|
China Population Control Programs
Initially, China's post-1949 leaders were ideologically
disposed to view a large population as an asset. But the
liabilities of a large, rapidly growing population soon became
apparent. For one year, starting in August 1956, vigorous
propaganda support was given to the Ministry of Public Health's
mass birth control efforts. These efforts, however, had little
impact on fertility. After the interval of the Great Leap Forward,
Chinese leaders again saw rapid population growth as an obstacle to
development, and their interest in birth control revived. In the
early 1960s, propaganda, somewhat more muted than during the first
campaign, emphasized the virtues of late marriage. Birth control
offices were set up in the central government and some provinciallevel governments in 1964. The second campaign was particularly
successful in the cities, where the birth rate was cut in half
during the 1963-66 period. The chaos of the Cultural Revolution
brought the program to a halt, however.
In 1972 and 1973 the party mobilized its resources for a
nationwide birth control campaign administered by a group in the
State Council
(see The State Council
, ch. 10). Committees to
oversee birth control activities were established at all
administrative levels and in various collective enterprises. This
extensive and seemingly effective network covered both the rural
and the urban population. In urban areas public security
headquarters included population control sections. In rural areas
the country's
"barefoot doctors" (see Glossary)
distributed
information and contraceptives to
people's commune (see Glossary)
members. By 1973 Mao Zedong was personally identified with the
family planning movement, signifying a greater leadership
commitment to controlled population growth than ever before. Yet
until several years after Mao's death in 1976, the leadership was
reluctant to put forth directly the rationale that population
control was necessary for economic growth and improved living
standards.
Population growth targets were set for both administrative
units and individual families. In the mid-1970s the maximum
recommended family size was two children in cities and three or
four in the country. Since 1979 the government has advocated a onechild limit for both rural and urban areas and has generally set a
maximum of two children in special circumstances. As of 1986 the
policy for minority nationalities was two children per couple,
three in special circumstances, and no limit for ethnic groups with
very small populations. The overall goal of the one-child policy
was to keep the total population within 1.2 billion through the
year 2000, on the premise that the
Four Modernizations (see Glossary)
program would be of little value if population growth was
not brought under control.
The one-child policy was a highly ambitious population control
program. Like previous programs of the 1960s and 1970s, the onechild policy employed a combination of propaganda, social pressure,
and in some cases coercion. The one-child policy was unique,
however, in that it linked reproduction with economic cost or
benefit.
Under the one-child program, a sophisticated system rewarded
those who observed the policy and penalized those who did not.
Couples with only one child were given a "one-child certificate"
entitling them to such benefits as cash bonuses, longer maternity
leave, better child care, and preferential housing assignments. In
return, they were required to pledge that they would not have more
children. In the countryside, there was great pressure to adhere to
the one-child limit. Because the rural population accounted for
approximately 60 percent of the total, the effectiveness of the
one-child policy in rural areas was considered the key to the
success or failure of the program as a whole.
In rural areas the day-to-day work of family planning was done
by cadres at the team and brigade levels who were responsible for
women's affairs and by health workers. The women's team leader made
regular household visits to keep track of the status of each family
under her jurisdiction and collected information on which women
were using contraceptives, the methods used, and which had become
pregnant. She then reported to the brigade women's leader, who
documented the information and took it to a monthly meeting of the
commune birth-planning committee. According to reports, ceilings or
quotas had to be adhered to; to satisfy these cutoffs, unmarried
young people were persuaded to postpone marriage, couples without
children were advised to "wait their turn," women with unauthorized
pregnancies were pressured to have abortions, and those who already
had children were urged to use contraception or undergo
sterilization. Couples with more than one child were exhorted to be
sterilized.
The one-child policy enjoyed much greater success in urban than
in rural areas. Even without state intervention, there were
compelling reasons for urban couples to limit the family to a
single child. Raising a child required a significant portion of
family income, and in the cities a child did not become an economic
asset until he or she entered the work force at age sixteen.
Couples with only one child were given preferential treatment in
housing allocation. In addition, because city dwellers who were
employed in state enterprises received pensions after retirement,
the sex of their first child was less important to them than it was
to those in rural areas
(see Urban Society
, ch. 3).
Numerous reports surfaced of coercive measures used to achieve
the desired results of the one-child policy. The alleged methods
ranged from intense psychological pressure to the use of physical
force, including some grisly accounts of forced abortions and
infanticide. Chinese officials admitted that isolated, uncondoned
abuses of the program occurred and that they condemned such acts,
but they insisted that the family planning program was administered
on a voluntary basis using persuasion and economic measures only.
International reaction to the allegations were mixed. The UN Fund
for Population Activities and the International Planned Parenthood
Association were generally supportive of China's family planning
program. The United States Agency for International Development,
however, withdrew US$10 million from the Fund in March 1985 based
on allegations that coercion had been used.
Observers suggested that an accurate assessment of the onechild program would not be possible until all women who came of
childbearing age in the early 1980s passed their fertile years. As
of 1987 the one-child program had achieved mixed results. In
general, it was very successful in almost all urban areas but less
successful in rural areas. The Chinese authorities must have been
disturbed by the increase in the officially reported annual
population growth rate (birth rate minus death rate): from 12 per
1,000, or 1.2 percent in 1980 to 14.1 per 1,000, or 1.4 percent in
1986. If the 1986 rate is maintained to the year 2000, the
population will exceed 1.2 billion.
Rapid fertility reduction associated with the one-child policy
has potentially negative results. For instance, in the future the
elderly might not be able to rely on their children to care for
them as they have in the past, leaving the state to assume the
expense, which could be considerable. Based on United Nations
statistics and data provided by the Chinese government, it was
estimated in 1987 that by the year 2000 the population 60 years and
older (the retirement age is 60 in urban areas) would number 127
million, or 10.1 percent of the total population; the projection
for 2025 was 234 million elderly, or 16.4 percent. According to one
Western analyst, projections based on the 1982 census show that if
the one-child policy were maintained to the year 2000, 25 percent
of China's population would be age 65 or older by the year 2040.
Data as of July 1987
|
