Overpopulation In Beijing

Urbanisation is an inevitable process caused by rapid economic development and population growth. In the 21st century, many Asian countries, especially China and India, have been experiencing overcrowding in their major cities. Beijing, the capital city of China, has become one of the most populated cities in the world with unforeseen urbanisation issues, arising from 21.822 million in 2018. Beijing has now become one of the most populated cities in the world and experts are concerned that the city is on the verge of a crisis.

Rapid overpopulation in Beijing, even though it fell by 22,000 people last year, has been caused by many things such as poverty, improvement in medical technology, unchecked immigration and more. But in Beijing, it has been mainly blamed on the internal immigration. Beijing is not only political and economic centre of China but also traditionally regarded as the centre of everything Chinese. Even before the early 20th century in which China was forced to open its borders for Westernisation, Beijing has attracted international immigrants from all over the country. Recently, the capital city has been indebted with the influx of internal migrants to support an enormous economic boom and consequently many unwanted issues relating to the overpopulation with population density of 1300 people per square kilometre.

Overpopulation in Beijing has caused hazardous air pollution, severe traffic congestion, shortage of essential resources such as water and energy and housing issues. Overpopulation in Beijing directly associates to climate change, particularly as China continue to develop their industrial capacities. They now rank as one of the three largest contributors of green-house gas emissions in the world. Most of the science community agree that human activities are contributing to climate change. Larger populations may speed these changes up, especially if nothing is done to reduce individual carbon footprints on a wide scale.

The location of Beijing does not impact why it is densely populated.

Beijing’s longitude – 116.4° E

Beijing’s latitude – 39.9° N

There are many disadvantages towards a city that is overpopulated. Beijing, with a population density of 1300 people per square kilometre, will face many hardships if they do not respond to the issue quickly. Poverty, air, water and land pollution, waste, environmental hazards and even extinction of animal species are all consequences that occur because of overpopulation.

The society do not really mention anything about overpopulation. Maybe because they do not notice how more packed the already packed suburbs are becoming. Some people believe that intensification of agriculture and technological innovations can bridge the gap and ensure we can accustom to the growing population. Others believe that it is up to couples to decide how many children they will have, and any suggestions of birth and population control are illiberal, immoral and unworkable.

According to UN Water, 75% of planet Earth, is covered in water. 97.5% of that, is the ocean and 2.5% is freshwater. 70% of freshwater is divided into glaciers and ice caps and the remaining 30% into land surface water, such as rivers, lakes and ponds. Most of the freshwater resources are either unreachable or too polluted, leaving us with less than 1% of the world’s freshwater, or about 0.003% of all the water on Earth, readily accessible for direct human use. It is estimated that by 2025, more than half of the world’s population will be facing water-based complications and human demands will account for 70% of all available freshwater. We must share 0.003% of the world’s freshwater between 195 countries, China containing the most people. If the population rate keeps rising at this rate, there will simply be too little resources left for this country. More people will become poor and homeless. Overpopulation is a major problem itself, but this problem is branching and creating other major problems.

The Chinese government has taken several steps to slow down Beijing’s rapid population growth. However, much of the government’s previous attempts were flawed. One of the plans was to move the heap of 1 million people out of crowded cities to less populated areas such as the Tongzhou District. The government has also been moving factories and major markets to other cities, hoping that the community will too follow. China introduced the famous, 1 child policy which limited Chinese families to a single child. To enforce the law, Chinese women were forcefully sterilised and fined for having too many children. Historians believe that this policy prevented 400 million extra births. But China’s Total Fertility Rate, the average number of children a woman will have in her lifetime has fallen from 6.5 to 1.6. 1.6 children in a woman’s lifetime is well below the 2.1, needed to maintain its size. There were simply not enough children.

Overpopulation is still occurring and is an ongoing process that cannot be maintained. Scientists believe that the Earth could support 10 billion people at the most where food, water and other essentials are concerned. Earth’s resources are limited. No matter how efficiently we can do it, there will only be so much fresh water on the planet and only so much food that we can produce. Scientists predict that the population will reach 8 to 10 billion between the years 2040 and 2050.