The People’s Republic of China and The One Child Policy

In the 1950s the People’s Republic of China first implemented the beginnings of the one child policy. It made significant changes to the population and the nation’s growth rate decreased. Professor Yinchu Ma (1957) initiated the policy with his book New Population Theory. His book responded to the huge increase in population growth occurring in China (Singer 1998). Under the Mao republic, leaders saw the population development as a danger to the nation’s economy (White 1994). The political party promoted childbirth in the 1950s and 1960s according to the slogan “one is a good few, two is just enough, and three is over” (White 1994). However these efforts were not successful and there were 250 million additional people in the 1970s. More steps were taken to encourage population control. These steps included focusing on contraceptive and abortion services in the countryside and encouraging later marriages. In 1982 the Chinese population was over one billion and the growth rate made China’s modernization goals more difficult.
Therefore the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and the State Council’s Resolution Concerning the Strengthening of Birth Control proclaimed the one child policy in 1980. This policy said “the state advocates the one couple has only one child except for special cases, with approval for second birth” (Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, 1980). The goals of the policy were to have zero growth in the country and maintain the population at 1.2 billion by 2000. China offered financial and marital incentives to couples with a child and suspended them if the couple had a second child. Despite being defined as a voluntary program, the policy was enforced through administrative controls (White 2006). Be...

... middle of paper ...

...wnews-11494.html.

White, T. 1994. “The Origins of China’s Birth Planning Policy.” Pp. 250-278 in Engendering China edited by C. K. Gilmartin, G. Herstatter, L. Rofel, and T. White . Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

White, T. 2006. China’s Longest Campaign: Birth Planning in the People’s Republic, 1949- 2005. Cornell University Press.
Zhan, H. J. 2004. “Socialization or Social Structure: Investigating Predictors of Attitudes Toward Filial Responsibility Among Chinese Urban Youth From One and Multiple Child Families.” International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 59: 105-124.

Zhao, L. 2006. Woguo chengshi diyidai dushengziyu fumu de shengming li cheng: cong zhongnian kongchao jiating de chuxian tanqi [The Life Course of Parents of First Generation Only Children in Urban China: A Discussion About Empty-Nest Families of Middle-Adulthood]. Youth Studies 6