ASIA / PACIFIC
November 7, 2016
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 3
Junko Tabei, first woman to
climb Everest, dies at age 77
By Ken Moritsugu
The Associated Press
OKYO — The first woman to climb
Mount Everest didn’t stop there.
Japanese mountaineer Junko
Tabei, who died in October at age 77,
devoted her adult life to scaling peaks,
climbing the tallest mountains in more
than 70 countries.
Her philosophy was to live life to the
fullest. “I want to climb even more
mountains,” she said in a 1991 interview
with The Associated Press, 16 years after
conquering Everest. “To think, ‘It was
great,’ and then die.”
To do so required defying stereotypes,
and a supportive husband, in a country
that thought a woman’s place was in the
home. She founded the Ladies Climbing
Club in 1969 with the slogan “Let’s go on
an overseas expedition by ourselves,” and
reached the summit of Everest on May 16,
1975, as the leader of the climbing party of
an all-female Japanese team.
“Most Japanese men of my generation
would expect the woman to stay at home
and clean house,” the mother of two said in
the 1991 interview.
In 1992, she became the first woman to
complete the “Seven Summits,” reaching
the highest peaks of the seven continents.
Tabei died of cancer at a hospital outside
of Tokyo, Japanese media reported.
She was born in 1939 in Miharu, a hilly
farming town in Fukushima prefecture
about 140 miles north of Tokyo. Her first
summit was nearby Mount Nasu with her
teacher in the fourth grade.
Later in life, she became concerned
about the degradation of Everest,
completing master’s studies in 2000 at
Kyushu University in southern Japan on
the garbage problem as the famous
mountain was opened to more climbers.
“Everest has become too crowded. It
needs a rest now,” she said at a 2003
parade in Nepal to mark the 50th
T
The
ACCOMPLISHED MOUNTAINEER. Japa-
nese mountaineer Junko Tabei looks on during a felic-
itation ceremony in Kathmandu, Nepal, in this October
31, 2005 file photo. Tabei died on October 20, 2016
of cancer at a hospital outside of Tokyo, according to
Japanese media reports. She was 77 years old. Tabei
reached the summit of the world’s highest mountain
in 1975. In 1992, she also became the first woman to
complete the “Seven Summits,” reaching the highest
peaks of the seven continents. (AP Photo/Binod Joshi,
File)
anniversary of the first successful ascent
of the peak by Sir Edmund Hillary.
She kept climbing even after being
diagnosed with cancer four years ago,
Japanese public broadcaster NHK said.
Her goal was to climb the tallest mountain
in all of the more than 190 countries of the
world. She fell short, but ticked off four
more as recently as 2015, according to her
website, in Niger, Luxembourg, Belgium,
and Oman.
China’s two-child policy won’t
lead to population boom
By Louise Watt
The Associated Press
EIJING — The loosening of
China’s one-child policy to allow
all married couples to have two
children will bring only a relatively small
increase in population growth, a study
predicts, while recommending that the
country increase its retirement age to
address an expected labor shortage.
With 1.37 billion people, China
currently has the world’s largest
population. It will peak at 1.45 billion in
2029, compared with a peak of 1.4 billion in
2023 if the “one-child” policy that
restricted most urban couples to one child
and rural couples to two if their first was a
girl had continued, according to the study,
published in the medical journal Lancet.
China brought in the policy in 1979 with
the aim of limiting a surging population
and promoting economic development. It
was revised over the years to allow more
couples to have an additional child, until
the government allowed all married cou-
ples to have two children beginning this
year, mainly to combat an aging popula-
tion.
One of the study’s authors, Zeng Yi of
Peking University, said that it was the
first such analysis to fully consider
rural-urban differences and the effects of
migration when quantifying the impact on
population growth.
The study says it assumes that the total
fertility rate, or births per woman, will rise
from the current 2.01 in rural areas and
1.24 in urban areas to 2.15 and 1.67,
B
POPULATION PREDICTIONS. Children play
bubbles at a residential compound in Beijing, in this
March 31, 2016 file photo. The loosening of China’s
one-child policy to allow all married couples to have
two children will bring only a relatively small increase
in population growth, a study predicts, while recom-
mending that the country increase its retirement age
to address an expected labor shortage. (AP Photo/
Andy Wong, File)
respectively, in the next decade. That
takes into account a lower socioeconomic
level in rural areas and the fact that ethnic
minorities are allowed three or more
children. It estimates a combined total
fertility rate of 1.81 in 2030.
Cai Yong, a demographer at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill who wasn’t involved in the study, said
he thought its total fertility rate projection
of 1.81 in 2030 was “overly optimistic.”
Lower fertility in China “is no longer a
depressed result of restrictive policy,” Cai
said, adding that Chinese are likely to opt
to pour their resources into just one “high
quality” child instead of multiple children.
Continued on page 7
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