杏吧原创

The Chinese government鈥檚 attitude to reproduction has veered from population-boosting policies at one extreme to the 鈥渙ne child鈥� approach at the other. Now the economic consequences of the policies could eclipse even the demographic time bomb of 40 million 鈥渆xtra鈥� males, finds Alexander Monro

鈥淥UR views on population should change. In the past I said that we could manage with 800 million. Now I think that 1 billion would be no cause for alarm.鈥� When Mao Zedong made this announcement in August 1958, it brought to an end the birth control policies that the Chinese Communist Party had pursued in the early years of the republic鈥檚 life. What it did not change was the idea that the government could tell its people how many children to rear, as Tyrene White points out in her new book on the policy, China鈥檚 Longest Campaign: Birth planning in the People鈥檚 Republic, 1949-2005.

For Mao, the new socialist vision of China needed a sea of workers to launch the country into modernity, and his emphasis on citizens doing their reproductive duty to the state led to the wildest demographic explosion in history. In 1949, China had a population of 542 million. At Mao鈥檚 death in 1976, that figure was 937 million. In the subsequent post-Mao reforms, the new ruler Deng Xiaoping introduced the one-child policy.

China鈥檚 Longest Campaign examines the republic鈥檚 policies towards reproduction from a political perspective. At a time when journalists often draw broad conclusions about China from limited experiences or conversations, this is a helpful corrective, and White is good on the sparring and trade-offs between government and citizens that characterised both the drafting and the enforcement of China鈥檚 policies. She describes some Orwellian moments, with the horrors of mass sterilisation providing the most harrowing reading. But the real value of White鈥檚 book is how she tracks the contradictions between Deng鈥檚 free market reforms and his attempt to subdue fertility rates.

Decollectivisation meant that land tended to be divided according to the number of labourers 鈥� thus the more children the better. Meanwhile, welfare systems collapsed, drying up funds to reward single-child households for their restraint. Penalties also became harder to enforce and many were willing to pay fines for having more than one child.

By 1984, says White, the government began to accept the lesson that declining fertility was more likely to follow economic growth than precede it and embarked on a series of compromises, such as a two-child policy for six of the poorest regions and a one-son-two-child policy in 18 provinces, but with only limited concessions for second births in major cities. At this point the government鈥檚 policy could no longer be called a 鈥渙ne child鈥� approach.

鈥淐hina鈥檚 birth policy has deepened the rural-urban divide鈥�

Resistance continued anyway, whether through collusion with local authorities, false reporting of statistics or, notoriously, through female infanticide, abandonment and, first legally and then illegally, through aborting fetuses that ultrasound scans indicated were female. The consequences for the demographics of China are huge. It is predicted there will be 40 million Chinese bachelors by 2020 with the associated problems of forced marriages, trafficking of women, surrogate motherhood and prostitution. The HIV/AIDS issue in China can hardly be irrelevant either.

White touches on an even bigger problem: the rural-urban divide. It is inevitable that a fast-developing country embracing market reforms will experience a two-speed economy to some degree, but China鈥檚 birth control policy has meant a rural population fighting the government to have more children, while the urban demographic is content to have smaller, low-cost families. In this sense two Chinas are being created, and the fault line is growing. Add to this the spectre of an ageing population that, according to economist Helen Qiao at the investment bank Goldman Sachs, will mean that every 10 Chinese workers aged 15 to 64 will have to support seven younger or older dependants by 2050. This is happening in a country in which per capita income is still very low compared with other nations facing pension crises, and in which social services are paltry, especially in rural areas.

This raises other questions. Is it impossible for a developing country to get richer when its population is already old? Will the necessary tax rises mean a dangerous shortage of capital? And is there a population threshold beyond which no market or government can properly function? If the answer to any of these is yes, Mao鈥檚 legacy could yet be his own party鈥檚 downfall.