Main contributor: Dr. David Heffernan
Propaganda promoting the One-Child Policy.

The One-Child Policy was a policy introduced by the communist government of the People’s Republic of China in 1979 with the goal of curbing population growth in what was then the world’s most populous country by quite some margin. As the name suggests, the policy imposed a one-child limit on couples, though in practice the restriction could be circumvented for a wide range of reasons and those who wished to violate it could do so by paying a fine. The policy did serve to slow the rate of Chinese population growth in a country where the population had been expanding by nearly 20 million people year on year in the 1970s. However, in the long run the One-Child Policy has had demographic implications for China, which is now experiencing a rapidly aging population and also a declining population for the first time in its modern history. The One-Child Policy has had implications on migration within China since the 1980s. More importantly, it is now raising policy questions for the Chinese government about how it will meet the country’s labor needs in the decades ahead.[1]

Research your ancestors on MyHeritage

One-Child Policy chronology of events

The Japanese occupation of China

China has always been one of the largest countries in the world and one of the most populated, a product of the three great rivers of the country, the Yellow, Yangtze and Pearl Rivers, being some of the world’s foremost breadbaskets, areas able to sustain large populations. At the same time the chaos that enveloped China in the first half of the twentieth century in the form of disease outbreaks, constant social and political instability and the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and Chinese Civil War (1927–1949), kept population levels growing at a relatively slow rate. Over 20 million people died alone in the Sino-Japanese War.[2]

Deng Xiaoping

From 1950 onwards though, after the Civil War ended, the population started to grow very rapidly. There were around 550 million in China in 1950. The famine spawned by the disastrous Great Leap Forward of the years between 1958 and 1962 killed tens of millions of people,[3] yet this still only slowed population growth. It took off again from 1962 onwards, with the overall population growing from about 660 million in 1962 to 820 million in 1970 and then to around 950 million by 1978.[4] It was at this juncture that the Chinese government decided that drastic intervention was needed in order to stop China’s population ballooning to 1.5 billion before the end of the century. Thus, beginning in 1979 the government, under the new leadership of Deng Xiaoping, decreed that couples were to only have one child each. However, in practice only 36% of the population adhered to this. 53% had a second child based on various factors such as the occupations of the parents, while around 10% simply broke the rules and paid the fines which were imposed on violators.[5]

The One-Child Policy worked in the short run. Where the annual growth in the population level had been between 2.5% and 3% in the 1960s and 1970s, it slowed to closer to 1.5% across the 1980s as a whole and then to an average of 0.75% in the 1990s. China’s population has peaked in recent years owing to it at just over 1.4 billion people.[6] Demographers estimate that it would be closer to two billion people today if the One-Child Policy had not been implemented. Yet at the same time it has caused social and demographic problems. In particular, the average age of Chinese people has gone from 20 years old in 1970 to nearly 40 years of age today. Chinese society will continue to age in the years ahead and its population is now falling, creating labor difficulties and economic challenges for future generations. Accordingly, the One-Child Policy has largely been abandoned since the early 2010s, with all couples being allowed have a second child since late 2013 and then a third from 2021.[7]

Extent of migration caused by the One-Child Policy

Birth rates in Child and the One-Child Policy

The One-Child Policy has played a role in migratory patterns in China since the 1980s. These have been influenced more by the Chinese Economic Miracle and industrialization and have fuelled mass migration of hundreds of millions of people into the burgeoning cities and towns of China. In 1980 the level of urbanization in China was just over 20%. It increased to about 30% by 1990 and continued ever since. Today the urbanization is around 65% and predicted to expand further to nearly 80% by mid-century. The One-Child Policy contributed to this. As couples had only one child they were more likely to send these to universities and technical schools in the cities and towns and for those young adults to then find jobs there and remain in urban centers. Hence, while it was far from the main cause, the One-Child Policy contributed to some extent to the internal mass migrations which have occurred in China over the last forty years and that have involved hundreds of millions of people.[8]

Perhaps the greatest migration impact of all produced by the One-Child Policy lies in the decades to come. With its population aging rapidly and with a declining labor force, China is potentially going to have to look for migrant workers from outside its borders to move to the country to provide much needed labor and support for the elderly. This will constitute a major change in a society which has experienced incredible levels of inward migration over the last half a century but comparatively little migration from without.[9]

Demographic impact of the One-Child Policy

The demographic impact of the One-Child Policy was very considerable. Demographers argue that China’s birth rate and population growth would have begun to decline anyway in the 1990s and 2000s as middle class families started to engage in higher levels of family planning even if it had not been introduced. The state intervened to forcibly intervene much earlier and so China’s population today is just over 1.4 billion instead of around 2 billion, which is what it might be if the One-Child Policy was never introduced. Had it not been introduced China would have even more megacities than it does, they being metropolises with over ten million inhabitants. Similarly, the rural areas of China, which have experienced comparative depopulation as China has urbanized would also be more populous. The demographic impact of the policy was that it stopped an already overpopulated country from becoming even more overpopulated, but it is also producing a rapidly aging population in the twenty-first century, making the One-Child Policy a double-edged form of demographic control.[10]

Explore more about the One-Child Policy

Retrieved from ""