Abstract
The population of China was estimated to be 542 million at the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949; the figure had more than doubled when the fourth census was taken in 1990, with the count recorded at 1134 million The number passed the 1.2 billion mark in 1995. This figure, though large in size, was smaller than that expected by many demographers and China observers. The major reason for this low figure was that natural increase slackened as a result of the declining birth rate. Though there was under-reporting of births, the adjusted figures still showed that there was a decline in fertility in the early 1990s.1 The major cause of China’s fertility decline can be attributed to the continuing success of the state-operated family planning programme 2 Its achievement in the late 1980s and early 1990s was remarkable, given the increase in the number of women at their prime childbearing age and the fact that the government machinery was losing influence on the people due to the reforms started in 1979. Since the implementation of the national family planning programme in 1973, about 300 million births had been averted by 1995.3 This achievement is even more notable when China is still classified as a developing country.
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Notes and references
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© 1999 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Ming, S.Y. (1999). The Evolution of Family Planning Policies. In: Teather, D.C.B., Yee, H.S., Campling, J. (eds) China in Transition. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333983829_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333983829_11
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