John Oliver holds up sex dolls as the perfect symbol of China's 70 years of Communist rule

"I know there is a lot going on with China right now, from the ongoing pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong to the trade war that's been 'good and easy to win' for the last year and a half now," John Oliver said on Sunday's Last Week Tonight. "But this week, China took a moment to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Communist Party coming to power," and "we thought we'd help tonight by highlighting one of the most massively consequential policies they undertook in that time: the one-child policy."

The population-control policy was in effect from 1980 to 2015, but "the effects of it are far from over," Oliver said. For example, there are about 34 million more men than women in China. The policy was designed, problematically, by China's military, he added. "Family planning isn't rocket science, and that's exactly why rocket scientists should not do it."

There are entire industries built around the millions of men who will never be able to marry, from pickup artistry workshops to sex dolls. "And while buying a sex doll to replace the wife you'll never have may seem like rock bottom, it turns out it's actually somewhere around rock middle," certainly above the boom in human trafficking of women and girls, Oliver said.

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And with its new two-child policy, "the Chinese government still hasn't learned the fundamental lesson here: People are not machines whose reproductive systems can be turned on or off at will," Oliver said. "And pretending otherwise leads to all the consequences that you've seen tonight, from the entirely foreseeable like trauma and heartbreak to the less anticipated ones like delicious little meatballs, desperate magic tricks, and a factory that can't pump out sex dolls fast enough. And actually, that image is pretty on-the-nose if you think about it: A factory churning out headless silicone women because rocket scientists nearly 40 years ago didn't care enough about what their policies might do to real ones." Watch below (though be aware there's NSFW images and language). Peter Weber

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