This House believes that the people's republic of China should abandon the one-child policy.

This debate seems to ignore aging! While the for points are all valid none of them are likely reasons why China will actually lift the one child policy. The people's republic of China is not known for its willingness to change policy for human rights reasons and any attempt to persuade China to change its policy based on this is likely to be laughed away.

Skewing gender demographics is a problem with the policy that has been recognised for a while now and so far has not resulted in the policy being dropped. It is of course a serious concern but as it is difficult to tell what the effect will be. The debate mentions 'By 2020 it is estimated there will be 40 million men unable to marry in China simply because of the lack of females' but gives no indication as to the consequences of this... why is it a bad thing? The obvious answer is social unrest but China is managing a lot of that already, the resulting social unrest from people lacking a marriage is likely to be pretty small by comparison, at least from the perspective of the state.

The final reason mentioned is that those who are well off or important are able to get around the rules; yes this says that the policy is an unfair policy but it is hardly an argument for that same elite to abandon it is it?

Instead the arguments need to focus on things the Chinese state cares about; principly economic growth. China has during the last thirty years been living through a 'demographic dividend' where there have been large numbers of young people joining the work force. It is this that has helped allow china to create the export machine that has come to dominate world manufacturing. Now however China is rapidly aging. In 2009 there were 167 million over 60s but by 2050 there will be 480 million. This would of course be fine if there were more young people working to support the elderly but there wont be as the fertility rate has fallen from 2.6 thirty years ago to 1.56 today. In 2010 there were 120 million people in China aged between 20 and 24 but by 2050 there will be only just over half this number; 63million. This could obviously have a devistating effect of economic growth and will mean that China will need to change its whole economic system. This in itself may be a good thing and some officials may welcome it as it will make cleaning up China's environment easier but since the Communist party's legitimacy is based upon economic growth it is likely that sooner or later the state will decide it needs to encourage its citizens to have more not less children.