At the bottom of the Chinese population pyramid (see fig. 1) one can again see large associates that were born between 1985 and 1990. They are almost as large as the birth cohorts during the "baby boom" years. However, these large number of birth are just the "echo effect" of the baby boom between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s. The large baby boom generation had their (first) children - and despite the fact, that each couple should have had only one child, the total number of births was high, because of the large number of parents.
What was the One Child Policy?
The one-child policy is the current policy in the of the . In 1949, General Mao Tse-tung became leader of China at a time when there were around 550 million Chinese. 10 years after that, the population had grown to 655 million (see figure 2). A program called the “Great Leap Forward” was started in 1958 to try and extend the socialist system of production. Mao aimed to hand control oveer to the peasants trhough industrialisation in rurul places and set high targets for agruculture. These plans ended with disorganised production and famine, causing the population to drop by 14 million between 59’ and 62’. Infant mortality reached around 284 per 1000, compared to 38 per 1000 in the late 1990’s.
The government introduced a family planing programme, that acted as a national policy of one child to urban couples, while couples in the countryside are “allowed” two children and cannot have three.
How was it necessary?
The one-child policy was established to limit communist China's population growth. It limits couples to one child. Fines, pressures to abort a pregnancy, and even forced sterilization accompanied second or subsequent pregnancies. The sheer size of the Chinese population puts increased demands on services such as food, housing, education and employment. Moreover, during the 1970’s, the Chinese government feared that further population growth would cause a mass starvation by the end of the century.
How it succeeded?
Since the introduction of the one-child policy in 1979, there has been no large drop in fertility and in fact China experienced a slight increase fluctuating around 21 births per 1,000 people in the 1980s. By the mid-1980s, less than one-fifth of all eligible married couples had signed the one-child certificate -- a contract which granted couples and their child economic and educational advantages in return for promising not to have more than one child. Recently, this policy has been relaxed because the extensive phase of sub-replacement fertility caused population ageing, and improvements in schooling and the economy have caused further couples to become hesitant to have children.
Criticism
China’s one-child policy has been noted as one of the key causes of female infanticide in China, therefore naming the policy a "death sentence for a generation of girls." Still, not many demographers consider that there is widespread infanticide in China. It may also lead to concealing the birth of a child. There is a prevalence of reported male births in some areas of China (as high as 12 males to every 10 females). But it is considered that this is the effect of widespread underreporting of female births, in addition to the prohibited practice of sex-selective abortions which is possible due to the extensive availability of ultrasound. Whilst the reported proportion between male and female births in China does fluctuate considerably from the natural baseline, it is similar to the ratios in Taiwan, South Korea, and India, who do not have a firm family planning policy.
Conclusion / How does this throw light onto the Malthus v. Boserup debate?
In relation to the Malthus and Boserup theories, it becomes quiet apparent that what Malthus hypothesized has indeed lead to some truth in China. There are indeed famines in many areas of China, where there simply is not enough food to feed the hungry mouths of rural children. However it must also be kept in mind, that China is arguably the world’s fastest growing and still thriving economies, with many financial possibilities, supporting Boserup’s argument that a vast population leads to great technological advances. Initially, the reason that China has such overpopulation problems is because the government believed Boserup’s theories to extreme depths, and there were simply too many people to handle – depicting Malthus’s hypothesis.
