretation and experimentation.

Also, a husband and wife who are both only children is allowed to have two children, effectively limiting the policy to one generation at a time. Ethnic minorities are also allowed two children to assuage fears that the Hans were attempting to breed them out of existence. (Note: Fears NOT assuaged!)

Further more, anyone willing to pay the tax penalty can have as many children as they want, and people too poor to pay taxes in the first place generally ignore the law, so it really only effects the middle class. Many Chinese feel that this policy has not worked at all, blaming people in the countryside and their ignorance for a still growing population. This, however, is typical Chinese prejudice against rural people.

Why the Chinese population continues to grow is that we are not mayflies. Parents do not die as soon as they spawn in our species, thus even with a dramatic drop in birthrate, the population will continue to climb until the older generations start to die. This means population declines often come by surprise.

Right now, an over-reaction to the population problem in Japan threatens to bring the economy to its knees as the population ages. Look for this to happen in China over the next twenty years. When the time comes for this generation of parents to die, we should be seeing a nearly 50% reduction in the Chinese population. This staggering figure is a self-inflicted holocaust, and will be a major disruption in the world economy.