On October 31, the planet's 7 billionth baby was born. The number is a milestone for countries around the globe, especially China, which has the largest population in the world. China's population has been blamed for many of its problems, but Li Tie, a media commentator at Southern Weekly, believes that this tendency should change. His thoughts are as follows:

The world's population reached 5 billion in 1987, then 6 billion in 1999; now, in 2011, it is 7 billion. For a country with a set birth control policy, the way in which Chinese people and the media view this number has greatly changed. People are increasingly reflecting on the concept of population from a more scientific and rational perspective. This shift is a change from how people perceived population in the past.

A well-worn argument is that China could not free itself from poverty and backwardness due to its overpopulation issues. If the country wanted to fix the situation, these growth numbers needed to be brought under control. Too many people, it was widely thought, would diminish the availability of social resources.

This kind of argument is easy to disprove. When it comes to population density, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Britain and Italy all have bigger problems than China. Even considering population density in productive areas, South Korea, Japan, Switzerland and Israel, in spite of high-density populations, still rank high in the world in terms of per-capita statistics. In addition, both thickly and thinly populated countries rank high when it comes to per-capita gross domestic product.

High housing prices, high unemployment, and terrible traffic conditions: these are all problems that people used to attribute to overpopulation. However, this is based on a mistaken premise that human beings are burdens, that they consume and do not produce.

The truth is that people definitely can produce. An example of this is the labor shortage of recent years, which has enlightened people to the fact that human beings are a precious, productive resource. Societal and economic growth is based on developing this resource. According to some researchers, during the last two decades of the 20th century, a quarter of per-capita income growth in China could be attributed to its demographic dividends.

All this said, millions of the unemployed face serious competition in job hunting. But because they also have to consume, more job opportunities will ultimately be produced. It should be noted that high unemployment is rooted in problems of social and economic development rather than population. The fact that many countries have doubled their populations in the past 40 years, but their unemployment rates remain static, is evidence of this.

It is too early to worry about possible food scarcity issues related to overpopulation, since resources are not in a static state. Take grain as an example: its price (allowing for inflation) was halved from 1950 to 1997, and during this time grain saw the biggest slump compared to other commodities. As such, there is little evidence of a food crisis yet.

Traditionally, the Chinese believe that the more sons they have, the more blessings they will receive. Many people believe that Chinese couples have a desperate desire for children, and the country's population will explode if it is not kept under control. But in fact the opposite is true. At present, the Chinese in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao have a low birthrate in the world.

According to a report published in 2009 by the Population Reference Bureau in the United States, Taiwan's birthrate has decreased more than in places like Macao and Hong Kong. But Hong Kong and Taiwan both have pro-birth public policies. As one of the most densely populated regions in the world, Hong Kong had 5.1 million citizens in 1981, 6.18 million citizens in 1995, and 7.09 million citizens in 2011. This growth rate is not very low, but Donald Tsang, the Chief Executive in the region, has publicly called on residents multiple times to aim to raise three children per family. He has also promised to improve education opportunities in hopes of convincing more young people to have children of their own. Tsang expects more than 40 percent growth from these initiatives – there will be 10 million people in Hong Kong. If such a crowded place is promoting more births, should we change our old ideas?

All the examples provided above show that public well-being is not always invariably linked to population. Such is the benefit of analyzing equal and reasonable social systems.