HILL: The inevitable population time bomb

Thirty-five years of strict population control policy has triggered a mathematical apocalypse from which China can never recover

Chinese elders sit and bask in the sun as they watch people come and go at a street market set outside their home in Beijing. Their generation lives in China almost unrecognizable from the one into which they were born. The pace of change in recent years has left many elderly Chinese uncertain about their future in the world's most populous nation. (Elizabeth Dalziel / AP Photo)

In 1968, Paul Ehrlich wrote “The Population Bomb.”

Everyone read it. Most of them freaked out.

Unless strictly enforced radical population control was instituted with legalized abortion, mandatory birth control and the use of sterilants in water supplies immediately worldwide, Ehrlich said, the human race would suffer tribulations comparable to the end times before the end of the next decade.

“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now,” wrote Ehrlich.

World population in 1968 was 3.5 billion. Today, there are more than 8 billion people, almost all in countries where life spans have increased. Death rates have plummeted, and poverty rates have been slashed mostly through the internationalization of free trade and commerce.

Ehrlich was spectacularly wrong and rightfully ridiculed in many sectors. He outkicked the Malthusian Doctrine all by himself.

Ever since President Joe Biden opened up the floodgates to 10 million, 15 million or maybe 20 million undocumented illegal immigrants, one question has not been answered in any coherent manner by anyone in the Biden camp:

“Why?”

What was the “real reason” Biden and progressive liberals wanted so many people to flood the United States illegally in the first place?

Conspiracy theorists have postulated various nefarious reasons: Democrats need them to cheat and win elections; human trafficking for prostitution and drug gangs; fulfillment of the Cloward-Piven strategy to take down America.

Ehrlich was wrong about a population explosion outracing food production capability that would trigger massive loss of life. However, official government projections now point to a time in the not-too-distant future when adversaries such as China and Russia will see their populations shrink precipitously in an irreversible manner and become a shadow of their former selves.

It won’t be because they can’t feed their populations. It will be because the Chinese and Russians stopped having enough Chinese and Russian babies to replace their parents and grow their populations.

China hit its high-water mark of 1.49 billion people in 2024. By 2050, according to various population projection sources, the Chinese population is expected to be less than 1.26 billion. By 2100, there will be only 633 million Chinese in China, 60% fewer than today ― all self-inflicted by communists following the short-sighted population control policies espoused by Ehrlich, such as the one-child mandate in China from 1979 to 2015.

Thirty-five years of strict population control policy has triggered a mathematical apocalypse from which China can never recover.

Russian population currently is 145 million. By 2050, they will be down to 136 million Russians. By 2100, only 126 million Russians will be alive, a 13% decrease from today.

It is impossible to have sufficient economic growth to support a world superpower when your population and GDP are shrinking.

As illegal and dangerous as all the immigration of undocumented aliens has been, their presence is built into current projections of population growth for Americans. There are 345 million people living in the U.S. today; by 2050, that number is expected to hit 381 million, and by 2100, there will be 421 million Americans.

There have been more than 66 million legal abortions since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973 in the wake of population control hysteria. The live birth rate in America is less than half of what it was in the late 1950s. The only way for the U.S. to continue to grow in population is to accept far more immigrants than we would have done otherwise.

World powers that experience declining birth rates and populations do not stay world powers for very long. Japan’s population is already shrinking (by 636,000 in 2024). Japan could become an economic basket case by 2050 and totally gone as a functioning nation by 2100.

Maybe there really was one genius hidden in the bowels of the stumbling, bumbling Biden administration who saw this coming and said: “You know, we need to have a lot more immigrants so the USA can outgrow our adversaries and maintain a solid economic growth rate while they tumble into oblivion.”

If so, we need to send all the bad actors back to their home country immediately and figure out how to process the remaining illegal immigrant population like America did on Ellis Island when 12 million European immigrants were strictly and legally processed from 1892 until 1954.

Otherwise, America will be hit by the same population time bomb that will devastate China, Russia and Japan.

This is the only national security reason possible for such blatant disregard for American immigration law. It doesn’t make it right. At least it would have been more believable than anything put forth yet ― which has been nothing.