The policy of one child per couple or one-child policy is a measure of population control established in urban China in 1979 with the aim of exercising radical birth control to reduce the excessive growth of population and overcrowding. China is the world's most populous country, a home to a fifth of the world's population (China Daily).
The Chinese government introduced the policy in 1978 to alleviate the social and environmental problems of their country. The policy is controversial both within and outside China due to the resultant issues. The controversy stems from the way in which it has been applied (harsh enforcement of the law) and from concerns about negative economic and social consequences. However, recent research undertaken by the Pew Research Center of China showed that about 75% of the population supports the policy (PRB).
The policy is enforced at the provincial level through fines imposed in income or rent of the family and other factors. However, there are still many people who have more than one child, despite these punitive measures. In February 2008, the Chinese government official, Wu Jianmin, said the one-child policy would be reconsidered (PRB). In November 2013, at the Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a decision was made that allowed a second child in families where one of the spouses did was a single child. This measure represents a change in the one-child policy (PRB).
Experts estimated that the birth control policies have resulted in preventing 400 million births in the period from the late 1970s. The one-child policy reinforces the age imbalance of the population (Pew Global). The official doctrine of the communist revolution of 1949 regarding demography and population growth became part of Marxist orthodoxy: the population size is not a problem, without the private property there will be no problems in production and food supply for a large population (Pew Global).
Mao Zedong nationalist birth program was not generally supported. President of Peking University Ma Yinchu considered it necessary to start family planning already in 1950, but his initiative was dismissed. After the first modern census of 1953 that revealed the population of 583 million, Chinese authorities become receptive to the Neo-Malthusianism that was dominant in the Western population thought of those years. From August 1959, the Ministry of Public Health was campaigning for birth control supported by a huge propaganda effort, although it had no visible effect on fertility. This first attempt only lasted a few months after the Cultural Revolution, halted by the Great Leap Forward that caused chaos and the great famine in the period from 1958 to 1961. At that time the collapse of agricultural production occurred resulting from the economic policies implemented by the Great Leap Forward authors, the first consequence of which was the hungry death of 20-30 million Chinese. In this context, family planning was not a matter of importance. However, some indirect measures aimed at controlling the population, such as promoting the virtues of late marriage, were resumed shortly after. Thus, the 1960s saw the fertility reduced by almost half between 1963 and 1966. But it was not until 1972 that the Chinese Communist Party assumed the population control as a national policy and started propaganda campaigns. Despite the reluctance of some officials, a nationwide campaign was launched the program of creation of supervising and administrative structures for rigorous population control enforcement. Medical advisers were sent to the rural areas to inform the population and facilitate the access to contraceptives (PRB).
The aim of the one-child policy was to achieve population stabilization by 2000, once it would reach 1,200 million. For this end the one-child policy was introduced in the country, with exceptions in the areas considered special and for certain ethnic minorities. It was a radical and unprecedented campaign. Propaganda, social pressure, system of benefits and financial penalties were combined. Thus, couples with one child, if they choose not to have more, earned a certificate that gives them various benefits: extended maternity leave, preferred pediatric services, priority in the housing program, financial aid. However, in rural areas, the force of tradition made fertility much higher, so the control had to be very strict. Late marriage was encouraged in 1980 when marriage before ages 22 and 20 years for men and women respectively were prohibited, with the delay of having their first child. The contraceptive practices were supervised over and couples were pressured to forced abortion and sterilization.
In general, the one-child policy encourages parents to have only one child in both in rural and urban areas. However, parents with several children receive the same benefits as those with only one child. The limit is enforced heavily in urban areas, but the actual implementation varies depending on the localization (China Daily). In most rural areas, families are allowed to have two children if the first child is female or disabled. A second child is subject to the delay of birth (usually 3 or 4 years). Unlicensed children will result in heavy fines. This policy does not concern children born overseas who did not get the Chinese citizenship. Chinese citizens returning from abroad can have a second child.
Since the one-child policy was introduced in 1972, the fertility rate has decreased from three children per woman in 1980 (and a sharp decrease of about five births per woman in the beginning of 70s) to about 1.8 in 2008. (The colloquial usage "births per woman" strands for a formal term Total Fertility Rate (TFR), a scientific term in demographic analysis, which describes the average number of births that a woman gives in her lifetime).
The slump in fertility rate and population increase has relieved the scale of the problems of overpopulation, such as epidemic diseases, slums expansion, inadequate social services (including health, education, legal services), and impact to the ecosystem by excessive burden on fertile lands and generating of high quantities of waste. However, even with the birth control policy in effect, China birth rate still exceeds the deaths by one million. In addition, there are still six hundred million people in China living on less than two dollars per day.
In 2011 the southern province of Guangdong, one of the industrial areas of China, has asked the central government a permission for marriages may have two children if one of the parents does not have brothers or sisters (China Daily).
During the Cold War, the United States were fearful of rapid population growth in the Third World and especially in China, and they provided advice and financing through the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). After Ronald Reagan came to power in 1981, supported by ultra-conservative and pro-life sectors, US policy undergoes a radical shift and starts to withdraw their support from UNFPA. By 1986 all funding was removed which relinquished the control over the growth of population in China and other poor countries.
Some people believe that the birth-child policy in China is a time bomb for the country, as the aging population in China will pose enormous economic and social problems in the world's most populous country (PRB). But it was only three decades later that demographers started to sound the alarm when it became evident that a serious crisis of aging was emerging. China is the only developing country faced with the paradox of having a country with a predominantly elderly population while being a rich country (PRB). In China, the crisis of aging is incomparably faster than in Europe, where lowered fertility and mortality is happening gradually over a century, according to a demographer Christophe Z Guilmoto (Sex-Ratio Imbalance in Asia: Trends, Consequences and Policy Responses). For others, since the implementation of birth control in 1970 China has grown economically, becoming an industrial power today, there appeared fears that the one-child policy affecting the economy may have been shown unfounded. But if it had not applied the limitation of births and taken the action of this scale and rigor, unprecedented anywhere in the world, China would be about 2 billion and unable to feed the population, rather than the current 1,340 million in a more or less manageable situation (China Daily).
Works cited
Population Reference Bureau (PRB). “China’s Rapidly Aging Population”. 2010.
Accessed at http://www.prb.org/pdf10/todaysresearchaging20.pdf
"The Chinese Celebrate Their Roaring Economy, As They Struggle With Its
Costs". Pew Global Attitudes Project. 2008. Acceced at http://www.pewglobal.org/2008/07/22/the-chinese-celebrate-their-roaring-economy-as-they-struggle-with-its-costs/
"Total population, CBR, CDR, NIR and TFR of China (1949–2000)". China Daily
Accessed at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010census/2010-08/20/content_11182379.htm
