The Evolution of China's Birth-Planning Policy and Policy Making before the 1980s by Die Wu B.A. in Journalism, July 2008, Shanghai International Studies University A Thesis submitted to The Faculty of The Elliot School of International Affairs of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts May 15, 2016 Thesis directed by Bruce Dickson Professor of Political Science and International Affairs © Copyright 2016 by Die Wu All rights reserved ii Abstract of Thesis The Evolution of China's Birth-Planning Policy and Policy Making before the 1980s The thesis reviews the origin and evolution of China’s birth-planning policy before the 1980s, explains how the idea of birth planning was created in the 1950s, and identifies what led China to adopt the one-child policy in the late 1970s. By taking the city of Shanghai as a case study, it shows the birth-planning policy remained constant despite sporadic political turmoil, and large-scale coercion, including forced abortion and sterilization, had actually been carried out in administrative areas in the 1960s and 1970s. Such regional measures would be adopted nationwide in the following one-child policy period. By studying the top CCP leaders attitude, logic, motivation and roles in policy making before and after Mao Zedong’s death, and the mechanism between the central and local levels in policy implementation, it demonstrates that 1) the top leadership played a deciding role in formulating the most coercive one-child policy, while the role of China’s scholars was only to support policy making; 2) it was the planning system that led to the top leadership's resolution on strict birth control and encouraged local cadres to resort to coercion in enforcement. iii Contents Abstract of Thesis ..............................................................................................................iii List of Tables ...................................................................................................................... v Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: The Origin of Birth-Planning Policy, 1953-1966 ............................................. 7 Chapter 2: Shanghai’s Leading Role: the Mechanism between Local and Central Government....................................................................................................................... 23 Chapter 3: The Reemergence of the Conservatives: Pushing Birth Planning toward One-Child Policy .............................................................................................................. 45 Chapter 4: Policy Implementation: National Plan, Number Control and Economic Incentive ............................................................................................................................ 62 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 80 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 86 iv List of Tables Table 1: People who had abortion, sterilization, and Intra-uterine device in Shanghai ... 27 Table 2: Annual married couples in Shanghai ................................................................. 27 Table 3: Key political leaders in one-child policy making ............................................... 52 Table 4: Key program leaders in one-child policy making ............................................... 53 Table 5: Key population scholars ..................................................................................... 57 Table 6: Timeline of important occasions related to population target ............................ 66 Table 7: China’s total population according to official census data ................................. 68 v Introduction On October 29, 2015, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) publicly announced that all married couples would be allowed to have two children, effective January 1, 2016.1 The new policy marked the official end of China’s decades-long one-child policy and a significant relaxation on birth control, which naturally drew the whole world’s attention back to China’s population control policy again. Before the historic policy shift, China’s population control policy since late the 1970s was broadly generalized by the West as one-child policy; however, in China, it was actually called Birth Planning (jihua shengyu) policy, which literarily means all births should be planned. It is noteworthy that the Chinese government tended to translate all official documents, government departments, bureaucratic organs, or semi-governmental organizations relevant to “birth planning” as “family planning.” For example, the executive agency overseeing the birth-planning policy was translated as National Family Planning Commission (Guojia jihua shengyu weiyuanhui), and the largest Chinese non- profit, non-governmental (self-proclaimed) organization in the field of reproductive health was translated as Family Planning Association (Zhongguo jihua shengyu xiehui). But such translation could lead to misunderstanding in an English context. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), family planning is a tool that “allows individuals and couples to anticipate and attain their desired number of children and the spacing and timing of their births. It is achieved through use of contraceptive methods and the treatment of involuntary infertility. A woman’s ability to space and limit her pregnancies 1 “China to Allow Two Children for All Couples,” Xinhua, Oct. 29, 2015, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-10/29/c_134763507.htm (accessed April 25, 2016). 1 has a direct impact on her health and well-being as well as on the outcome of each pregnancy.”2 And according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), “access to safe, voluntary family planning is a human right. Family planning is central to gender equality and women’s empowerment.”3 Both interpretations signify that family planning is a voluntary option decided by a woman within a family. However, birth planning (Jihua shengyu) in China carries two connotations: on the one hand, it is equivalent to the Western idea of family planning: if some women or couples say they want to have “birth planning,” it implies a voluntary choice, in which case the context of Chinese birth planning and Western family planning is the same. On the other hand, to a larger degree, birth planning is a mandatory regulation made by the state that individuals and couples are supposed to obey. The Chinese Constitution says: “The State promotes and implements birth planning.” Chinese Population and Family Planning Law is more explicit; Article 17 in Chapter III says: “Citizens have the right to reproduction as well as the obligation to practice birth planning according to law. Both husband and wife bear equal responsibility for birth planning.”4 In this sense, birth planning is an individual duty imposed by the government rather than an individual right in China, which completely contradicts the Western meaning of family planning. The government’s intervention in people’s family life is the key in China’s population control policy. Thus, in this thesis, to prevent confusion, I will refer to all “Jihua Shengyu” as “birth planning,” even for those official translations made by the Chinese government 2 “Family Planning”, World Health Organization, http://www.who.int/topics/family_planning/en/ (accessed April 25, 2016). 3 “Family Planning Overview”, United Nations Population Fund, http://www.unfpa.org/family- planning (accessed April 25, 2016). 4 The State Council of the People’s Republic of China, Population and Family Planning Law of the People's Republic of China (Order of the President No.63), December 29, 2001, http://www.gov.cn/english/laws/2005-10/11/content_75954.htm (accessed April 25, 2016). 2 and accepted by the West. Over the past three decades and more, China’s unprecedented governmental intervention in population policy and the context gap between the West and Chinese official domains lead to a great deal of research on China’s birth-planning policy, especially on the one-child policy. The majority of Western scholars focused on the negative side of the policy: the violation of human rights including forced abortion and harming women’s health, the unfavorable consequences including unbalanced sex ratio, sex selection, missing girls, aging population, and the coercion of the government and the resistance of the people.5 To counter the criticism of the West, many Chinese scholars, sometimes supported by the Chinese government, also published many research papers on the policy, but they mainly focused on the policy’s contribution to China’s economic achievement,6 the necessity of the policy,7 how to enhance the policy by piecemeal improvement and how to improve the demographic measures of population. Only in recent years, the trend both inside and outside of China started to merge, when more and more Chinese independent scholars, even scholars within the CCP system, began to study the looming adverse demographic outcomes and called for policy change.8 Meanwhile, 5 See e.g. John Shields Aird, Slaughter of the innocents: Coercive birth control in China. Vol. 498. American Enterprise Institute, 1990; Kay Johnson, "Chinese orphanages: Saving China's abandoned girls." The Australian Journal of Chinese