•In the 1950’s Chinas communist regimes attitude to the problem was to maximize it for military and strategic strength.
•As a result of this the population continued to rise, leading to a famine in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.
•The problem could be addressed in many ways;
1. Young people were encouraged to migrate from east to west- this brought the Han Chinese culture to ethnic groups.
2) Productivity increased- intense farming meant jobs were lost to machinery
3) Economic restructuring- Estimates show that in 2030 china will need more than double the current world import for grains – 369 million tones.
4) Encourage outmigration- The rest of the world will be affected by a large number of Chinese people migrating there.
5) Anti-natalist- Limiting births is hard to enforce as people will have to be convinced
China’s population-limitation policy
•What were the limitations of a 2-child policy?
A two child policy would have produced a population of 1.4 billion which was twice liv’s optimum. It would not have reduced population
•A rigorous one-child policy was adopted in 1979. It was enforced by; paying incentives, fines for failing to follow the policy, compulsory abortions and sterilizations, contraceptive advice freely available, granny police and The marriage Law encourages late marriages, late childbirth’s, one child per couple. Having one child is really encouraged, use of propaganda such as posters help this, also the state controls the media so they get to chose what the public see and hear so can make sure it supports and encourages their policies.
In urban towns the policy was accepted however in rural villages there is a strong preference for boys as they support the parents in old age so they may have more than one child to ensure that they have a son, there is a 2:1 ratio of children in rural families to urban families.
Since the introduction of the one-child policy, the fertility rate in China has fallen from over two births per woman (already a sharp reduction from about five births per woman in the early 1970s) to approximately 1.7 births today. In total, China estimates that it has three to four hundred million fewer people today, with the one-child policy, than it would have had otherwise. Chinese authorities thus consider the policy as a great success in helping to implement China's current economic growth. The reduction in the fertility rate and thus population growth has reduced the severity of problems that come with overpopulation, like epidemics, slums, overwhelmed social services (such as health, education, law enforcement), and strain on the ecosystem from abuse of fertile land and production of high volumes of waste
Chinese people can apply to have another child if, both parents themselves are only children, the first child is a girl or if the first child is disabled or unable to work.
The one child policy will have affected the population of China greatly, especially the structure, there will be a lot more elderly people due to improvements in medicine and nutrition. There will also be a huge decline in the number of under 18s for obvious reasons that only one child is allowed per family. There will also be a decline in the number of girls because if parents are only allowed one child then they prefer it to be a boy. Boys carry on the family name and are better labourers, it’s also a tradition China that once the children grow up they look after their parents and grandparents. If your only child is a daughter then she will move to her husband’s family leaving no other offspring to take care of the parents. The scheme has caused a number of problems in China. This is particularly the case for hundreds of thousands of young females. Many thousands of young girls have been abandoned by their parents as the result of the one child policy. Many parents in China prefer to have a boy to carry on the family name. As a result large numbers of girls have either ended up in orphanages, homeless or in some cases killed. Also, 90% of foetuses aborted in China are female. Disasters such as the earthquake which caused a school to collapse and the children inside to die mean that whole generations of children are wiped out.
