POPULATION POLICY IN CHINA

The People's Republic of China (PRC) has the largest population in the world. At the end of 2002, the population in China (excluding Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) was 1.284 billion, and the birthrate was 12.86 births per year per 1,000 population, which results in a doubling every fifty-five years.

Historical Background

The large Chinese population is a result of historical factors. Before 1900 China had a predominately agricultural economy dependent primarily on manual labor, with a standard of living closely tied to the number of working children in a family. Traditionally, having many children brought higher welfare and happiness. As a result, China had a high birthrate.

In the twentieth century, with the gradual improvement of medicine, people's health improved, and as a result, the death rate decreased continuously, from 20 deaths per year per 1,000 population in 1945 to 9.5 in 1965. Since 1980 the death rate has remained constant at close to 6. Because of the huge population base, the number of people in China rapidly increased from 601.9 million in 1953 to 1.0318 billion in 1982. At the same time, employment shifted from agriculture to industry. If China had not instituted family planning policies, a great portion of resources would have had to go to supporting a now nonproductive segment of the population (children), slowing the pace of social development, which would be unfair to present and future generations.

Because high population growth strains societal resources in education, employment, and medical care, as well as other areas, the Chinese government implemented a policy of family planning that considers the interaction of science, technology, economics, and society. For instance, improvements in technology should increase the quality of life, advances in medicine will allow people to live longer lives, but too rapid a decline in the birthrate would mean that younger generations would eventually have to support too large an elderly population.

Policy Guidelines and Their Development

The PRC has adopted the following family planning policies: It encourages late marriage and late, fewer, but healthier babies. It seeks to avoid genetic and other birth defects, which are a disproportionately large drain on societal resources. It advocates a "one couple, one child" policy. It encourages rural couples who have a need for more children to space them properly. The government also provides strong support for family planning policies to raise the level of health among women and children. In 1981 the government established the State Family Planning Commission—now the State Family Planning and Population Commission—which seeks to provide a service-oriented approach to family planning.

Chinese family-planning policy is tailored to meet the practical living needs of people in different regions of the country. Provinces and autonomous regions decide specific family planning measures and regulations for minorities in accord with local conditions. China is also making strides in getting citizens to understand and accept its family planning policies. To this end some politicians and scholars have made great contributions. For example, in 1957 Ma Yinchu, a renowned economist, became a pioneer advocate of family planning when he presented to the National People's Congress his new population theory, in which he recommended controlling population size so as not to impede economic development. Yet Ma was ahead of his time, for he was soon criticized as a representative figure of erroneous idea. He was not able to publish his New Population Theory until 1979. In the early 1970s Premier Zhou Enlai also overcame diverse difficulties to promote stable family planning.

Since 1980 many academic societies for research on population and family planning policy have been established. In 1980 the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences created the Institute of Population Research. In 1981 the China Population Society was founded. Institutes for research on the population were in turn set up at Beijing University, Renmin University of China, and Xiamen University. These efforts of the government and research institutes have led to many publications. The government started publishing the China Population Statistics Yearbook in 1985 and the China Population Paper in 1988. In the late 1990s several important academic publications appeared, including the Encyclopedia of Chinese Family Planning (Peng Peiyun 1997). Subsequently, scholars made efforts to relate China's population policy to issues of sustainable development (Qin, Zhang, and Niu 2002), and a number of authors reflected on the importance of limiting the population not just for social development but also for preserving the quality of the environment (Li Shuhua 2003, Peng Keshan 1994, Zhou Yi 2003).

As a result of this research, the significance of family planning policy in the development of science, technology, economics, and society was now generally well recognized and accepted by the early 2000s. The implementation of a family planning policy has effectively controlled the rapid expansion of the population in the PRC, improved the quality of life and health, and made possible the greater development of science, technology, and society.

The Ethics of Population Control

Chinese population policy has been very controversial outside of China. The most common criticism is that the policy deprives people of their right to bear children and to decide for themselves how many children they will have. Another criticism is that because of a traditional desire for male children, the one-child policy encourages parents to abort or abandon female offspring. Within the historical and social context of China, however, the implementation of the "one couple, one child" policy during the 1980s represented a major shift from the much more coercive practices of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Moreover, under some circumstances, Chinese policymakers argue, concerns for the common good should outweigh individual freedoms. Finally, as Margaret Pabst Battin (2004) has argued, although the Chinese policy may be "the most coercive population-limitation policy in any country, it is also the most fair" (p. 2095). Unlike the population-limitation policies of India, for instance, the Chinese policy applies equally to all groups.

WANG QIAN QIAN QIAN

SEE ALSO Chinese Perspectives;Eugenics.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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