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China calls on universities to provide 'love education'

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Honey69
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05 Dec 2024, 10:35 am

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chi ... 024-12-04/

Reuters wrote:

China calls on universities to provide 'love education'

HONG KONG, Dec 4 (Reuters) - China is urging colleges and universities to provide "love education" to emphasise positive views on marriage, love, fertility and family, in a bid to boost the country's flagging birth rate.

Beijing has been promoting various measures to try to make having children more attractive to young couples after China posted a second consecutive year of population decline in 2023.

China has the second-biggest population in the world at 1.4 billion, but it is ageing quickly, which will increase the demands on government spending in the future and put pressure on the economy.

College students will be the biggest driver of fertility but they have significantly changed their views on marriage and love, the Jiangsu Xinhua newspaper group said, citing China Population News, an official publication.

"Colleges and universities should assume the responsibility of providing marriage and love education to college students by offering marriage and love education courses," the publication said.

The measures would help create a "healthy and positive marriage and childbearing cultural atmosphere."

The state council, or cabinet, rallied local governments in November to direct resources towards fixing China's population decline and spread respect for childbearing and marriages "at the right age," although demographers said the moves were unlikely to resonate with young Chinese.

Around 57% of college students polled by China Population News said they did not want to fall in love, mainly because they did not know how to allocate time to balance the relationship between study and love, the publication said.

Due to the lack of "systematic and scientific marriage and love education, college students have a vague understanding of emotional relationships."

Universities could focus on teaching junior college students about population and national conditions, new marriage and childbearing concepts, it said.

Senior college students and graduate students could be taught through "case analysis, group discussion on maintaining intimate relationships and communication between the sexes."



Doesn't anybody fornicate any more?


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belijojo
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05 Dec 2024, 11:10 am

Don't waste the golden time of career development on love.


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funeralxempire
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05 Dec 2024, 11:11 am

belijojo wrote:
Don't waste the golden time of career development on love.


If all the educated, ambitious people don't breed that kinda leaves it to the less capable.


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blitzkrieg
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05 Dec 2024, 11:17 am

There is a similar trend going on in the west, due to falling living standards.

People don't want to be burdened financially more than they already often are, so they opt out of having kids.

It serves the rich right when they have less slaves to exploit, as the world population possibly declines in the coming century.

https://www.livescience.com/worlds-population-could-plummet-to-six-billion-by-the-end-of-the-century-new-study-suggests



belijojo
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05 Dec 2024, 11:30 am

funeralxempire wrote:
If all the educated, ambitious people don't breed that kinda leaves it to the less capable.

Family-based reproduction has come into conflict with company-based Labor.Turn left ：the company will take care of the children during working hours. Turn right：drive women back into the family.
Simply reasoning without taking measures can not reverse the low birth rate.


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funeralxempire
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05 Dec 2024, 11:36 am

belijojo wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
If all the educated, ambitious people don't breed that kinda leaves it to the less capable.

Family-based reproduction has come into conflict with company-based Labor.Turn left ：the company will take care of the children during working hours. Turn right：drive women back into the family.
Simply reasoning without taking measures can not reverse the low birth rate.


I agree, a society can't emphasis economic output above all else without paying other costs, like declining birth rates or a less connected society.


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05 Dec 2024, 5:26 pm

blitzkrieg wrote:
People don't want to be burdened financially more than they already often are, so they opt out of having kids.


I don't disagree with that however I feel it's only part of the story.

For some years now, the narrative about the future has been relentlessly depressing. When I was a kid the future seemed like an exciting thing - the technology that was coming, the exploration of space etc.

I honestly don't know what young people today have to look forward to. Declining living standards, geopolitical instability, and obviously the potentially existential threat of environmental breakdown.

When was the last time you saw a TV show, movie or read a book with a positive view of the future? It's far more likely to be a dystopia or zombie apocalypse. It's like people are psychologically preparing themselves for a sh***y future.

You don't have even have to be particularly switched on to current affairs to get the general impression that life for our children is going to be worse than for previous generations.

Why would you want to bring a child into the world?


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blitzkrieg
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05 Dec 2024, 5:44 pm

^ I agree that geopolitical instability and the potential of existentially threatening environmental issues are also some of the reasons why people are pessimistic about the future.



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06 Dec 2024, 12:14 pm

Honey69 wrote:
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-calls-universities-provide-love-education-2024-12-04/

Reuters wrote:

China calls on universities to provide 'love education'

HONG KONG, Dec 4 (Reuters) - China is urging colleges and universities to provide "love education" to emphasise positive views on marriage, love, fertility and family, in a bid to boost the country's flagging birth rate.

Beijing has been promoting various measures to try to make having children more attractive to young couples after China posted a second consecutive year of population decline in 2023.

China has the second-biggest population in the world at 1.4 billion, but it is ageing quickly, which will increase the demands on government spending in the future and put pressure on the economy.

College students will be the biggest driver of fertility but they have significantly changed their views on marriage and love, the Jiangsu Xinhua newspaper group said, citing China Population News, an official publication.

"Colleges and universities should assume the responsibility of providing marriage and love education to college students by offering marriage and love education courses," the publication said.

The measures would help create a "healthy and positive marriage and childbearing cultural atmosphere."

The state council, or cabinet, rallied local governments in November to direct resources towards fixing China's population decline and spread respect for childbearing and marriages "at the right age," although demographers said the moves were unlikely to resonate with young Chinese.

Around 57% of college students polled by China Population News said they did not want to fall in love, mainly because they did not know how to allocate time to balance the relationship between study and love, the publication said.

Due to the lack of "systematic and scientific marriage and love education, college students have a vague understanding of emotional relationships."

Universities could focus on teaching junior college students about population and national conditions, new marriage and childbearing concepts, it said.

Senior college students and graduate students could be taught through "case analysis, group discussion on maintaining intimate relationships and communication between the sexes."



Doesn't anybody fornicate any more?


I would think in a country where hardly anybody is religious, it would be much more commonplace.


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Honey69
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06 Dec 2024, 1:14 pm

Tim_Tex wrote:

I would think in a country where hardly anybody is religious, it would be much more commonplace.


I remember Chinese culture (including in Taiwan) as being rather asexual, but that was a generation ago. Things may have changed.

https://yuxie.scholar.princeton.edu/sit ... ndings.pdf

Quote:

...The culture of sexual repression in the PRC culminated during 1966–1976. Novels, movies, and other forms of literary and artistic pieces related to love and sexuality were banned as they were considered products of a degenerate, bourgeois way of life. People were not allowed to openly express love and intimacy, with hugging, caressing, or kissing deemed unethical. The state tried to eliminate all gender differences. For example, clothing with feminine features was considered capitalist, and the image of the “iron girl” was further reinforced. Due to the state’s strict control over sexuality, although Chinese women in this era had achieved significant improvements in socioeconomic status (SES), including a decline in illiteracy and a very high labor force participation rate, their sexual lives had not changed substantially. The vast majority of Chinese women still played the passive, reproduction-oriented role in sexuality, as they always had in ancient China...


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funeralxempire
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06 Dec 2024, 1:16 pm

Tim_Tex wrote:
I would think in a country where hardly anybody is religious, it would be much more commonplace.


So, how will you reconcile this information that contradicts your existing hypothesis? :nerdy:


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06 Dec 2024, 1:42 pm

As Mrs. Krabappel would have said, most of us will never fall in love and will only marry out of fear of dying alone.



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Yesterday, 2:25 am

Chinese scholar asked, sparking outrage online
Chinese media outlet NetEase reported that Kazakh State Advisor Erlan Karin was invited to deliver a speech at the National People's Congress on November 11, with the theme of "Kazakhstan's reform and China-Kazakhstan relations." After the speech, Wang Xianju, a former counselor of the Chinese Embassy in Belarus, asked a question and said that when he visited Kazakhstan, he saw "children everywhere". On the other hand, China is facing the dilemma of low fertility rate, which surprised him and asked " How can Kazakh female college students believe your words so honestly and obediently to have children, early and often?”

In response, Kalin responded that Kazakhstan will not force women to give birth, and that their women "participate in politics, ask questions, and ensure human rights." In addition, the country will pass important laws involving children's safety and women's rights in 2022, forming a new mechanism to protect women's rights. He added that Kazakhstan remits part of its energy revenue to a national fund, and each newborn can receive dividends from the account, which can be used to solve housing and education problems in the future.


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Yesterday, 3:52 am

Now there's a prac exam I wouldn't want to fail



MatchboxVagabond
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Yesterday, 4:05 am

I"m not sure how much things have changed since I was last over there, but at that time, dating was done nearly exclusively in secret. You never really knew who was in any sort of a relationship. And a traditional gift to give newly weds is a sex-ed scroll that indicated a bunch of the basics of what they'd need.

I wouldn't necessarily assume that the love education is going to be particularly weird, it's probably going to be a lot of the stuff that in this part of the US you get in elementary, middle and high school covering the essentials.There may be a few more things related to how to interact in general with respect to love as there aren't really the same opportunities to see people dating that there are in the US.



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Yesterday, 1:10 pm

I think technology has a big role to play. It's become extremely good at pacifying and forming parasocial relationships.

A lot of the older people who never managed form intimate bonds often have an unhealthy interest in tech. Manga, video games, crushes on celebs and general isolation. None of this was a problem decades ago.

Japan is a good example of this. Even weather forecasters are hounded out of their careers if their army of online followers discover they're in relationships.

Nothing wrong with manga, video games or even crushes, so long as it's kept in check but it's becoming very common for people to hit 30 and never having a meaningful, healthy romantic or intimate encounter.