a billion more potential farmers yes, but land and water are finite resources

It won't be anywhere near a billion.

China already has an average of ~1.7 children per family [0] if you factor into account that the policy is enforced at a provincial level, and depending on that province, it may be the case that (0) people of certain backgrounds (e.g. farmers, minorities, parents with disabilities or medical conditions) can be exempt in some areas, (1) affluent people sometimes just pay the fine and have a second child, (2) in the most recent version of the law, if one parent is an only child, they were permitted have 2 children, (3) Chinese citizens who have resided overseas for some period of time may be permitted to have 2 children.

A lot of people may go from 1 to 2 children. Not that many people will go from 2 to 3 children. Children are very expensive for most families.

[0] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN

>China's success is not necessarily because of the policies in place by the government.

Please enlight us then; Knowing that in china government is present in EVERY aspect of a life (religion, state, education, internet) I cannot see how their success is not because of the policies of the government. Any place that has an exploding growth is in deep shit just look at the whole africa. better off countries with exploding growth, turkey or maghreb countries are also in deep shit with big parts of the population immigrating to europe to survive this.

China's success is DEFINITELY because of the policies they put in place.

Population growth at China's scale is not a "pretty old problem". It's literally the largest population in the history of the world. No one, not even the U.S. government has an idea of what to do there. Then, add in the fact that when these policies were made, China had not even been through an industrial revolution and just had a MASSIVE famine (20-40 million deaths), I think the decision to have a one-child policy made a lot of sense.

Development is not something that happens naturally if you just leave people alone. Overpopulation hinders development. They most certainly wouldn't be as developed as they are if they had grown faster than their economy could sustain.