China's Shifting Demographics

Posters like these may be obsolete soon - what's with the red-eyed panda?

Breaking news this afternoon -- China has lifted its one-child policy and now couples are allowed to have more than one without any preconditions.

This is a stark change from when an ex-colleague of mine in Beijing told me quietly that he was the second child born illegally and his parents paid dearly for it.

They were previously quite active in the Communist Party and then they were shunned. Not only that but they had to pay a massive fine.

So this latest announcement is a big step foward in liberalizing family planning restrictions. For the longest time no one could have more than one child except for ethnic minorities. And then it shifted slightly with both only children could have another child, then only one parent who was an only child was necessary to be eligible to have two children, and in the countryside if the first born was a girl, the family could have another child.

The one-child policy has been in place since 1976

But now every family will be allowed to have two children, in the hopes of easing labour shortages and caring for the elderly.

China will "fully implement a policy of allowing each couple to have two children as an active response to an aging population", the Communist Party said in a statement today during the fifth plenum, where party elites are discussing the next five-year plan.

It's caring for the elderly that has made young people stressed out. When I was in Beijing eight years ago, they would talk about how they would have to look after two sets of grandparents and parents. And if they married that would be doubled.

That is too much of a burden for one child, not just financially which is already a huge cost, but physically being able to care for so many people.

Also sad is their lack of experience in having a sibling, of learning to share, and having relatives like cousins, uncles and aunts.

While that all changes soon, though no time frame was announced today, babies won't be popping out overnight.

That's because the cost of having a child, particularly in urban areas, is so expensive, that financially parents are not keen on having another one to raise.

As a result, some critics say the measure is too little, too late.

Having more than one child is too expensive for many families

William Nee, a researcher with China Rights Watch, sees this as an important political and social issue.

"China should immediately and completely end its control over people's decisions to have children. This would not only be good for improving human rights, but would also make sense given the stark demographic challenges that lie ahead," he said.

It really is a human rights issue -- being told you can or cannot have children by the government seems strange to the rest of us, but for the Chinese, it will take time (and money) to get used to this new idea.

What will be interesting to watch is that if this easing with stop the widening sex ratio between men and women. Currently it's at around 118 men for every 100 women which is not good. There are remote villages of single men.

I had previously thought this would give women the edge in choosing their mate, but it's the exact opposite -- females have become commodities in high demand and treated as such, rather than as humans.

There are studies showing higher numbers of kidnappings and sexual assaults against women which is very troubling because there aren't enough of them to marry. And women in the cities with careers aren't necessarily interested in settling down either.

So hopefully with the family planning policy being lifted, there will be a more normal ratio of men to women. Hope demographers will be pressing the reset button when this happens to record this latest change in China's population shift.

Quote of the Day: Don't get Involved in "Sextortion"

The number of cases of Hong Kong men threatened with blackmail after having online sex chats with women has increased significantly this year compared to last year.

Police figures show 506 local reports of "sextortion" in the first six months of this year, more than eight times the reported 60 cases in 2012; there were 477 cases in 2013, and last year 638.

Could it also be that more men are willing to come forward about their extracurricular activities because they don't have the money to pay up?

The amount victims also paid went up as well, according to police statistics. In the first six months of this year HK$1.6 million was paid out, compared to HK$100,000 in 2012. Meanwhile HK$1.7 million was swindled in 2013, and HK$2.3 million last year.

Yesterday three cases were reported by men ranging in ages 20 to 61, and none of them paid the amounts demanded of them, though they were threatened with lurid photos or videos of them would be released online. Interestingly they all reported the incidents in the morning until around lunchtime.

The police are treating these cases as blackmail, and one veteran police officer said such online scams were carried out by Asian women who demanded the money be paid into Western Union accounts registered in the women's home countries, like the Philippines.

Word of advice from the police? "Do not take your clothes off and perform indecent acts in front of a webcam."

It makes sense, but the sage words maybe harder to remember for those who get caught up in the heat of the moment...

Not Quite Progressive

About two weeks ago a young American male colleague remarked how sexist Hong Kong is.

Coming from San Francisco, he is shocked at how women are treated here, how local men look down on them and the preconceptions they have of the fairer sex.

To verify his point, there's a report out today from Privacy Commissioner Allan Chiang Yam-wang that there are mostly small and mid-sized companies that have made serious breaches with the law.

One shocking case is of an investment company that required all of its female staff to give blood samples for DNA testing after menstrual blood stains were left in the women's washroom.

There is no indication in the news story of how much of a mess was left, but is such a witch hunt necessary?

YTSL expressed frustration to me recently when she went to a restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui and ordered a dry martini, only to be warned by the waiter that the drink "might be too strong" for her.

Knowing her, she probably gave him a dirty look, but to assume that she wouldn't be able to handle the drink is condescending to say the least.

It's really amusing the preconceived ideas Hong Kong men in particular have of women -- how they are supposed to be delicate pretty things with long hair, big eyes and skinny legs -- and need to be supported by a man physically and financially. And then they get thrown off when they meet a woman who is more than capable of looking after herself.

They are immediately intimidated and perhaps wonder if they are lesbians!

Which explains to a certain degree why there are so many more single women in Hong Kong than men, who pursue women who depend on them.

So much for women's lib in Hong Kong...

Debating Women

The BBC's Zeinab Badawi moderates the panel of four successful women

Tonight I attended the Intelligence Square debate at the Asia Society where the motion was "The hand that rocks the cradle cannot rock the boardroom".

Taped for broadcast on March 15 on the BBC and hosted by the network's Zeinab Badawi, the speakers for and against the motion had very impressive CVs.

For the motion was Allison Pearson, an award-winning journalist and author who wrote I Don't know How She Does It. For the novel, she interviewed many working women and heard many anecdotes of how difficult it is for them to balance career and home.

Debora Spar is the president of Barnard College, a liberal arts college for women and was previously senior associate dean for the faculty of research and development at Harvard Business School. She also wrote Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection.

Against the motion was Helena Morrissey who is CEO of Newton Investment Management. She founded the 30% club to get 30 percent of women on UK corporate boards and has a stay-at-home husband and nine -- yes nine -- children.

Zhang Xin is the CEO of SOHO China, the largest real estate developer in China. She moved to Hong Kong at the age of 14 working 12-hour days in factories before going to England to study and eventually got a Masters in development economics from Cambridge University. She and her husband Pan Shiyi started SOHO China in 1995 and they have two boys.

Before the debate the audience was asked their opinion about the motion. Nineteen percent said "I don't know", 21 percent were for the motion, 60 percent against.

Spar started the debate and being an academic she gave a lot of figures to prove her argument that to be a successful working mother the hours needed to be put into both jobs is beyond 24 hours a day.

She said that women spend an average of 33 hours a week on housework and to be a CEO one has to spend 50-70 hours a week working on the job that includes international travel and conference calls in odd hours.

In the United States, 15 percent of board positions are held by women (9 percent in Hong Kong, 16 percent of women are partners at law firms, while 16 percent of women are in the Legislative Council in Hong Kong, and 19 percent in high court.

Spar concluded there were solutions but they were stark. If a woman wanted to have a successful career and have children, they had to hire help (and make lots of money), or they could have kids early before charging into the boardroom, or not have kids at all.

However, Morrissey begged to differ. She felt that women spend too much time fretting over what they couldn't do when they should focus their energy on figuring out how to make family and career work.

Meanwhile for the motion Pearson gave a humorous argument. She said women ran a country called Home, where men don't know where toilet paper comes from and think it's from the toilet paper fairy.

She reported interviewing many working women who felt they were not meeting their own standards and had bad health because they put everyone else in the family ahead of them.

Pearson added that men put pictures of their family on their desks to show they are family-oriented, but women seldom do that to try to avoid being judged. One joked to Spar that it's better to admit to being a drug addict because at least there's a rehab program for it.

And then Zhang rounded up the rear trying to dispel the preconception that women are not as strong as men by saying China had 30 percent more female gold medallists than male.

She also said that women are more resilient, men not so and that they need more support from women to be successful whereas women could do it on their own. She added that at SOHO China, the staff ratio was 50 percent men, 50 percent women and proudly said they leave home at a decent hour to have dinner with their families.

Zhang also said that women needed to have PhDs -- poor, hungry and determined.

A lively Q&A followed, with some women in the audience questioning if they were good mothers, or how do you find the work-life balance. One audience member who tracks women in Hong Kong boards reported that in 2009 there were 8.9 percent and now it's 9.6 percent. It's an improvement, but she described it moving at a glacial pace.

Before the debate I hadn't given much thought of the topic, and was one of the 19 percent who didn't know. But after listening to the speakers, I voted for the motion because Spar and Pearson gave more convincing arguments, that today, the reality is that it is extremely difficult for women to have it all. Morrissey has a husband who looks after the children, while Zhang is a billionaire. They are not representative of the vast majority of working women.

In the end the audience voted 1 percent "I don't know", 48 percent against and 51 percent for the motion.

Many people probably felt the same as me, while there were many young women in particular who were determined to vote against the motion because of their own personal conviction, not because of the debate.

In some ways I wish this debate took place 15, 20 years ago, because back then I thought I women could either have one or the other, not both. Then I thought it was possible, but there was no partner to make having a children an option.

We have to make do with the cards we are dealt with, but more importantly as Morrissey says, we should not be fretting or feeling guilty, but taking that energy and channeling it towards more productivity in whatever we are doing.

And we should be role models to the next generation of women to succeed in whatever they want to do, be it a CEO or a stay-at-home mom -- or both. There should be various shades on the definition of success.

Feminine Touch to Shakespeare's Shrew

Shakespeare's Globe's all-female cast performing The Taming of the Shew

I just came back from watching the first of five shows of Shakespeare's Globe performing The Taming of the Shrew at the Lyric Theatre at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.

In Shakespeare's day, all the women's parts were performed by men. But in this version, they were all female actors, which in the beginning threw my friend and I into a loop.

However it all fits in the theme of disguise and trying to figure out the real from the fake, though adding another layer to it with women playing men.

Here too the actors sing and play musical instruments, from the guitar to the trombone, accordion and saxophone to break up scenes or add a bit of levity.

Katherina and her husband Petruchio on their wedding day

I have to admit it was fun watching women portray men -- Petruchio, who demands the petulant Katherina be his wife, is very aggressive and struts with an egotistic air, while the servant Tranio pretends to be his master Lucentio and is puckish and hip, a guy who boasts much more than he could deliver.

The humour was shown by both physical actions and how they interpreted the lines, making it fun and fresh. However we have to say it was strange seeing two women kiss on stage -- even though they were playing a man and a woman...

I last studied the play in high school and so I had forgotten how Petruchio "tames" Katherina in such a demeaning way. Not only does he prevent her from eating and sleeping, but from cleaning after having fallen off her horse in the mud. He demands that she follow what he says, that if he sees the sun, it is the sun even if it is not -- and if he changes his mind, she is to accept that.

As a woman it was hard to watch, particularly at the end when Katherina instructs her sister and Hortensio's wife how the woman should be subservient and obey her master because he is the one who looks after her... one has to wonder if this is still relevant today?

Katherina is covered in mud after falling off her horse

Her speech ends the play on a serious note, but then as the saxophonist, the woman playing Katherina comes out again on stage on her own playing the instrument to a lively song that the others later come out and perform. It was a strange ending, though one could see the director wanting to end the show on a high note so to speak.

Nevertheless, all the actors were very strong in their roles, not missing a beat and bringing laughs from physical comedy to verbal puns. The fact that they had to sing and play musical instruments demonstrated how demanding their roles were, though the latter was not their forte.

A fun (though long evening) that started at 7.30pm and ended after 10pm.

The Taming of the Shrew

Shakespeare's Globe

September 25-29

Lyric Theatre

The Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts

www.shakespearesglobe.com