User:Tsuiy/One-child policy

One-child policy
One-child policy is a birth planning policy initiated by the Chinese state from the year 1979 to 2015. It was intended to curtail and restrict the rapid population growth in China. The population drastically increased from 542 million in 1949 to more than 975 million in the late 1970s. State officials were concerned about the future of overpopulation, which would hinder their agenda to boost the national economy and improve people’s standard of living. The policy was proposed in the fifth session of the 5th National People’s Congress (第五届全国人民代表大会第五次会议). It was then officially called to full action and written into the constitution of the People’s Republic of China in 1982. As it was written in the constitution, couples have the obligation to abide by the requirements of family planning. All families were restricted to have one child. Thus, the policy opened a new era for modern China, reshaping the family structure of families and bringing about numerous effects on society.

1950s-1970s
Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, socialist construction was the utmost mission the state needed to accomplish. The top leaders of the state believed that having more population would effectively contribute to the national effort. They thought that as long as there are people, any kind of miracle is possible (只要有了人，什么人间奇迹都可以创造出来). Among these leaders, Mao claimed that “having a populous China is a good thing” (中国人口众多是一件极大的好事). Therefore, during the first two decades after the establishment of China, the state encouraged childbirth as more labor force was necessary to participate in the socialist construction. To incentivize families, the state granted the title “英雄母亲” to mothers who gave birth to multiple children, which means “heroic mother”. As a result, there were approximately 541,670,000 people in China in the year 1949. The number then went up to 806,710,000 in 1969.

1970s
As the children who were born in the early 1950s started to step into marriage, an enormous wave of birth population was to come. In the early 1970s, the state introduced a set of birth planning policies. It mainly called for later childbearing (晚; wǎn), longer time spans between having new children (稀; xī), and giving birth to fewer children (少; shǎo). These policies acted as a response to the lingering problems left behind by the Maoist period, when childbirths were not limited but encouraged for the purpose of increasing national production. Some accomplishments were made by the birth planning policy. Fertility rate dropped from 5.9 in the 1950s and to 4.0 in the 1970s. Yet, the population still grew in a significant rate. From 1949 to 1980, China went through a net population increase of 430 million people. Population crisis also emerged as urban population experienced difficulties in receiving education, finding housings, and acquiring jobs. This social situations backed the national effort and target of modernization, and the state was totally aware of the necessity of limiting population growth. The anticipated outcomes of uncontrolled population growth finally set stage for one-child policy, which lasted until 2016.

Formulation of the Policy
China was especially deprived of data, skill, as well as state support to conduct population studies. Due to Mao’s ambivalent attitude toward population, population studies were abolished in the late 1950s. This left a mark on China’s population history. Scholars did not possess the skill, methodology, and data to conduct population research. During Deng’s period after Mao’s death, family planning became a critical component and premise to reaching China’s national goal. That is, to achieve “China’s socialist modernization”, which includes modernizing industry, agriculture, national defense, and technology. Therefore, at this point, population science was closely related and tied with state politics. China needed to redefine population as a domain of science, identify the population problem in China, and propose a solution to it. Such kind of effort included many groups of people with diverse backgrounds. They held different views to what should be done to solve the population problem, had different fields of expertise, and came from different institutions around China. Among these experts, two groups held the most influence in defining the population problem and providing a solution to it. They were a group of social scientists led by Liu Zheng (刘铮), and another group of natural scientists led by Song Jian (宋健).

Social Scientists
Two sides of scientists with various orientations toward the population problem entered the scope. Social scientists, including Liu Zheng (刘铮), Wu Cangping (邬沧萍), Lin Fude (林富德), and Zha Ruichuan (查瑞传), prioritized the Marxist formulation of the population problem. They saw the problem as an “imbalance between economic and demographic growth”, and wished to design a reasonable policy that considered the social consequences. These social scientists came from many backgrounds, they were professionals in the fields of social science, statistics, genetics, history, and many others. However, they had very limited access to resources compared to their natural scientists counterparts. Since population studies was forbidden from the 1950s and wasn't removed from the "forbidden zones" until 1979, population science had made no progress in between these two decades. Once set free from the restrictions, socially-oriented scholars found it difficult engaging in socially-oriented discussion of population problem due to intellectual isolation with the foreign world as well as detachment from this field of academia for 20 years.

Natural Scientists
Natural scientists looked at the population problem from a totally different perspective. They were interested in using control theory and applying it to the actual policy. This group of scientists had very little glimpse at the population dimension. The leader of the group, Song Jian (宋健), was a control theorist at the Ministry of Aerospace Industry. He was famous for his career in missile science. Yu Jingyuan (于景元) and Li Guangyuan (李广元) were trained engineers in the field of cybernetics. Compared to the social scientists, this group of natural scientists had numerous advantages. They were politically protected during the Maoist period due to their importance in national defense and technology. They also had access to Western science. Eventually, they took an important role in examining the population model as well as designing the details of one-child policies. They used control theory to control people as they would with objects. And after quantitative research and analysis, they showed the top state leaders that the only solution would be a policy “to encourage all couples to have only one child, regardless of the costs to individuals and society”.

Urban Responses
The urban population in the cities was acceptive of the policy, given the already crowded circumstances in urban areas. Incentives offered by the state also were effective to make the urban population compliant with the newly-introduced family planning. Families that signed the single-child pledge and met the requirements of having only one child were given access to housing and daycare, while non-compliant ones would receive penalties. Examples are obstructing the parents’ careers and delaying the payment of their salaries.

Rural responses
The rural population responded differently. After the collective co-ops were dismantled and decollectivization took place, children had an exceptional value in the eyes of their parents. The elder parents needed their children to farm the contract lands and sustain their daily needs. Due to the inherent patrilocal nature of marriage, daughters were expected to contribute labor in their husband’s houses. Sons, in this case, were greatly treasured. The one-child policy came in conflict with the rural incentives to give birth to sons. And when such wishes collided with the government official’s mission to limit childbirth, social conflicts happened.

In order to implement the policy, coercive measures were taken at times. Women had their pregnancies terminated if it was an over-quota pregnancy. Sterilization of women also happened to prevent their future pregnancies. This led to a series of physical conflicts with the government cadres who were assigned to enforce the policy in a specific rural area. Rural families wished to add sons to their families in order to contribute to agricultural production. But the cadres came on the way in conflict with them. Many cadres were middle-aged women who went through the collective period when childbearing was encouraged. They experienced continuous childbearing, and so were strongly supportive of the one-child policy. When these two distinct groups disapproved of each other, conflicts came. More than that, rural families that were desperate to have a son would abuse women who could not give birth to one. They also abandoned infant girls and even engaged in activities of infanticide. As a result, societal relationships were tense within families and also between the cadres and people.

Pre-Policy Statistics
Below are the results of the first three National Population Census of the People's Republic of China (人民共和国全国人口普查). The first two censuses date back to the 1950s and 60s, and the last one in the 1980s. They were conducted in the years 1953, 1964, and 1982 respectively.

Post-Policy Statistics
Below are the results of population investigation after the implementation of one-child policy.