History of the Policy
Birth control in the 1950s
Soon after the formation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, government officials began to grapple with the issue of population control. Faced with growing numbers and the need for more laborers, leaders initially did little to reduce the nation’s fertility rates. Some of them believed that if the government told people to reduce their fertility, a stable population size could quickly be achieved. According to author Judith Banister in China’s Changing Population, Chairman Mao Zedong said in a 1957 speech that he wished for the population to stay at 600 million for many years.
Leaders soon realized that population control would require a long-term, proactive approach, and in the lead-up to the Great Leap Forward in 1958, laws banning birth control, sterilization, and abortion were repealed, and China started to mass produce and distribute contraceptives, including, condoms, diaphragms, and spermicidal jelly. Public interest was low, in part because many of the available contraceptives were low in quality, but also because of a general reluctance to discuss issues of sex and family planning. According to Banister, by 1958, the nation’s supply of contraceptives was sufficient to meet the needs of only 2.2 percent of all couples of childbearing age.
The famine of 1959–1961 temporarily derailed the nation’s family planning efforts, but once the country began to show signs of economic recovery, leaders implemented a new birth control campaign. Effort included the renewed production of contraceptives and massive media campaigns promoting late marriage, low birth rates, and the use of intrauterine devices (IUDs) and vasectomies to limit fertility.
After the Cultural Revolution
In 1964, the first national Family Planning Office was established to oversee China’s fertility reduction programs, many of which focused on urban areas with modern medical facilities and access to supplies of birth control. Government officials also had more control in cities to monitor residents, enforce policies, and threaten those who did not comply. Banister reports that by 1966, many cities in China had experienced a significant decrease in their fertility rates. Rural areas remained largely untouched by family planning efforts until after the Cultural Revolution of 1966–1969, at which time many of the urban family planning networks expanded their control into the surrounding towns and countryside.
Foundation for the One-Child Policy
Although many of the nation’s family planning programs were derailed during the Cultural Revolution, by the early 1970s, the nation was again in a position to promote fertility reduction. This time around, several factors aligned to increase the success of the programs. Since the onset of family planning efforts 15 years before:
- Much of the adult population had been exposed to information about contraceptives;
- Factories were in place to produce the needed contraceptives;
- The government had a better understanding of various contraceptive, sterilization, and abortion techniques due to several years of research;
- Government programs had trained millions of “barefoot doctors,” health aides, and midwives to move throughout the country promoting the use of birth control.
By the late 1970s, China had experienced significant success in increasing the use of birth control and reducing fertility rates. Most married couples had no more than two or three children. Still, government officials worried about the predicted 1 percent annual growth of the population, due to disproportionately large numbers of young people. In 1978, the government set the goal of a zero population growth rate by the year 2000. Soon, their focus turned to limiting the number of children per couple to one.
