The issue with demographic decline is not just quantity of people, but also quality of people. China (and any country) will want individuals that speak the language, are culturally compatible, with useful skills, and so on. The limited number of people any country can draw on once you consider this starts to make it clear that migration doesn't solve anything.
And even with migration, if those migrants don't themselves end up with high fertility rates then you've done nothing but kick the can, and not especially far. Because of all of these issues, I think there's approximately a 100% chance that China will do the equal but opposite of the one-child-policy should their demographic issues fail to start reversing more naturally.
"The equal but opposite of the one-child-policy" is easier said than done. A brute-force approach worked for stopping more babies (I don't know if it's true, but what I heard back was that back in the 80s Chinese officials literally killed unauthorised babies moments after they were born - that's probably exaggerated, however they really did carry out forced sterilisations and forced abortions). It wouldn't work so well for creating more babies. You can't force people to have more children. Many countries are offering financial incentives for producing babies right now - cash at birth, free house, free childcare, etc - with limited success. I don't see how China could deliver (hahaha aren't I punny) a significantly different result if it goes down that same road.
"People" here means women, and womens' rights are a very recent thing in world history. With a sufficiently evil and authoritarian government, it might be possible. It certainly has been tried in the 20th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Honour_of_the_German_...
No, people means people. It takes two people to have a child, and the man has the exact same ethical, legal, and financial responsibilities to the child, pretty much everywhere in the world, until the child reaches adulthood. I also don't think conferring some sort of state award or honor on mothers who have multiple children is evil or authoritarian. In general I think it's quite a nice and appropriate idea as having children is ultimately the core civic responsibility of all people. It's literally the only way that a society, and on a larger level - species, can continue to exist.
So 'motivating' people to have more children is rather the opposite of evil, though obviously some means can be more or less ethical. In the short-run children are an economic burden, but in the long-run you have complete and catastrophic collapse, in all ways - including economic, without a surprisingly large number of children. The government that takes short-term wins in exchange for accepting a long-term collapse of a civilization is failing society in every single way. I still don't know if I'd call that 'evil', but it's certainly far closer to it than one that looks to ensure that there's a next chapter for the civilization that it's supposed to be the leader of.
I don't think it'd be especially hard. Ban contraception, economic coercion, mandatory family planning at a certain age and you're probably already there. For the economic coercion part there are endless forms it could take. An obvious one would be a 'national sustainability' tax assessed on the number of children one has (adjusted for minimum age) - 40% for 0, 20% for 1, 0% for 2, - 10% for 3, and so on.
Another way would be to fine companies and local jurisdictions if their average number of children per employee/resident is below 2.1 or whatever, similar in spirit to Japan's 'metabo laws.' You could also require companies prioritize employment, beyond a minimal standard, based on the number of children per employee, and so on.
(That said, I don't know how up to date such maps are, and have no way to verify laws; don't suggest machine translation from Chinese to English, it is bad).
Saying quality is different than qualities plural. It's the kind of language used by rationalist[1] or HBD/eugenics adjacent movements that believe each person's value to society can be reduced to a single number. Too close to fascism for comfort.
That's obviously not the case in this context but it can get confusing so you should just avoid it. There are legit reasons to be suspicious of anyone talking like that. It's better to say "expected economic value" or "readiness to integrate" when talking about immigrants so you don't get mistaken for a racist.
No one in this discussion except you expressed the idea that quality of a human can be expressed by a single number.
A more natural concept of overall human quality would be something like a linear combination of individual qualities in a multidimensional space.
a. Smart person - good, positive coefficient.
b. Diligent person - good, positive coefficient.
c. But works for the mob as a money launderer - bad, very high negative coefficient, probably high enough to drag the overall combination under the neutral hyperplane, so to say.
Sure, but it doesn't work like that in public discourse and it's hard to believe that you are oblivious to that.
That 19 year old dark skinned refugee from Syria who has just arrived in Poland in 2015, doesn't speak the language, is physically fit, basic school education, quite some trauma to process though. That's what the far right racist nationlists there would have called a low quality human. Don't use their language if you don't want to be associated with their views.
And indeed, if their trauma is not processed and they are left in a ghetto with other traumatized folks, that's a recipe for violence to eventually erupt. But if they get help by a psychologiest and a chance to integrate, they can contribute to society immensely, build a life, become the best neighbors you could wish for.
Now, what is the "quality" of such a person? Or maybe rather: What is the quality of how we treat them.
Regular economic immigration processes, which is what is mainly being discussed here, are usually centered around measurable skills and other traits such as criminal record.
BTW you don't know many Syrians if you consider them dark skinned. They are classical Mediterranean people, the whitest of all Arabic-speaking nations. You won't be able to tell a random Syrian from a random Greek.
And even with migration, if those migrants don't themselves end up with high fertility rates then you've done nothing but kick the can, and not especially far. Because of all of these issues, I think there's approximately a 100% chance that China will do the equal but opposite of the one-child-policy should their demographic issues fail to start reversing more naturally.