Anti-natalist policy : China

Question 1

Define anti-natalist policy.

Answer 1

A population policy designed to limit fertility through the use of both incentives and deterrents.

Question 2

Reasons for introducing the policy :

1) Historical

Answer 2

• In 1950, the rate of population growth was high at 1.9% each year. ( A population growth rate of 3% will cause a country’s population to double in less than 24 years. )
• Previous Chinese governments had encouraged people to have a lot of children to increase the country’s workforce. But by the 1970s, the government realized that current rates of population growth would soon become unsustainable, because infrastructure and food supplies, etc were becoming strained and overcrowded.

Question 3

Reasons for introducing the policy :

2) General

Answer 3

• lack of access to contraception
• lack of education on safe sex and family planning
• contraception too expensive
• children considered a source of great joy / traditionally large families
• agricultural based society – meaning children needed to work on family farm

Question 4

How did the government enforce this policy?

Answer 4

• The One-Child Policy, established in 1979, stated that all couples were only allowed to have one child.
• The government enforced this by forcing parents to apply for a permit for each child, and heavy fines for having more than one child.
• They made contraception widely available, and encouraged abortions.

Question 5

Problems enforcing the policy :

Answer 5

• Those who had more than one child didn’t receive these benefits and were fined.
• The policy was keenly resisted in rural areas, where it was traditional to have large families.
• In urban areas, the policy has been enforced strictly but remote rural areas have been harder to control.
• Many people claim that some women, who became pregnant after they had already had a child, were forced to have an abortion and many women were forcibly sterilised.

Question 6

Impacts :

1) Current

Answer 6

• The birth rate in China has fallen since 1979, and the rate of population growth is now 0.7%
• There have been negative impacts too - due to a traditional preference for boys, large numbers of female babies have ended up homeless or in orphanages, and in some cases killed. In 2000, it was reported that 90% of fetuses aborted in China were female.
• As a result, the gender balance of the Chinese population has become distorted. Today it is thought that men outnumber women by more than 60 million.

Question 7

Impacts :

2) Long term

Answer 7

• In the long term, China could have an aging population due to the falling birth rate leading to a rise in the relative number of elderly / old dependents.
• High dependency ratio - fewer economically active to support the growing number of economically active.

Question 8

Present day :

Answer 8

• China has realised the negative implications of its one child policy, including their possible aging population, and have relaxed the policy to a two child policy, introduced in October 2016.
• Even before then, the policy was relaxed, and couples were allowed to have two children if their first child was a girl, or if both parents were only children.