Visit Mom OR ELSE!

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12130140

In response to its ballooning elderly population China is considering making it a legal duty for people with elderly parents to visit them. Elders could even go to court and sue for the right to be looked after by their kids.


First, doing this would take away the fun of threatening to stick old ladies back in Shady Pines. (That's a reference to the TV show The Golden Girls for those who don't get it.)

Second, this is wildly impractical on so many levels. One, you can't get blood from a stone so if someone's kids are barely making ends meet themselves how would forcing someone else on them benefit anyone? Two, what about people who live very far away from their parents or overseas? Third, what about parents who were abusive to their kids? Can you imagine someone who hit or molested you as a kid taking you to court and demanding that you look after them in their dotage?


Frankly, this all just smacks of how clueless to reality and practicality some aspects of the Chinese government really are. I can't help but wonder if this isn't some final swing by the Old Guard who know that in every way their time is running out.

Comments

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

That's a possibility, but with China you never really know.

[roofless.livejournal.com]

Rather than killing off any children over the one-child (http://geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/onechild.htm) limit,they could put them into camps and train/indoctrinate them for a life of care-taking.

Seems like something for which Chinese government would be capable.

[http://users.livejournal.com/-wanderer-/]

It is not the general practice China to kill off any children over the one-child limit (unless you're referring to abortion).

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

It's totally because the old guard are feeling that these are their last days.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Also reminds me of that NationStates game, where a possible legislation would require that married couples should call each other 'honey' at least once a week, or face a fine.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

This is also interesting.
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/china/national-news/2010/07/27/266257/Chinas-Chongqing.htm
China's Chongqing adopts new law to prohibit parents from spying on offspring

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

After I moved away, my dad asked "Who's going to take care of me when I'm old?" to which I answered "Wolves, probably."

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

If my kids didn't visit me, who would listen to me describe all my aches and pains?

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Random strangers and shop clerks you accost in a desperate attempt at connecting with other human beings?

BTW, can you tell I've worked retail?

Er, context, maybe....

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

The underlying impetus for this law part of Chinese society anyway. I quote (selectively) from wikipedia's entry on Confucianism:

"Filial piety" [pinyin: xiào] is considered among the greatest of virtues and must be shown towards both the living and the dead (including even remote ancestors). The term "filial" (meaning "of a child") characterizes the respect that a child, originally a son, should show to his parents....

....The idea of Filial piety influenced the Chinese legal system: a criminal would be punished more harshly if the culprit had committed the crime against a parent, while fathers often exercised enormous power over their children. A similar differentiation was applied to other relationships. At the time, the power was too much on the parent's side. Now filial piety is also built into law. People have the responsibility to provide for their elderly parents according to the law.'

However:

The main source of our knowledge of the importance of filial piety is The Book of Filial Piety, a work attributed to Confucius and his son but almost certainly written in the 3rd century BCE. The Analects, the main source of the Confucianism of Confucius, actually has little to say on the matter of filial piety and some sources believe the concept was focused on by later thinkers as a response to Mohism.

Er, China has a culture which maybe best appreciated by a comprehensive understanding of its history: these things may not sit well with our idea of what is right and proper, but making a law based on 23 centuries of custom doesn't sound that bizarre to me, especially when one considers some of the less-than-rational laws some folk would like to see enacted in our own polities based on equally (or even more) ancient customs: and it's not as if Confucianism is quite as mad a system of ethics and philosophy as some of our own systems. So I don't think it's as much the 'Old Guard' feeling their age as the Old Old Guard reaching from beyond the grave and into the modern world.

Re: Er, context, maybe....erratum

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

The underlying impetus for this law part of Chinese society anyway.

Is missing an 'is', as in: 'The underlying impetus for this law IS part of Chinese society anyway.'

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

Well, China is still a mix of old world traditions, (which another responder already described well) hard socialist rules and new capitalist tendencies.

This law I see more as an influence of trying to solve an old problem with capitalist means. Legislate so that everyone takes care of their family privately, and not on the state's dole. (which is the case in many mixed socialist/capitalist systems, and thus relieves kin and offspring a bit from that type burden)

So, ironically enough, I really do think that this is a sign of China's step away from hard socialism, and a try to combine that with not having tons of malnourished and neglected seniors rotting away in their homes.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

China doesn't have and never had a safety net anyways.

[pmax3.livejournal.com]

That is the way their society has been functioning - the old take care of the young to the extent of taking a very large share of responsibility for them and their success - the young in turn fulfill their duty to the parents when they are old. So it is not unreasonable to expect children to take care of the parents when they get old. In fact, the situation is somewhat similar in India, and a similar law too was passed in 2007. Arrests have been made too, such as this one (http://www.aarogya.com/news-and-updates/year-2010/5805-man-arrested-for-failing-to-take-care-of-elderly-father.html), under that law.

Having lived in India and being familiar with the realities here I find such a law to be completely reasonable.

The societies we are talking about are dependent on such social traditions for the kind of welfare which is provided by the government's social security net in the west - and in the absence of the the latter, those social traditions will have to be preserved - by law, if required.

In fact, people in eastern countries would find the following "sample contract" between parents and their newly graduated children -- which was published in the Richmond Times Dispatch in 2003 in a proposal for reducing joblessness -- to be outright horrifying:

The undersigned hereby agrees to the following terms regarding the living arrangements of the GRADUATE in the residence of the PARENTS, following the completion of the GRADUATE'S college education.

The GRADUATE will be allowed to reside in the home of the PARENTS free of financial obligation for a period of 90 days from the date of graduation.

Following the 90-day period, the GRADUATE becomes the LESSEE and must compensate the PARENTS for the cost of room, board and ....
.....
He/she will contribute at least four times a week to the preparation and/or clean up of family meals. Failure to do so will result in the cessation of meal privileges for a to-be-determined period.


.... and other such clauses.

A traditional Eastern person reading such a proposal would consider Western countries to be inhabited by soulless, selfish brutes - which goes to show we should not be hasty while trying to universalize the values we hold dear.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten India.

Thank you for reminding me.

We Westerners must seem to be all Xiǎorén to the Chinese: which is, small-minded, petty, grasping, selfish, materialistic, wilfully ignorant, and ungentlemanly.

Just goes to show, hey?

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

G-d forbid that anyone ever mentions that there could be other viable social customs that are different from the ones which pass for the universal 'norm' in the West, eh?

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

I can't help but notice you didn't actual address any of the concerns I listed. "It's their culture" isn't really news.

[onefatmusicnerd.livejournal.com]

The Richmond Times Disgrace is inhabited by soulless, selfish brutes.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually this is one area where the PRC shows it's not so different from the rest of the Chinese regimes. Honoring family is a big deal religiously and culturally over there, and the greying population is just going to amplify that moreso. And as the Chinese are run by Communists I wouldn't be surprised if their laws covering sex crimes are still in the Victorian Age.....

[reality-hammer.livejournal.com]

Ancestor worship for the non-win. :P

They should just implement a ponzi scheme for cross-generational wealth transfer like our elderly did.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

Maybe they should just adopt the Western approach, run up massive debts then foist the bill on the younger generation, who probably won't be able to retire anyway, at least not with the perks and benefits their parents had.

[anadinboy.livejournal.com]

the safety net was 5 daughters, now they only have one and shes into handbags. They will have to be switched off like logans run

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Renew! Renew!

[http://users.livejournal.com/-wanderer-/]

I can't help but wonder if this isn't some final swing by the Old Guard who know that in every way their time is running out.

This doesn't really strike me as the type of thing that hard-line Chinese socialists would be into (not that there really are any of those left); they were all about ripping up paintings and beating up old people. This seems more like an attempt to deal with the fact that China's population is actually aging very quickly, and more than a few people are going to be tempted to screw their parents over (especially since most of them have no brothers and sisters to share the burden).