Inside a Demographic Forbidden Zone: On the Transformative Impact of China’s Great Malthusian Campaign (1970-2021)
In 1970, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai announced population growth ceiling targets for urban and rural areas, respectively. Many demographers view this as the start of the most determined attempt to limit population in human history. This half-century intervention to control births, inspired by Malthusian concerns and intended to hasten economic development, was the most extreme the world has ever known.
China’s enforced anti-natalism fully ended in 2021 when authorities drafted a blueprint of sweeping pro-natal provisions. This turnaround occurred as birth rates approached the ultra-low levels once considered ideal and, incredible as it may seem, about as low as that of Singapore, one of the most highly developed societies in the world. Since the mid 1970s, China’s fertility reached low levels some 25 earlier than one would expect based on its development.
Equally remarkable is that the most obvious question one might ask – how much lower is China’s population owing to this program? – appears to be academically off limits. Over the last 6 years, no journal of demography has published a paper addressing these questions. Related questions about Chinese families - how many fewer children, grandchildren, and other relatives are there due to the program? – are similarly unaskable.
Why? The key reason concerns the fallout of a debate about the program’s impact centered in the journal Demography, among the most heated ever in the field. The debate was (and is) largely unnecessary when one considers differing definitions of the program.
Observers routinely conflate one-child limits – the best-known policy feature – with the broader program of restrictions and enforcements. Thus, the phrase ‘one-child policy’ defines away the broader program, which lacks any similarly familiar name (I call it China’s Great Malthusian Campaign).
Bookend estimates across these definitions are as follows. At the low end, albeit poorly documented, some observers (myself included) offer that 150-200 million one-child families emerged during the one-child era (1980-2015). Given that many families chose to have a single child voluntary, the impact of one-child limits must be well below that range.
In contrast, the best known counterfactual model of China’s birth rates since 1970 in the absence of this program, one that fully incorporates developmental factors, tells a different story. China’s population is currently more than 600 million lower than it would have been. This estimate reflects enforcements of all anti-natal provisions, not just one-child limits (e.g., two-child limits, birth spacing, etc.). It also reflects an ongoing demographic dynamic – every birth averted directly by the program averts the future family tree that would have followed.
Ironically, influential institutional stakeholders – many academic scholars, the international family planning community, and (now) even the Chinese government – are reluctant to acknowledge these massive numbers, each for their own reasons. But without a better understanding of the impact of this intervention, we will never appreciate the unique forces affecting China’s demographic present as well as its future.
Further Readings
Goodkind, Daniel. 2017. “The Astonishing Population Averted by China’s Birth Restrictions: Estimates, Nightmares, and Reprogrammed Ambitions.” Demography 54 (4): 1375–1400.
Goodkind, Daniel. 2018. “If Science Had Come First: A Billion Person Fable for the Ages (A Reply to Comments)” Demography 55 (2): 743–768.
Carl Minzner, Daniel Goodkind, Stuart Gietel-Basten and Zak Dychtwald. 2023. "China’s Demographic Challenges," Interpret: China, Center for Strategic and International Studies, November 28. https://interpret.csis.org/chinas-demographic-challenges/.
