Where next for China’s population policy?

Crowded China: Following the doubling of its population under chairman Mao Zedong, China introduced the one-child policy to stop the population explosion. (Photo: © Sophie Caron.) The world in 1979, half-way between Hiroshima and today, is already beginning to look exotic in the rearview mirror. Jimmy Carter was still the US president, Margaret Thatcher became the UK’s prime minister, while Leonid Brezhnev still presided over the Soviet Union. In February 1979, the Islamic revolution in Iran ended a monarchy that had just celebrated its 2500th anniversary seven years earlier, and at the end of the year the Soviet Union intervened in the civil war in Afghanistan, which led to the boycott of the 1980 Olympics at Moscow by many western countries. Meanwhile, the western world kept wondering what direction China might take after the death of its revolutionary leader Mao Zedong in September 1976. The trial of the Gang of Four and the power struggle between communist hardliners led by Hua Guofeng and more marketoriented reformers under Deng Xiaoping left the outside world guessing. At the beginning of 1979, the Carter administration recognised the People’s Republic of China, rather than Taiwan, as the legitimate representation of China, and Deng Xiaoping’s faction was beginning to steer the country towards a more capitalist future. At that point, China’s economy was still dominated by agriculture. Around 80% of workers were employed in this sector, which still relied on manual work and used every scrap of land available. The population was approaching the one-billion mark and growing steadily. It had nearly doubled in the previous 30 years since the beginnings of the People’s Republic. As the country had neither spare land to farm nor established industries to produce goods for export, population growth became a threat to food security, and the authorities were beginning to try out various soft and not quite so soft measures to curb the fertility rates. Young people were encouraged to delay their procreation, and women who had two children already were threatened with sterilisation should they fall pregnant again. In 1979 the Chinese leadership announced a new drastic set of rules that became known as the one-child policy. It is based on the household registration system (hukou), which differentiates between urban and rural populations. Residents of urban areas were strictly allowed only one child. Exceptions for rural areas allowed a second child if the firstborn was a girl, thus giving in to a culturally engrained preference for sons, which also led to selective abortions and infanticides, shifting the gender balance significantly. Violation of the rules could be punished with fines amounting to several annual salaries of the household concerned, but the strictness of implementation varied by region.