The international news agency that ran this story ends by reminding us that China’s estimated 1.3 billion population is the largest in the world and is forecast to hit 1.6 billion around 2050.

This final sentence is pithy but telling. The crucial piece of context is meant to justify the couple’s persecution. We are quietly asked to drop our outrage that a woman, expecting her third child, is forced to lead a fugitive life because of China’s “overpopulation problem”.

Arrested development

This reflects the prevailing mindset that the population growth in the developing world must be curbed, no matter what the human cost. Thus the United Nations Population Fund warns us that the developing world is “responsible” for 95 per cent of all population growth that “reduces the quality of life for all”. Never mind if the bulk of world resources is consumed by the developed world, the poor must pay.

Industrialised countries may not openly approve of coerced birth control but they are not protesting loudly about it either. There exists a consensus—repugnant in its condescension—that people in developing countries should not have too many children since they can ill-afford to feed, clothe and educate their offspring.

Of course, the link between economic development and birth rates remains nebulous.

Rather than overpopulation, the squalor of overcrowded cities can be attributed to poor urban planning and endemic poverty may be due to unjust social and political structures. Beneath all the noble talk of alleviating poverty and protecting natural resources, the ominous spectre invoked is that of the unwashed Third World hordes clamouring at the gates of the First World.

How else to explain why European countries—many of whom are facing social and economic problems related to their own rapidly ageing populations—continue to fund population control programmes in the Third World?