The Chinese one child policy

        During the 1950’s there was great encouragement to have a large population due to it meaning a strong country, however in 1959 there was a massive famine where 20 million people died as a result. After this famine there was another population boom. The population increased by 55 million in each year between 1960 and 1973. This therefore meant that the population spiralled out of control.

        From 1974-79 there was a policy change and people were encouraged to reduce the birth rate by the slogan wan-xi-shoa (later, longer, fewer) this included the concepts of later marriages longer gaps between children and fewer children in general. This combined was designed to decrease population growth.

In 1974-79 this policy wan-xi-shoa did not work and population carried on increasing. And therefore in 1979 the Chinese government introduced the one child policy which set very strict limits on who was allowed to have children, and when. Strong pressure was put  on women to use contraception. Special family planning workers in every work place. Enforced abortions and sterilisation became common. The policy was the practice of female infanticide. The policy was very successful in urban areas but less in rural areas as it was harder to police and the need for children was greater as the more manual labour side is more common.

From 1990 onwards the one child policy has been relaxed slightly. This is partly because it was so difficult to enforce, and also because of the economic impacts of a population where there were far more older people than young, where there in time would be far more people not working than working