Dear William Saletan :

First I admit I'm a Chinese, but not the those who speak for their own government in any case.I even don't get hyper when others talk ills of China. cuz I wanna know what they think and wanna have a full picture of my country.I genuinely admire that you are so familar with China's one-child policy.I'm very grateful to you that you are so deeply concerned about China's human rights.Yes, China needs the supervision form the world,only that can China develop faster and healthily.

Now I'd like to talk about the issue you brought up about the one-child policy in China.For the sake of population control and for the sake of the quality of life,China introduced one-China policy. It is reasonable,isn't it?You know, the government doesn't always adopt this policy. After world war two, the population of China is about 400 million, when the government encouraged its citizens to have more children. It led to a big boom of the population of China.Afterward, the government became aware that the growth rate was too fast so that they introduced the one-child policy to control population.Is it unreasonable? The policy of population control is neither invented or exclusively practised in China,why are you so keen on denouncing Chinese government?

It gave me an impression when I had read 99% of your article that you would come to a conclusion that: Chinese government did a good job in this earthquake.They care about their people and gave those who lost their only child in the earthquake a second chance to have another child.But you gave me a big surprise by arguing that the new policy sounds like a warranty.Being a intelligent student, I'm afraid I am not able to understand your logic. Imagine that you suffered a calamity,and the government gave you a large sum of money for compensation,would you scold your government for those money looks like paper?

I'm not clear whether the government issued similar policy in the 1998 flood or the 1988 drought.Even if the truth is like what you said,isn't the posture adopted by the government towards the policy an improvement? You always scold your government or others when they made an improvement?

Anyway, thank you indeed for your concern about our country's affairs even if your own country has a huge amount of serious issues to settle.

China has always been the brunt of so much American criticism for its one child policy. The fact is, especially as Americans who consume most of the world’s resources, we should be very grateful to China for helping to curb world population growth. While on an individual basis, execution of the policy may have resulted in draconian measures, the degree of starvation and suffering that the Chinese policy has prevented may far outweigh any harm caused to individuals. We in America have the luxury of criticizing the rest of the world because we are not faced with the same resource challenges. While I don’t condone forced abortions or the abandonment of baby girls, I’m not sure any of us would feel much better about mass starvation. This is one issue that is absolutely not black and white. The question the West must ask is how would we deal with the situation any better?

You make some great points here. It's unfortunate that when the Chinese government's humanitarian side is showcased, cynics interpret is as the "commoditization" of children.

Of course the government will not tell parents who have lost their only child that they cannot have another one. The author's implicit criticisms could well be extended to marriage in the United States. Are spouses commoditized because one cannot replace them until after being widowed or divorced? Do we have a "spousal warranty" because we are allowed to remarry, even though polygamy is illegal?

The one child policy has caused a lot of problems in China, no one can doubt that.

But the US could do well to take a few cues from the policy. For some reason that pretty much no one can give, Americans love unfettered procreation (we actually subsidize it). You could cure cancer, but you'd never be as highly regarded as someone who properly got married at age 22, produced six kids, and let everyone else pay for their public schooling, environmental damage, and health care.

I say, let people have as many kids as they want, but make them incur some of the costs!