The reproductive revolution among China's billion people
Tuan, C.H.
Draper Fund Report 12: 1-3
1983
ISSN/ISBN: 0191-3905 PMID: 12338972 Document Number: 396552
The government of China is waging the world's most comprehensive battle to control population growth. The current attitude contrasts sharply with that of the pronatalist days of the 1950s. The urgency of the issue is the result of pressures from population growth during the last 330 years, which has resulted in a 20-fold increase in the country's population. Extensive studies of the impact of population size on resources, environment, and development over the next 100 years have shown that China should aim at a total of no more than 700 million people. These studies show that unless immediate and drastic action is taken to cut fertility there is no likelihood of raising China's nutritional intake to a level comparable to that of developed countries. In response to the potential crisis of overpopulation, the government has adopted population policies based on a novel "U shaped" transition curve. The theory behind it is that fertility should be brought down to below replacement level, kept there for a number of years, and then raised to realize replacement level fertility at the ideal population size. The pursuit of this goal has resulted in the single child policy. The family planning program has been impressive. A national survey conducted in 1982 demonstrated that the average number of births per woman had been cut by at least half from 1972-81. The attainment of almost universal consensus favoring birth control can be attributed to an ingenious pyramidal social structure that links the central administration in Beijing with individuals in the village. Socioeconomic adjustments and reorientation of traditional values have not had time to catch up with government policy throughout China. Urban areas seem to have accepted the 1 child policy, but the vast number of villages are reluctant to forego their preference for large families. As long as villages remain underdeveloped and their residents lack a comprehensive social security system for old age protection, there is good reason for the villagers to evade the new family planning policy. This situation is responsible for dreadful incidents such as maltreatment of women who give birth to daughters and infanticide of females. If these horrible incidents demonstrate the hardship of adjustment from traditional values to the 1 child family, the question that arises is whether the policy should be repealed. Most likely the maltreatment of females stems from the clash of the single child policy with traditional values such as family continuation, the value of male labor, and the desire to bear a son for protection in one's old age. Problems such as infanticide did not become apparent until the 1 child policy was enforced in the 1970s. The current task is to convince rural villagers to accept the single child limit by synchronizing political mobilization and ideological education with economic measures.