One-Child One-Family Policy

The one-child one-family policy originated at a national Chinese birth-planning conference in February 1978. That October the Communist Party State Council established birth-planning bureaus in all counties to promote the new policy of allowing one child per family, tolerating two children per family, and preventing families from having additional children. Those policies were instituted because the Party Central Committee wanted to ensure that the national population would not exceed 1.2 billion by the year 2000. In September 1980 the Party Central Committee established a stricter one-child policy, with some special permits for a second child granted. That policy was relaxed after the issuance of Document No. 7/1984, which allowed for more rural second-child permits and more local flexibility.

After the Tian'amen crisis of June 1989, however, and with new projections of the 2000 population at 1.27 billion to 1.323 billion, the party again limited second-child permits and increased sanctions for disobeying birth quotas. Those restrictions, especially in rural areas, led to imbalances in sex ratios as high as 114 male infants born per 100 females, well above biologically normal levels, in 1992 and 1993. As traditional desires for a son have remained culturally intact alongside strict policies of birth limitation, these statistics suggest that prenatal sex determination led to more abortions of female fetuses and that infanticide was practiced on female infants. However, as a result of increasing mobility, divorces, second marriages, and informal unions, among other factors, an increasing number of Chinese people are able to evade party controls on their fertility.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Greenhalgh, Susan, and Jiali Li. 1995. "Engendering Reproductive Policy and Practice in Peasant China: For a Feminist Demography of Reproduction." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 20 (3): 601-641.

Scharping, Thomas. 2002. Birth Control in China 1949–2000: Population Policy and Demographic Development. New York: Routledge.

                                         Donna J. Drucker