Socioeconomic development is certainly a decisive factor facilitating demographic transition. To a large extent, lower birth and death rates are by-products of socioeconomic development. Higher incomes contribute to infant mortality decline by raising nutritional standards and to lower birth rates by raising the market value of women’s time and, hence, the opportunity costs of childbearing. Other features of social and economic development, particularly the educational attainment of women, may play an even more important role. With the passage of time, the importance of the socioeconomic factors on fertility trend has been rising. Nevertheless, government polices related to fertility behavior have played a profound role in bringing about the demographic transition in China, and shaping the regional pattern of China’s demographic dynamics.
China’s demographic transition was initialized by strong and effective government-sponsored public health and family planning programs. China witnessed a very rapid population growth during the 1964–1974 period. Its total population increased from 700 million to 900 million in only ten years, prompting the government to promote the family planning program. The program implementation began in the urban areas in the 1960s, and expanded to the rural areas in the early 1970s. The program focused on the slogan of “Later, Longer, and Fewer”, meaning later marriage and later childbearing, longer birth interval, and fewer children. The proposal of “OCP” was first put forward in 1979 and became fully operational in the early 1980s. One of the notable features of China’s family planning program is its decentralized policy formation and program implementation.
In general, regulations are more flexible in rural areas than in urban areas, more rigid for the Han people than for the national minorities. Had all Chinese couples followed the local family planning regulations, the total cohort fertility rate in 1990 would have been 1.62 and 1.50 in 2000, as more people became urban residents and thus changed their birth control categories. Therefore, the notion of “OCP” is actually an oversimplification even though the term is widely accepted.
The differential local birth control regulation is to a large extent a compromise between the central guidance on population control and the local situation, both in terms of socioeconomic development and the political commitment of the local government. For instance, Chinese farmer families can have two children in general, and this is rationalized on the ground that farmer families depend on family labor for agricultural production and for old-age support (primarily support by married son[s]) , as there is almost no well-covered government-sponsored pension system operating for Chinese farmers. Therefore, the relatively rigid family planning regulation is expected to be implemented in regions with better socio-economic conditions, with more concentration of state-owned enterprises, and more people engaging in non-agricultural economic activities in general.
There are always exceptions. It is interesting to note that for a long time the family planning regulation in Guangdong province, one of the rich provinces in China, was a slack one compared to that in many other Chinese provinces, while the regulation in Sichuan province was rigid relative to its socio-economic condition.
Both incentive and disincentive measures have been used to operate and manage the program. Incentive measures rely heavily on the financial capacity and other social welfare resources of local government. When such capacity and resources were lacking, local government often resorted to punitive packages, which in some cases took coercive nature. Such practices were widely used particularly in the 1980s. Levying fines from those parents who gave birth outside
the birth control quota was treated as one of the most effective ways of implementing the program. However such fines were also one of the causes of social tension between cadres and the public, especially in the rural areas. The introduction of family planning responsibility system for government agencies at all levels in the 1980s manifested the commitment of the Chinese government to slowing down the population growth. In recent years, more attention has been paid to the provision of social welfare to the rural elderly who followed the government family planning policy regulation in the past.
This new measure indicates a significant shift of China’s family planning from purely “punishing those who have many children” to “rewarding those who have fewer children”. Also, this long-awaited program is one of the major policy measures manifesting the “pro-people” orientation of the present Chinese leadership.
As the imbalance in China’s sex ratio at birth has been deteriorating, the Chinese government’s attitude toward the problem has recently changed from denying the problem in earlier years to more active condemnation of abortion of female fetuses and prevention of this unfortunate practice. Tough regulations have been introduced to crack down on illegal sex identification and to prevent pre-birth selective abortions of female fetuses. However, as technologies, such as ultrasound examination, become widely available at affordable cost to Chinese farmers, and also due to lack of efficient implementation of these laws and regulations, the problem remains serious. The government’s plan to bring the situation back to normal in the near future is fraught with difficulties.
It seems most likely that the current population policy will remain in effect at least for the next five years, but more modifications will be implemented first at provincial level and then extended nationwide. The current population policy will be implemented in a much more comprehensive manner, together with other social policies and along with gradual transformation of governance patterns at the local community level.
