One Child Policy: Nationalization For Population Reproduction

Extolled as one of China’s the greatest social experimental reforms in 20th century, one child policy has exerted profound impact upon Chinese society, rural areas in particular. One child policy is not only a product characteristic of then planned economy, but also a fundamental ideologically-charged national policy with a variety of factors having been taken into account, including food, resources, environment and economic development etc.With one child policy as the key word threading through the thesis, research work in the thesis, within the framework of relationship of country and society, intends to explore respectively government’s introduction and implementation of one child policy, farmer’s birth behaviors towards the policy and the social consequence the policy has brought about. What is being discussed in the thesis, is the roles of government from a macro-level, family units and individuals from a micro-level, and interaction between government and individuals. The one child policy finds its origin in the birth behavior of petty farmers and social background of petty farmer economy. Influenced by a long-established reproduction view and land system, farmers have been practicing a free, unplanned way towards the issue of reproduction. It turned out that such unrestricted manner resulted in a huge increase in population in the long term, which became a stumbling block to social stability and prosperity. With a growing awareness of its probable consequences, China began to implement the one child policy nationwide, the role of decision-making on reproduction issue transferred from family units to central government. Exercising policy control and social control, and enforcing regulations on birth timing and birth quantity, the government to some extent successfully altered the traditional ideas held by farmers by means of communication and education. Under the totalitarian administration of government, the birth behavior of farmers has developed into two extremes:one is cooperatively biding by one child policy; the other is the violating the policy and producing extra-plan babies.Viewed from a macro-level, China has undergone a fundamental transformation in population reproduction after more than 30 years of implementation, changing from high birth rate, low morality and high growth to low birth rate, low morality and low growth. At the micro level, the one child policy has played a key role in maintaining population growth, and also contributed to changes in family wealth, demographic structure and population quality.