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The Evolution of the One-child Policy in Shaanxi, 1979–88

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Susan Greenhalgh
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A crucial element in China's modernization effort is the control of population growth. Months before the historic Third Plenum of the 11th Communist Party Congress in December 1978, the leadership decided that only a drastic limitation of fertility would ensure achievement of its economic goals for the year 2000. The policy to encourage all couples to limit themselves to one child was announced in January 1979. In September 1980 the Party Central Committee took the unusual step of publishing an “Open Letter” announcing a drastic programme of 20 to 30 years’ duration to restrict population growth, and calling on all Party and Youth League members to take the lead in having only one child. Thus was launched the world's most ambitious family-planning programme.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 122 , June 1990 , pp. 191 - 229
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1990

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References

1 On the place of population control in China's modernization strategy see Xueyuan, Tian, Xin shiqi renkou lun (Population Theory of the New Period) (Harbin: Heilongjiang chubanshe, 1983), andGoogle ScholarBin, Ma, Lun Zhongguo renkou wenti (On China's Population Problems) (Beijing: Zhongguo guoji guangbo chubanshe, 1987).Google Scholar

2 Xinhua, , “National planned parenthood conference held in Beijing,” Broadcast, 26 January 1979, in FBIS, 31 January 1979, pp. E9–10.Google Scholar

3 “Open letter from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to all members of the Party and the Communist Youth League concerning the problem of controlling the country's population growth,” in China Population Information Centre, China: Population Policy and Family Planning Practice (Beijing: CPIC, 1983), pp. 1–4.

4 Jian, Song and Jingyuan, Yu, Renkou kongzhi lun (Population Control Theory) (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1985), esp. pp. 265–75Google Scholar, and Jian, Song, “Population development—Goals and plans,” in Liu, Zheng, Song, Jianet al, China's Population: Problems and Prospects (Beijing: New World Press, 1981), pp.25–31.Google Scholar Critics of the policy's demographic rationale include John, S. Aird, “Coercion in family planning: Causes, methods and consequences,” in U.S. Congress, Joint Economic Committee, China's Economy Looks Toward the Year 2000; Vol. I, The Four Modernizations (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986), pp. 184–221Google Scholar, and Chinese demographers interviewed by the author in 1985 (Interview file 851 lbj).

5 Shixun, Gui, “Renkou shehuixue diqi jiang: Weilai renkou ziran biandong yao yuli yu shehui de fazhan” (Lecture 7 in social demography: future population change must be favourable to societal development), Shehui (Society), No. 4 (1983), pp. 61–65Google Scholar; Cangping, Wu, “Yingdang zhuyi de liangge renkou wenti” (“Two population problems that ought to be paid attention to”), Jingjixue wenzhai (Economics Digest), No. 4 (1984), p. 58Google Scholar; Davis-Friedman, Deborah, “Old-age security and the one-child campaign,” in Elisabeth, Croll, Delia, Davin, and Penny, Kane (eds), China's One-Child Family Policy (New York: St. Martin's, 1985), pp. 149–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Terence, H. Hull, “Recent trends in sex ratios at birth in China,” Research Note No. 96 (November 1988)Google Scholar, International Population Dynamics Programme, Department of Demography, Australian National University; Saith, Ashwani, “China's new population policies: rationale and some implications,” Development and Change, Vol. 15, No. 3 (1984), pp. 321–58CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Wolf, Margery, Revolution Postponed: Women in Contemporary China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), esp. pp. 238–59.Google Scholar

7 Hanyi, Yu, “Dusheng zinu jiaoyu zhong ying zhuyi de jige wenti” (“Some problems that ought to be paid attention to in the education of single children”), Jiankang bao-Jihua shengyu ban (Health Gazette-Birth Planning Edition), 21 March 1986Google Scholar; Shuang-yin, Kung, “The mainland's 'little emperors': single children,” TaKungPao, 31 May 1986, p. 2Google Scholar, in JPRS-CPS, 4 September 1986, pp. 49–50.

8 Aird, “Coercion” Banister, Judith, China's Changing Population (Stanford:Stanford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Steven, W. Mosher, “Human rights in the new China,” Society, Vol. 23, No. 2 (January/February 1986), pp. 28–35Google Scholar; as well as more journalistic reports such as Steven, W. Mosher, Broken Earth: the Rural Chinese (New York: Free Press, 1983), esp. pp. 224–61.Google Scholar

9 The U.S. decision to withdraw support from the Unted Nations Population Fund is examined by Barbara, B. Crane and Jason, L. Finkle in “The United States, China, and the United Nations Population Fund: dynamics of U.S. policymaking,” Population and Development Review, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1989), pp. 23–59.Google Scholar UNFPA has provided population assistance to China since 1979.

10 Qian Xinzhong, the first minister-in-charge of the State Family Planning Commission, was removed in December 1983. His successor, Wang Wei, was replaced by Peng Peiyun in January 1988. Xinhua, “Decree No. 10 of the president of the People's Republic of China,” Broadcast, 8 December 1983, in FBIS, 9 December 1983, p. K9. Xinhua, “Order No. 64 of the president of the People's Republic of China,” Broadcast, 21 January 1988, in FBIS-CHI 21 January 1988, p. 6.

11 The oscillatory image is most clearly articulated in Aird, “Coercion.” It was limned in John, S. Aird, “Population studies and population policy in China,” Population and Development Review, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1982), pp. 267–97Google Scholar, and brought up to early 1989 in “Is China's birth control program still coercive?”, unpubl. ms. (1989), portions of which are appended to a 17 March 1989 letter from U.S. Representative Christopher H. Smith (Republican, of New Jersey) to Dante B. Fascell (Democrat, of Florida). The oscillatory image also occurs, although in less explicit form, in the writings of Judith Banister; her primary emphasis, however, is on the persistence of a core of policy elements that in her view constitute a compulsory, coercive population control programme. See Banister, China's Changing Population; Banister, “Statement of the representative of the Bureau of the Census before the Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations and the Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives” (31 October 1985); Hardee-Cleaveland, Karen and Banister, Judith, “Family planning in China: recent trends,” CIR Staff Paper No. 40, Center for International Research, U.S.Google Scholar Bureau of the Census.

12 See especially Skinner, G. William and Edwin, A. Winckler, “Compliance succession in rural Communist China: A cyclical theory,” in Etzioni, Amitai, (ed.) A Sociological Reader on Complex Organizations (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969, 2nd edit.), pp. 410–38Google Scholar; Andrew, J. Nathan, “Policy oscillations in the People's Republic of China: a critique,” The China Quarterly (CQ), No. 68 (1976), pp. 720–33Google Scholar; Edwin, A. Winckler, “Policy oscillations in the People's Republic of China: a reply,” CQ, No. 68 (1976), pp. 734–50.Google Scholar

13 Etzioni, Amitai, A Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations (New York: Free Press, 1961).Google Scholar

14 Interview file 851 lbj, 8612xa, 8710bj, 8906tn.

15 Hints of answers to these questions can be found in Tien, H. Yuan, “Second thoughts on the second child: a talk with Peng Peiyun,” Population Today, Vol. 17, No. 4 (1989), pp. 6–9Google ScholarPubMed; White, Tyrene, “Implementing the 'one-child-per-couple' population program in rural China: national goals and local politics,” in David, M. Lampton (ed.), Policy Implementation in Post-Mao China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 284–31Google Scholar; Yi, Zeng, “Is the Chinese family planning program 'tightening up'?”, Population and Development Review, Vol. 15, No. 2 (1989), pp. 333–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kaufman, Joanet al., “Family planning policy and practice in China: A study of four rural counties,” Population and Development Review, Vol. 15, No. 4 (1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Hardee-Cleaveland and Banister, “Fertility policy,” p. 85.

17 Aird, “Coercion” and “Is China's birth control program still coercive?”

18 On the impact of the Cultural Revolution on western thinking about China's political system, Lieberthal, Kenneth and Oksenberg, Michel, Policy Making in China: Leaders, Structures, and Processes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 6–90Google Scholar, and Shue, Vivienne, The Reach of the State: Sketches of the Chinese Body Politic (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 12ff.Google Scholar

19 The phrase is Shue, Vivienne. See her book by the same name, The Reach of the State; also Jean C. Oi, State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Village Government (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1989).Google Scholar

20 See, e.g., Donnithorne, Audrey, “China's cellular economy: some economic trends since the Cultural Revolution,” CQ, No. 52 (1972), pp. 605–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Shue, Reach of the State, pp. 125–52.

21 David, M. Lampton, “Water: challenge to a fragmented political system” in Lampton, (ed.), Policy Implementation, pp. 157–89.Google Scholar

22 Zweig, David, “Context and content in policy implementation: household contracts and decollectivization, 1977–1983,” in Lampton, (ed.), Policy Implementation, pp. 255–83.Google Scholar

23 Dorothy J. Solinger, “The 1980 inflation and the politics of price control in the People's Republic of China,” in Lampton (ed.), Policy Implementation, pp. 81–118.

24 Naughton, Barry, “The decline of central control over investment in post-Mao China,” in Lampton, (ed.), Policy Implementation, pp. 51–80.Google Scholar

25 A pervasive phenomenon, local resistance to central authority is buttressed by such structural factors as the chronic overload on the political centre; the limited capacity of the centre to oversee and monitor policy-making and enforcement at lower levels, and the de facto autonomy conferred on lower-level units by their control of independent resources. David, M. Lampton, “The implementation problem in postMao China,” inLampton, (ed.), Policy Implementation, pp. 3–24Google Scholar; Naughton, Barry, “False starts and second wind: financial reforms in China's industrial system,” in Elizabeth, J. Perry and Christine, Wong (eds.), The Political Economy of Reform in PostMao China (Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1985), pp. 223–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wong, Christine, “Material allocation and decentralization: impact of the local sector on industrial reform,” in Perry, and Wong, (eds.), Political Economy of Reform, pp. 253–78.Google Scholar

26 Cf. Merilee, S. Grindle (ed.), Politics and Policy Implementation in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

27 Hardee-Cleaveland and Banister, “Fertility policy,” p. 85. The effects of the reforms on childbearing desires and enforcement capabilities are explored on pp. 60–62, 72–81.

28 See inter alia Harding, Harry, China's Second Revolution: Reform After Mao (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1987), and Lampton, (ed.), Policy Implementation.Google Scholar

29 This loss of control over spatial movement of the population was made amply clear to officials in Guangzhou in early 1989, when the city was reportedly flooded with over 2–5 million new migrants (surely an overestimate). See Xinhua, “Government makes 'urgent appeal',” Broadcast, 27 February 1989, in FBIS-CHI, 27 February 1989, pp. 57–58.

30 On policy interdependence in the post-Mao era see the contributions in Lampton (ed.), Policy Implementation.

31 Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Joint Publications Research Service, both translation services of the U.S. Government.

32 Interview file 871Obj.

33 Based on frequent scanning of Chinese birth planning papers such as Jiankang bao-Jihua shengyu ban (Health Gazette-Birth Planning Edition) and demographic journals such as Renkou yu jingji (Population and Economy) and Renkou yanjiu (Population Research).

34 Lacking the regulations, Aird is forced to rely on a variety of other, largely indirect types of evidence-e.g., the “toughness” of language used in speeches-to infer policy change. Most of this evidence is problematic, marred by well-known problems of incompleteness of coverage, political restrictions on public discourse, and falsification of statistics.

35 During the Great Leap a crisis of only moderate proportion produced fluctuations in birth rates that were less sharp than those recorded elsewhere.

36 A recent State Statistical Bureau survey indicates that roughly 17% of babies born between January 1987 and October 1988 were not registered. Salem, Ellen, “It all depends on how you count them,” Far Eastern Economic Review, 2 March 1989, pp. 63–64.Google Scholar The Shaanxi Provincial Birth Planning Commission has noted that statistics on births are “seriously incorrect,” a fact which has “covered up the facts,” but it has released no information on the extent of the undercount. Jing Xianfeng, “Shaanxi provincial government issues warning to leaders at all levels on the partial loss of population control,” Renmin ribao, 20 November 1988, p. 1, in FBIS-CHI, 29 November 1988, p. 64.

37 Shaanxi Provincial Bureau of Statistics, Shaanxi tongji nianjian, 1987 (Statistical Yearbook of Shaanxi, 1987) (Xi'an: Shaanxi renmin chubanshe, 1987), p. 64.

38 Shaanxi Provincial Bureau of Statistics, Tongji nianjian, p. 63.

39 Cf. Eduard, B. Vermeer, Economic Development in Provincial China: The Central Shaanxi Since 1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 310–23.Google Scholar My own research supports Vermeer's conclusions on this point.

40 Guo, Qi (ed.), Shaanqing yaolan (Shaanxi Abstract) (Xi'an: Shaanxi renmin chubanshe, 1986, pp. 181–87.Google Scholar

41. Guo Qi (ed.), Shaanqing yaolan.

42 Guo Qi (ed.), Shaanqing yaolan.

43 Shaanxi Provincial Bureau of Statistics, Shaanxi sheng nongye tongyi nianbao ziliao, 1983 (Annual Report of Agricultural Statistics for Shaanxi Province, 1983) (Xi'an: Shaanxi sheng tongjiju, 1984), p. 2.

44 Guo Qi (ed.), Shaanqing yaolan.

45 Based on family histories gathered from 150 family heads. The pro-natalist effects of the reforms elsewhere are described by Croll, Elisabeth, “Some implications of the rural reforms for the Chinese peasant household,” in Ashwani Saith (ed.), The Re-emergence of the Chinese Peasantry: Aspects of Rural Decollectivisation (London: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 105–136.Google Scholar

46 Based on interviews with present and former cadres in the Xianyang township where I carried out research. Birth planning cadres there were loath to demand excess-child penalties from fellow villagers, preferring instead to pay a fine for not meeting their quota of penalties collected.

47 In the Xianyang township studied, local cadres spent their days in the fields, squeezing home visits associated with birth planning into the evening hours. Nor were they inclined to enforce the rules too strictly, often bending them for family and friends. On the decline in cadre power in the wake of the economic reforms generally, see Richard, J. Latham, “The implications of rural reforms for grassroots cadres,” in Perry, and Wong, (eds.), Poitical Economy, pp. 157–73Google Scholar and White, Gordon, “Riding the tiger: Grass-roots rural politics in the wake of the Chinese economic reforms,” in Saith, (ed.), Re-emergence, pp. 250–69.Google Scholar

48 The first written documents on birth planning in Shaanxi were the “Methods of managing expenses and expenditures for birth planning work in Shaanxi Province,” enacted in December 1962. As elsewhere, birth planning was interrupted during the Cultural Revolution. Beginning in 1973 a number of prefectures and cities (not including Xianyang, then a prefecture) adopted regulations encouraging two-child families and undoing previous rules that had rewarded couples for having large families. See Zhu, Chuzhu (ed.), Zhongguo renkou-Shaanxi fence (China Population Monographs-Shaanxi Volume) (Beijing: Zhongguo caizheng jingji chubanshe, 1988), pp. 403–408.Google Scholar

49 Xinhua, “National planned parenthood conference.”

50 Aird, “Coercion.”

51 On the wanxishao policy see Pi-chao, Chen and Kols, Adrienne, “Population and birth planning in the People's Republic of China,” Population Reports, Series J, No. 25 (January-February 1982), pp. J577–618.Google Scholar

52 The preceding account of the origins of the provincial Temporary Regulations of 1981 was provided by Tan Weixu, deputy governor of Shaanxi, in his “Guanyu 'Shaanxi sheng jihua shengyu zhanxing tiaoli (cao'an)' de shuoming” (“Explanation of the 'Temporary Birth Planning Regulations of Shaanxi Province (draft)'”), dated 28 April 1981 and appended to the “Shaanxi sheng jihua shengyu zhanxing tiaoli” (“Temporary Birth Planning Regulations of Shaanxi Province”), issued 1 May 1981. A set of amendments drafted by the Provincial Birth Planning Leadership Small Group in June 1980 was apparently never formally adopted, for Tan's speech bemoans the lack of unified regulations embodying the strict one-child policy before May of 1981.

53 Although Document No. 13 (1986) has never been published, a revealing discussion of its contents can be found in “Guojia jishengwei fachu tongzhi yaoqiu renzhen xuexi guance zhongyang shisanhao wenjian jingshen” (“State Family Planning Commission issues circular on conscientiously studying and implementing the spirit of Document No. 13 of the Party Central Committee”), Jiankang bao-Jihua shengyu ban, 13 June 1986, p. 1.

54 On Document No. 7 (1984) see Greenhalgh, Susan, “Shifts in China's population policy, 1984–1986: views from the central, provincial, and local levels,” Population and Development Review, Vol. 12, No. 3 (1986), pp. 491–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55 Article 6 of the 1980 Marriage Law states: “Marriage is not permitted in any of the following circumstances: (a) where the man and woman are lineal relatives by blood or collateral relatives by blood (up to the third degree of relationship); (b) where one party is suffering from leprosy, a cure not having been effected, or from any other disease which is regarded by medical science as rendering a person unfit for marriage.” A translation of the law can be found in Population and Development Review, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1981), pp. 369–72.

56 The formulation of different regulations for different ecological areas is a key element of Document 7; see Greenhalgh, “Shifts.”

57 “Comprehensive methods” refers to a full array of contraceptive methods, including pills, injectables, barrier methods, and so forth.

58 In Xianyang parents began in the early 1980s to remove their daughters from school after the fifth or sixth grade. Teachers in the local school system estimate that the proportion of primary school graduates going on to junior middle school had dropped from almost 100% in the late 1970s to 50–90%, depending on the village, by 1988.

59 Based on countless conversations with peasants in Xianyang.

60 That this additional 1 million represents Shaanxi's share of the 50 million by which the national target was increased (the difference between 1–2 and 1–25 billion) is suggested by the fact that 1 million is 2% of the total increase, and Shaanxi's population is 2–86% of the current total population. This is the amount by which one would expect leaders to increase Shaanxi's allocation if target increases were allocated to provinces according to their population sizes. See Gu, Nan and Mei, Ke, “Shaanxi implements responsibility system in population control,” Shaanxi ribao (Shaanxi Daily), 22 October 1984, p. 2Google Scholar, in JPRS-CPS, 15 February 1986, p. 107 and Shaanxi Provincial Service, 18 February 1989, in FBIS-CHI, 24 February 1989, pp. 75–76.

61 In Xianyang birth control campaigns were held in the autumn of 1986, the spring and winter of 1987, and the spring of 1988. The last campaign preceding the autumn 1986 mobilization had occurred in the late summer of 1983. On campaigns during this period in other provinces, see, e.g., Beijing Domestic Service, 8 January 1989, in FBIS-CHI, 7 February 1989, p. 48; Hainan Island Service, 1 May 1987, in FBIS, 4 May 1987, p. PI; Sichuan Provincial Service, 12 June 1987, in FBIS, 12 June 1987, p. Ql.

62 In Shaanxi's Yulin Prefecture birth planning expenditures more than doubled between 1982 and 1983, the year a massive sterilization campaign was carried out province-wide (indeed, country-wide). In 1983 the birth planning department accumulated debts of 940,000 yuan to the public health department for assistance in performing contraceptive operations. The debt increased by only 160,000, 100,000, and 700,000 yuan in 1984, 1985, and 1986, years in which such campaigns were in abeyance. See Wannian, Gao and Qin, Huaicheng, “Yulin Diqu jihua shengyu touzi qianxi” (“A preliminary analysis of birth planning investment in Yulin prefecture”); Shaanxi renkou qingbao {Population News of Shaanxi), No. 3–4 (1987), pp. 15–16Google Scholar, 12.

63 Gao and Qin, “Preliminary analysis.”

64 An insightful analysis of this trend is Elizabeth J. Perry, “Rural collective violence: The fruits of recent reforms,” in Perry and Wong (eds.), Political Economy.

65 See, eg., Suining, Su, “There are many causes of strained relations between cadres and the masses in rural areas,” Nongmin ribao (Peasant Daily), 26 September 1988, p. 1Google Scholar, in FBIS-CHI, 1 October 1988, pp. 12–14. On other forms of resistance to the one-child policy see Wasserstrom, Jeffrey, “Resistance to the one-child family,” Modern China, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1984), pp. 345–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

66 Perry, “Rural collective violence.”

67 From the time the discipline of demography was re-established in the late 1970s Chinese demographers have played a key advisory role in the population policy making process. Recently, this role has been formalized with the establishment in July 1988 of two academic advisory committees within the State Family Planning Commission. Interviews suggest that since 1981 scholars have been free, indeed they have been encouraged, to express their opinions on a wide range of policy matters. For more on the role of Chinese demographers in the policy-making process see Susan Greenhalgh, “Population studies in China: privileged past, anxious future,” forthcoming in The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs.

68 See Supra, Fns 5 and 7.

69 See Supra, Fn. 36.

70 The most recent projections suggest that the population is likely to top 1–3 billion at the century's end. See Xinhua, Broadcast, 8 February 1989, in FBIS-CHI, February 1989, p. 21.