《神州交流》Chinese Cross Currents

Foreword: The People Behind the Numbers

Vol. 1, No. 4, October-December 2004

If you set aside the splendour of the culture and the five thousand years of history, the immensity of the population is almost certainly the first idea that springs to mind when one thinks of China. China is today the most populated country in the world, still ahead of India: the last time we visited the China Population Information and Research Centre ( http://www.cpirc.org.cn/ ), its real-time online population counter was showing 1,299,120,135 people, some 35 million more than the total population worked out by the 10-year census in 2000. The numbers are undeniably astonishing: as often reminded by officials, this means that the yearly rate of increase of the Chinese population is equal to the “annual creation of a new medium-sized country”. Indeed, population is related to nationhood—if not statehood—and a large population was until the 1960s a prerequisite to achieve strong-country status.

Mao Zedong himself could never really be persuaded, even by his brilliant prime minister, Zhou Enlai, who thought otherwise, that the fast-paced growth of the Chinese population had to be reined in. Malthusian-inspired theses were considered with great suspicion, to say the least. Nevertheless, birth-control policies were introduced as early as 1954 in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanghai and Zhejiang, and already in May 1970, amidst the Cultural Revolution, the Ministry of Health decreed all contraceptives were to be distributed free of charge. The tightening of family planning was not instigated until the end of 1977, and with the new priority of the regime set to “modernisation”—a huge population thus becoming a burden in the development process—birth planning was included in the revised Constitution. We can trace the one-child policy back to 1978/1979, when targets for natural increase of the population were set to 1% by 1980 and 0% by 2000. Although these plans have failed to materialise to the letter, the one-child policy was implemented, and a recommendation to follow rapidly turned into an obligation to compel, despite the ever-repeated declarations from the authorities that birth-control was implemented on “a voluntary basis”. Today, the target of a natural increase of 1% is realised, and a whole generation of singletons is reaching adulthood.

Faced with growing evidence that present-day population-planning policies are being ignored—some people simply pay a fine of several thousand yuan per extra child, others move flat to find a hospital that has no record of their first child, and many resort to bribery—China's government is seriously considering switching to a two-child policy—after the few limited loosening measures that were adopted over the past four years. The director of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, Yu Xuejun, was recently quoted as saying that if there was no official policy change yet, his commission was “researching an adjustment to the population strategy”.

There are many ways to take part in the on-going debate regarding the revision of the one-child policy. One would be to cling to a moral standpoint, but then, would there be any debate? Would that alter what cannot be undone? Moreover, many specialists consider that the decline in natural birth would have eventually happened with the socio-economic development of the country, and thus discuss the actual use of the policy (and its brutal means): the demographic transition would have taken place anyway, although probably at a slower pace. Another way to examine this issue is then to consider what can be changed today, and for people to form their own opinion and shape future policies, sound information and contending points of view come into play.

We have thus asked “demographers” to present their findings to a wider readership than their scientific peers would normally address. Zhao Zhongwei and Chen Wei first introduce the remarkable demographic transition that China has gone through in the second half of the twentieth century, and then reflect on the achievements and unveil the challenges ahead. Isabelle Attané describes how twenty-five years of one-child policy coupled to a “traditional” preference for sons have led to a great imbalance between young men and women in 21st century China. Li Shuzhuo and Jin Xiaoyi expose the tremendous impact family planning has had on the life of the Chinese people, and not only in urban areas, by examining the growing trend in rural China where the groom is increasingly settling with his wife's family after marriage. On their part, Cai Fang and Wang Meiyan describe how migrant workers are still only slightly benefiting from China's present economic development, and endorse the idea that the first step to remedy this sorry state of affairs would be to relax or even disband the rigid residence registration system. Finally, Gu Danan takes a fresh look at the ultimate stage of demographic transition by questioning how China can (could and should) cope with the accelerated ageing of its population. Interestingly enough, no single article deals exclusively with one aspect or the other of the one-child policy, but they have somehow all placed it at their core. Finally, and although it is not related to the special dossier proper, we have asked a historian of the family to reflect on the idea of Modernity understood as an eroding factor of generation solidarities in the West. Obviously, one has to be cautious with preconceptions.

The guiding principle behind this whole issue, true to the very last book reviews, has been to emphasise that although “population studies” are founded on “hard” scientific research, it ultimately tells us about society, and that one should not forget that there are “people behind the numbers”.

Eric Sautedé, Chief Editor