Question

discuss the four successive family planning campaigns operated in China during the socialist period. Please share your thoughts on China’s one-child policy.

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Answer 1

Excessive population growth is an extremely serious problem facing the contemporary world. Each minute, the earth's population is increased by 160 people. In face of this problem, the UN Population Fund sounded a warning to the international community: Lacking prompt and determined moves to control population and maintain a balance between consumption and development, the world population would be 12.5 billion people by the middle of the next century and humanity be unable to develop further.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, due to the stability of the society, the development of production and the improvement of medical and health care conditions, the people lived and worked in peace and happiness. The death rate was reduced markedly, while the population increased rapidly, thus the situation then was characterized by more births, fewer deaths and high growth. It should be pointed out that this was an inevitable phenomenon at that time. But, just as the international community then was not responding promptly to the question of swelling global population, China lost the chance to solve the problem of over-rapid population growth in the first birth peak period after the founding of New China

1. China’s Population Policy:

At the end of the 1970s, Deng Xiaoping, the chief architect of China's reform and opening to the outside world, made an in-depth analysis of China's basic national conditions on the basis of the experience and lessons of socialist construction since the founding of the People's Republic, pointing out that, to accomplish the goal of the four modernizations in China, it was imperative to take into consideration the basic features of the Chinese environment, that is, the vast scale of the country, its weak foundation, its massive population and the low ratio of cultivated land, and this demonstrated the objective need for the development of population to be coordinated with the development of the economy, society, resources and environment. The major contribution Deng Xiaoping made to the solution of China's population problem is: To study and deal with the population problem in the overall context of the national economic and social development and clearly point out that China's population policy is an important policy of strategic significance. In accordance with Deng Xiaoping's thinking, the Chinese government has made it a basic state policy to carry out family planning and population control and to improve the life quality of the population, and has clearly incorporated it in the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, thus establishing the important position of family planning programme in China's overall task of national economic and social development.

2. One child for one couple:

One child for one couple is a necessary choice made under China's special historical conditions to alleviate the grim population situation. One child for one couple does not mean to "have one child" under all circumstances, but rather, while encouraging couples to have only one child, to plan arrangements for couples who have real difficulties and need to have a second child to do so. In China's cities and towns where family planning was introduced earlier and the economic, cultural, educational, public health and social security conditions are better, the overwhelming majority of couples of child-bearing age who are pleased with a small family have responded to the government's call and volunteered to have only one child. In 1990, of the non-agricultural population in China's urban localities, the total fertility rate of women dropped to 1.26, or 1.05 lower than the nation's average figure. In the countryside, the total fertility birth rate of women was 2.8.

3. Family Planning for national minorities:

China is a multi-ethnic country, the population of the national minorities making up about 8 percent of the country's total. To raise the economic and educational levels of the national minority areas and improve the life quality of the population, since the early 1980s the Chinese government has also advocated family planning in the areas inhabited by national minorities, except for Tibet and sparsely populated minority areas. The concrete policies are worked out by the national minority autonomous areas and the relevant provinces and autonomous regions according to specific local conditions. In general, a couple in agricultural and pastoral areas is allowed to have two children; and a more flexible policy is adopted to farmers and herdsmen with actual difficulties. Since the founding of New China, the population growth rate of the national minorities has been not only higher than that before Liberation, but also higher than that of the Han people in the corresponding period. The total population of the national minorities increased from 35 million in 1953 to 91.32 million in 1990. Between 1982 and 1990 after the practice of family planning in the areas inhabited by minority people, the population of the national minorities increased by 35.81 percent, or 3.27 times the growth of the Han population in the same period.

4. Publicity and education of family planning:

The publicity and education of family planning conducted in China according to its actual conditions and the population situation have made the whole society see that to control the rapid population growth is its responsibility and its urgent task. From the 1980s, all regions of China began one after another the activity of "doing accounts and making contrasts," during which people were organized to do accounts and make contrasts of the national and local changes after the founding of New China in terms of the population growth, per-capita cultivated land, grain supply and income, education, employment, housing and transportation, the differences in living standards between the families with more children and those with fewer children, and the benefits of family planning to the state and people. The activity has played an active role in helping people see clearly the nation's actual situation and practise family planning of their own accord.