Birth Planning: Cost and Effect
China started its call for family planning in the 1950s and 60s but didn't fully launch its one-child policy until the 1970s. (China's Demographic Dilemmas) Within its first decade of implementation, when it was most stringent, China's fertility rate fell from 34 to 18 births per thousand people. To add more encouraging numbers, in 1990, China finally achieved a below-replacement fertility rate and its population growth rate was at less than one percent. (Chinese Reproductive Policy at the Turn of the Millennium, pg 383) So as far as the statistics is concerned, the birth planning policy has and is continuing to produce the results it promised.How about the social results of the policy? Chinese official law states that "The development of birth planning work should be mutually linked with increasing the opportunity of women for education and employment, improving women's health, and raising women's status." (People's Republic of China Law on Population and Birth Planning, Chapter One, Article 3) Has the government lived up to these ideals? The answer to this question is complex, and requires that I answer it in two parts: the birth planning policy incurred a heavy negative social cost in the 1970s and 80s, but in the 1990s to the present day that cost has been mitigated. Let me explain in detail.
In the 1970s, the population control policy was fully launched and vigorously enforced. In rhetoric, the state promoted birth control in the name of women and children's welfare, (China's Demographic Dilemmas, pg. 9) but ironically women and children in particular were in a disadvantaged position at this time. Tyrene White is especially sensitive about this point, remarking that "under this rationale [of birth planning in the 1970s], women were production instruments subject to the structure of state monopoly and supply, and children became a planned product of the socialist state." (The Origins of China's Birth Planning Policy, pg 276) Millions of women were forced to have an IUD installed in their bodies, tens of millions of unborn babies (particularly girls) were aborted, and an uncertain number of babies were simply swept under the legal rug by parents attempting to hide them from official scrutiny. (Ibid, pg. 12) In the 1970s, means of enforcement of this policy was psychologically torturous for families. Women were under constant watch by vigilant co-workers and neighbors who were under threat of punishment should any one in their lot violate national policy. Individual desire and privacy was sacrificed in the name of following national policy and the serving the public good.
Be Sure to Continue to Page 4 of "China's Birth Planning Policy: Positive Steps to an Uncertain Victory ".
