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Some Western demographers have posited, due to the female shortage created by the one-child policy, that China will be forced to field a vast force - as in tens of millions strong - of wifeless men who'll gladly wage wars around the planet to burn off all those unrequited hormones.

Social services, not wealth per se, seem to be the key to lower birth rates. The Chinese, although among the poorest peoples of the world, have brought their fertility rate down to 2.4, partly by social coercion, but mostly by broadly available education, health care and family planning.

China's one-child policy punishes families for having 'out-of-plan' children, resulting in sex-selective abortion and tens of millions of 'missing girls' as well as forced abortion and sterilization campaigns.

I think women of our generation went through Cultural Revolution, went through hardship, coming from nowhere, and suddenly see China's amazing opportunity. So women just seized the opportunity.

In China, you've got six people buying for one child. But the thing is, you've got the largest rising upper-middle class in the world.

The Chinese model calls for giving your kids very little choice - and I've come to see that you can go too far with that. On the other hand, I also believe that Western parents sometimes give their young kids too much choice.

No other health disparity is so stark; virtually every woman who dies giving birth lives in a poor country.

People with fertility problems are not alone. It is a very very common problem for couples today. I've seen statistics that are just staggering.

We in the West do not refrain from childbirth because we are concerned about the population explosion or because we feel we cannot afford children, but because we do not like children.