Abstract

PIP: The Reagan administration refuses to recognize the achievements of China's population program and the practical and humanitarian considerations which lead to China's adoption of vigorous family planning policies. China began to express concern about population growth in 1960, and this concern was, in part, prompted by a severe famine. The occurence of the famine was only recently brought to the attention of the rest of the world when demographers uncovered statistical evidence indicating that as many as 30 million Chinese may have perished in the 1958-62 famine. The famine was due both to faulty agricultural policies and to severe crop damage in 1959 and 1960. The family planning program initiated in 1960 was interrupted by the cultural revolution, and the effort to control population growth was not reinstituted until the early 1970s. By 1979 childbearing among the postwar baby boom generation boosted population growth rates to a new high, and the government began advocating a 1-child family. The national census of 1982 revealed that China's population doubled between 1949-1982 and in 1982 exceeded 1 billion. Severe famine and economic chaos were forecasted for the near future if population growth was not severely and immediately curbed. The government responded to this impending threat by instituting stringent measures to restrict 2nd order births. Abortion was permitted for cases of contraceptive failure; however, the government warned that severe penalties would be imposed on anyone who tried to ensure that their 1 child was a son by practicing female infanticide, a traditional but illegal practice. The government admits that some couples, under extreme pressure from local officials, resorted to infanticide. The Reagan administration used the infanticide issue to descredit the Chinese population program, and recently announced its intention to withhold US$10 million in previously approved funding from the UN Fund for Population Activities because the agency provided support for China's coercive population program. The administration also voiced its distorted preceion of China's program at the 1984 International Conference on Population. James Buckley, the administration's delegate to the conference, blamed state controlled economies for interfering with natural mechanisms for slowing population growth. In reality, China's progress in controlling population growth accounts for almost all of the 20% reduction in the world's population growth rate, since the late 1960s. By slowing the world's population growth rate, China contributed not only to it own economic well-being but to the economic well-being of all nations including the US. Yet Reagan condemns rather than praises China for enduring the hardship of controlling its fertility.