{"id":81,"date":"2009-06-30T03:00:41","date_gmt":"2009-06-30T07:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dontow.com\/wordpress\/?p=81"},"modified":"2009-11-27T02:23:12","modified_gmt":"2009-11-27T06:23:12","slug":"a-discussion-of-chinas-population-control-policy-and-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/2009\/06\/a-discussion-of-chinas-population-control-policy-and-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"A Discussion of China’s Population Control Policy and Issues"},"content":{"rendered":"
China is well known as the most populous country in the world and a country where the government has adopted a one-child policy. The one-child policy is actually not a one-size fits all policy. Furthermore, formulating a good population control policy for China is extremely complex, and there are serious consequences for whatever policy adopted. This article provides some background information on this important issue, and discusses China\u2019s current population control policy, its resultant issues, and potential resolutions.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Some Basic Population Statistics during the First Two Decades of the PRC<\/strong><\/p>\n The population of China was about 450 million in 1949 (although it is not clear how accurate is this number), and over 1.3 billion today, or tripling in the last 60 years. However, the growth rate has not been constant over that period. Due to a weak Chinese government, imperialism, war, and turmoil in China during the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, China\u2019s population was pretty stagnant during that period. However, things started to change significantly after the establishment of the People\u2019s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. When the first census was taken in modern China in 1953, its population was already 583 million. This rapid increase of almost 30% in four years (although there is some uncertainty on the population of China in 1949) was due to the much lower death rate together with the much higher birth rate after the end of WWII and China\u2019s civil war. In the 1964 census, the population was 695 million, or an increase of almost 20% over the previous 11 years. This was still a large increase, however partially due to the tragic famine of the Great Leap Forward of 1958-1961, this increase was no where as much as the increase during the first few years of the founding of the People\u2019s Republic of China. During the next five years 1964-1969, there was another large increase to about 800 million, or about another 15% increase.<\/p>\n Traditional Factors Driving China\u2019s Population Growth<\/strong><\/p>\n There were several reasons in traditional Chinese culture resulting in a large number of children. Confucianism believed that many children mean much happiness, and early children means early happiness. Farmers in rural areas needed more hands to work the fields. Keep in mind that even as late as 30 years ago, about 80% of Chinese lived in the rural areas. In traditional Chinese culture, older parents lived with their adult sons and the sons take care of the older parents, while daughters moved away to live with their husbands\u2019 families. This meant that the Chinese wanted more sons (and therefore also more children) as insurance for support when they got old. This was especially important in rural China where there was no pension and no social welfare system to support the older retired farmers, and this is essentially still the case in rural China today.<\/p>\n In addition, Chairman Mao Zedong was in power until near his death in 1976, and Mao not only did not believe in birth control, he encouraged and urged the Chinese people to have lots of children. When Mao died in September 1976, the population of China was about 930 million, which means that the population of China had doubled during the 27 years of 1949-1976. This was one of many mistakes made by Mao.<\/p>\n China\u2019s Population Control Policy<\/strong><\/p>\n The above factors led to a very rapid increase in China\u2019s population during the first quarter century of the PRC. This, however, does not mean that there was no population policy or campaign whatsoever to limit population growth in China during that period. As a matter of fact, population policies and campaigns had been ongoing in China since the 1950s. Without these policies and campaigns, the population of China would have increased even faster during that period, as evident by the fact that the rate of population growth was already slowing during the latter part of that period.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, the pace of population growth was still very large, and if that rapid pace of increase would continue for the next quarter century or more, China\u2019s population would be so large that it would be impossible to provide enough food and other necessities for everyone, and definitely would not allow the country to raise China\u2019s standard of living significantly. This would lead to massive economic, social, and political problems.<\/p>\n Thus starting in the early 1970s even while Mao was still alive, China was already pushing for fewer children on a voluntary basis. In 1976, around the time of Mao\u2019s death, the cornerstone of China\u2019s birth control program was put into effect: the \u201cLater, Longer, Fewer\u201d policy. This policy encourages couples to get married later, wait longer to have children, and have fewer children. In 1979, this policy got more specific and more stringent and became the \u201cone-child policy\u201d (or \u8ba1\u5212\u751f\u80b2\u653f\u7b56 in Chinese, which means the \u201cpolicy of birth planning\u201d). Basically it restricts married couples to have only one child, although allowing many exemptions as discussed next.<\/p>\n Many exemptions were provided, or later added. There are also a lot of provincial or regional variations, as implementation and enforcement are done at the provincial or regional levels. Here are several examples of exemptions:<\/p>\n There are economic dis-incentives for violating the “policy of birth planning.” These dis-incentives include paying a one-time fine, needing to pay tuition for the second child to attend schools, denying health and other social welfare benefits for the second child. The amounts of the dis-incentives are decided by the appropriate provincial or regional authority. Besides economic dis-incentives, coerced or forced abortions or sterilizations may also be imposed, with also variations depending on the province or region. It is the coerced or forced abortions or sterilizations that have caused a lot of objections and controversies regarding human rights both within and outside of China.<\/p>\n Since the introduction of the one-child policy, the fertility rate in China has fallen from about three births per woman in 1980 to below 1.8 births in 2008. Note that the 1980 fertility rate of 3 was already reduced sharply from almost 6 births per woman in 1970 and as high as 7.5 births per woman around 1963. Note that the current Chinese fertility rate of below 1.8 is lower than the fertility rate of 2.05 in the U.S., 1.89 in France, or 1.82 in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n Factors to Consider and Potential Problems<\/strong><\/p>\n Formulating a good population control policy for China is extremely complex, and need to factor in many considerations. These include:<\/p>\n Note that some of the above considerations are on opposite ends of a spectrum. For example, the second and third bullets are opposite end results depending on the population control policy adopted.<\/p>\n Having the one-child policy in existence for 30 years has definitely slowed down the rate of population growth in China. During the last 30 years since the adoption of the one-child policy, China\u2019s population has only grown from approximately 975 millions in 1979 to approximately today\u2019s 1330 millions, or an increase of approximately 36%, as compared to an increase of approximately 100% during the first 27 years of the PRC.<\/p>\n Although controlling China\u2019s huge population growth is a major achievement, the one-child policy has brought about or will bring about several important problems. Among the more obvious ones are:<\/p>\n Potential Resolutions<\/strong><\/p>\n The above problems associated with China\u2019s one-child policy are so complex that I of course do not claim to be able to offer a solution that can solve all these problems. I do want to offer several general guidelines that could serve as the foundation on which a solution could possibly be built.<\/p>\n Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n In order for China, being the most populous country in the world, to develop into a rich, industrialized and modernized country, it is crucial that it adopts a good population control policy that can slow down the rapid growth of its population. However, it is not easy to formulate and implement a good policy, because a non-ideal policy could easily give rise to a plethora of undesirable problems. Although China\u2019s one-child policy has achieved the objective of controlling rapid population growth, it has given rise to several undesirable problems, such as a rapidly aging population, an excess of boys over girls, the inability of the productive workforce to support the large older population, and whether there is enough productive workforce to sustain a growing world-class economy. We offer several general guidelines that could serve as the foundation on which a solution could possibly be built. Note that a good solution will require many decades of commitment to achieve, and will rely crucially on a continuing healthy and growing Chinese economy.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> See Kevin Kinsella, \u201cDemographic Dimensions of Global Aging,\u201d Journal of Family Issues 21, no. 5 (Jul. 2000); 541-58.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> See the article \u201cIt\u2019s Cold Cash, Not Cold Feet, Motivating Runaway Brides in China\u201d: .<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" China is well known as the most populous country in the world and a country where the government has adopted a one-child policy. The one-child policy is actually not a one-size fits all policy. Furthermore, formulating a good population control policy for China is extremely complex, and there are serious consequences for whatever policy adopted. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":558,"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions\/558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n
\n
\nAn ever increasingly aged population would result in an increasingly larger financial burden on the state to provide pension and social welfare benefits to their senior citizens, while at the same time the number of productive workers is not increasing correspondingly due to the dropping birth rate. This means that the problem will get worse and worse. As an illustration, according to China\u2019s 2000 census, there were 69 million aged 0-4 years old, which is only half of the number aged 10-14 years old.<\/li>\n\n