CNN: South Korea spent $200 billion, but it can’t pay people enough to have a baby.

The five-nation summit at Ulan Bator was on a child issue that can be called anything but childish. All the five have disputes with each other and they had to find a “neutral” venue and poor Mongolia always welcomes visitors. Four of these nations have lots of money and the fifth one has lots of land, more than any other country in the world. But these are issues for adults and their present focus was not on adult matters. They were worried about something that they had tried to buy with money but failed. Russia, China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have one common worry – how to get their women to produce more babies. We in India have been lucky; there is a state which produces enough babies to make up for deficiency in any part of the country. They migrate to the rest of the country and help with all the chores, be it cleaning, constructing, repairing, committing cyber crime, stealing, becoming Union Ministers and IAS officers, and even producing more babies. Thus it is that India shall not need, in the coming few decades, to attend a summit like that at Ulan Bator.

All these five nations have problems with each other and so none will consent to any of the other four to chair the Summit. As a compromise, the host Mongolia was chosen to be the Chair, with the condition that the Mongolian President shall stay absolutely silent. A poor country cannot be allowed to opine on the grave issue confronting the powerful and the rich that the majority of their population shall be soon marching twoards the grave, with their “cradle to grave” administrations failing to populate the cradles. Seeing the pathetic look on the Chairperson’s face when this condition was announced, Taiwan requested that the Chairperson be allowed at the end to propose a vote of thanks. All others agreed to this magnanimous idea but Xi Jinping said that China will agree to this suggestion only if the written proceedings say that it came from China because Taiwan was, is and shall remain an inalienable part of China. We agree, the Taiwanese President Tsai said, “China is an inalienable part of Taiwan. We subscribe to one-China principle.” Xi Jinping was satisfied when Putin indicated that only the second sentence of Tsai’s asserrtion shall be included in the proceedings and thus all parties, China Taiwan and Mongolia, were mollified.

Since China, Taiwan and Russia had already spoken in some way or the other, it was left to Japan and South Korea to begin with the real issue. The Korean president claimed precedence as he represented an older culture. Japanese Prime Minister was about to say that the situation could change if Japan was allowed to occupy Manchuria once again, but looking at Xi Jinping he decided that discretion is the better part of the valour. South Korean President said that Russia has a small popultion with just 9 souls per square kilometer while South Korea has 527 and yet, the falling population is a more serious issue for Korea. He said that unlike Russians, who produce only oil, wheat and weapons, Korea is an economic powerhouse that produces ships and chips with the former requiring a lot of workers and the latter a lot of robots that require a lot of software coders and maintenance workers. Upgrade, muttered the Japanese Prime Minister. “Our robots maintain the robots and AI cooks the software.” “That is true,” said Xi. “We have robot cooks in many restaurants in China.”

The Japanese PM blamed South Africa of the apartheid era for Japan’s falling birthrate. Hendrik Verwoerd, the then PM of South Africa had classified the Japanese as “Honorary whites” because in that era, Japan had economic might and hence the Japanese were always “right”, as were the whites. Since whites had a declining population even in that age and were sustaining their nations with immigration and Japan did not allow immigration even during the Meiji era, Japan suffered the ill-effects of being white without gaining any of the advantages that had enriched the white nations.

Xi Jinping, as he did for all the problems facing China, blamed the US for its men and women refusing to marry and even the married ones refusing to produce children, though the revolutionary state now allows three children per couple instead of just one earlier. Xi said that following the US economic model, he let the Chinese become richer and that produced the demographic disaster. While China exported sneakers to the US, the latter exported barrenness to China. Xi vowed that, if necessary, he will make China poor again, to make it breed like India’s Bihar. He said he was in touch with Laloo Yadav for learning the pro-poverty ropes and the demographic dividend of spreading and sustaining poverty. Even his major-general wife was excited about it as Laloo’s wife could teach her the rope trick of climbing to the top and holding it there whenever the husband faced rough weather.

Tsai said that their “no babies” situation is all to be blamed on China. Because of Xi’s constant rhetoric about use of PLA to attack her country, people are living on day-to-day basis and have no time or inclination to make babies. Xi retorted that he is threatening to use PLA only against a part of China and so it is an internal affair in which no one, including Taiwan shall be allowed to interfere. Even Tibetans and Uyghurs have not been allowed to interfere in the internal affairs of Tibet and Xinjiang. He even offered to declare Taiwan a “Special Autonomous Region for Prosperity” (SARP) because Taiwan, as part of China, can make China prosperous. Tsai reminded him to come back to “babies” and Xi said that with the merger, China will become more prosperous and Taiwan less so and uncertainty will end and so Taiwanese will advance on the path of reproductivity making it a win-win situation.

None of the participants was willing to use immigration as a tool to increase the working-age population. As the discussions were not leading to anywhere on the elusive path to baby-boom, it was decided to set apart $10 billion for research on the subject, to be shared equally between China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea because Putin had spent all his money in killing Ukrainian babies. There will be special groups working on:
1. Nasal spray for impregnating women – As China claims success with its nasal Covid vaccine, this group will work from Wuhan.
2. Chip implant for biorhythm manipulation and auto-release of sperm in women – Taiwan is the obvious leader and Xi promised that he will not destroy this lab when invading Taiwan.
3. Genetically modifying vodka for increasing fertility – Moscow was the clear choice though Mongolia silently felt that Ulan Bator is the home of mare-milk vodka.
4. Developing a combo of khimchi and ginseng for population growth – What better place than South Korea! Even Kim will be requested to send a few experts and that may work towards peaceful unification with the North.

The Mongolian President thanked everyone for a very productive conference on reproductivity. He said that these are the first baby-steps for flooding their nations with babies and hoped that the results of research shall be shared gratis with his poor nation. He suggested that the next summit be held in Patna. A special request can be sent to get parole for Laloo so that he can chair the opening session failing which he can preside online.

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