China Today series
Copyright © Nancy E. Riley 2017
The right of Nancy E. Riley to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2017 by Polity Press
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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8863-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8864-0(pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Riley, Nancy E., 1955- author.
Title: Population in China / Nancy E. Riley.
Description: Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016017579 (print) | LCCN 2016028525 (ebook) | ISBN 9780745688633 (hardback) | ISBN 9780745688640 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780745688664 (Mobi) | ISBN 9780745688671 (Epub)
Subjects: LCSH: China–Population. | China–Population policy.
Classification: LCC HB3654.A3 R55 2016 (print) | LCC HB3654.A3 (ebook) | DDC 304.60951–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016017579
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Figure 2.1: Trends in Mortality, 1950–2005
Figure 2.2: Life Expectancy and Gross National Income in 1990 International dollars in different countries
Figure 2.3: Average life expectancy at birth in 2000 and average infant mortality rate in 2000, in urban and rural areas
Figure 2.4: Total fertility rate for China, 1949–2001
Figure 2.5: Age structure of the population
Figure 2.6: Share of income held by quintile of population, 1990–2010
Figure 3.1: Birth Planning Is Good for Our Nation's Health and Prosperity
Figure 3.2: Fewer births, better births, to develop China vigorously (1987)
Figure 3.3: Danshan village notice board showing the amount of social compensation fees (fines) owed in 2005
Figure 3.4: A projected effect of policy change on China's population
Figure 3.5: Number of children born per woman, actual and projected, 1950–2005
Figure 3.6: Sex ratio at birth, 1980–2013
Figure 4.1: Number of migrant workers, 2002–2010
Figure 4.2: Migrants as percent of total urban population
Figure 4.3: Mean household per capita income, 2002 (in yuan)
Figure 5.1: Infant mortality rates, 1981–2015
Figure 5.2: Infant mortality rates in Beijing, 1949–1956
Figure 5.3: Trend of infant mortality in rural China, 1996–2008
Figure 5.4: Rural and urban MMR per 100,000 live births
Figure 6.1: Distribution by gender of enrolled students at different education levels, 2013
Figure 6.2: Number of boys born per 100 girls, 1980–2013
Figure 6.3: Map of sex ratios at birth, 2010
Figure 6.4: Sex ratio at birth, urban and rural, 1982–2010
Figure 6.5: Reported sex ratios at birth by birth order (parity), 1982–2005
Figure 7.1: Mean age at first marriage of females, 1950–1982
Figure 7.2: First marriage rates by age, 1964–1974 cohorts
Figure 7.3: Dependency trends 1950–2050
Table 3.1: Women's preferred family size by selected characteristics, 2001
| 1894–1895 | First Sino-Japanese War |
| 1911 | Fall of the Qing dynasty |
| 1912 | Republic of China established under Sun Yat-sen |
| 1927 | Split between Nationalists (KMT) and Communists (CCP); civil war begins |
| 1934–1935 | CCP under Mao Zedong evades KMT in Long March |
| December 1937 | Nanjing Massacre |
| 1937–1945 | Second Sino-Japanese War |
| 1945–1949 | Civil war between KMT and CCP resumes |
| October 1949 | KMT retreats to Taiwan; Mao founds People's Republic of China (PRC) |
| 1950–1953 | Korean War |
| 1952 | Chinese state begins restricting rural-to-urban migration |
| 1953–1957 | First Five-Year Plan; PRC adopts Soviet-style economic planning |
| 1954 | First constitution of the PRC and first meeting of the National People's Congress |
| 1956–1957 | Hundred Flowers Movement, a brief period of open political debate |
| 1957 | Anti-Rightist Movement |
| 1958–1960 | Great Leap Forward, an effort to transform China through rapid industrialization and collectivization |
| March 1959 | Tibetan Uprising in Lhasa; Dalai Lama flees to India |
| 1959–1961 | Three Hard Years, widespread famine with tens of millions of deaths |
| 1960 | Sino-Soviet split |
| 1962 | Sino-Indian War |
| October 1964 | First PRC atomic bomb detonation |
| 1966–1976 | Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution; Mao reasserts power |
| February 1972 | President Richard Nixon visits China; ‘Shanghai Communiqué’ pledges to normalize U.S.–China relations |
| September 1976 | Death of Mao Zedong |
| October 1976 | Ultra-Leftist Gang of Four arrested and sentenced |
| December 1978 | Deng Xiaoping assumes power; launches Four Modernizations and economic reforms |
| 1979 | U.S. and China establish formal diplomatic ties; Deng Xiaoping visits Washington |
| 1979 | PRC invades Vietnam |
| 1980 | One Child family planning policy introduced |
| 1980s | With increased availability of food and housing on the private market and more available jobs, rural peasants begin mass migration to cities |
| 1982 | Census reports PRC population at more than one billion |
| 1984 | Change to One Child Policy, allowing most rural couples to have two children if their first child is female |
| December 1984 | Margaret Thatcher co-signs Sino-British Joint Declaration agreeing to return Hong Kong to China in 1997 |
| 1989 | Tiananmen Square protests culminate in June 4 military crack-down |
| 1992 | Deng Xiaoping's Southern Inspection Tour re-energizes economic reforms |
| 1993–2002 | Jiang Zemin is president of PRC, continues economic growth agenda |
| November 2001 | WTO accepts China as member |
| 2002–2012 | Hu Jintao, General-Secretary CCP (and President of PRC from 2003) |
| 2002–2003 | SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak concentrated in PRC and Hong Kong |
| 2006 | PRC supplants U.S. as largest CO2 emitter |
| August 2008 | Summer Olympic Games in Beijing |
| 2010 | Shanghai World Exposition |
| 2012 | Xi Jinping appointed General-Secretary of the CCP (and President of PRC from 2013) |
| 2013 | Couples are allowed to have two children if one member of the couple is an only child |
| 2015 | China abolishes one child policy, moving to a two child policy |
My biggest debt goes to all those scholars who have been thinking and writing about China's population over the last several decades and from whose work I have drawn here; I have particularly valued the work of Susan Greenhalgh, Kay Johnson, Tyrene White, Wang Feng, and Dudley Poston.
Thanks to everyone at Polity for all their help, especially Jonathan Skerrett and Amy Williams. They made the process of writing and publishing this volume a positive experience.
And I thank my friends and colleagues for support throughout the process: Sara Dickey, Deb DeGraff, Dharni Vasudevan, Lori Brackett, the librarians at Bowdoin College library, and my colleagues in Bowdoin College's Department of Sociology/Anthropology. Finally, thanks, as always, to Bob Gardner and Maggie Riley for always being there, and for asking the right questions and avoiding the other ones.
For Francis J. Riley, who taught me the power of words.
“at home the bookshelves connected heaven and earth.”
Lisel Mueller, Curriculum Vitae
When someone in China asks me what kind of research I do, and I respond that I am interested in issues of population in China, I often get what seems to be an inevitable response: “Good thing you are studying China! China's population is huge, we have lots of people here, it's a great place to study population!” From this perspective, the sheer size makes China's population a worthwhile course of study. In other places, particularly outside of China, when I am asked a similar question about my work, a common response is: “China! Population?! Well, yes, that must be interesting, with what the government has done, restricting people from having children.” Here, it is the role of the government that makes China's population so important to study. These two features – size and government involvement – are key to any study of China's population. Because a fifth of the world's population lives in China, China's population size affects the world's population in significant ways; China's population is larger than the combined populations of North America, South America, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. And the Chinese state has played an explicit and sometimes heavy-handed role in shaping China's population; that aspect of demography in China – understanding the role of the state and the reasons for and consequences of such state involvement – is also interesting and important.
In this volume, I will be exploring these and many other elements of China's population. The size of the population and the weight that population has on the world make it imperative that we understand China's recent and contemporary population issues. In many ways, the changes that have occurred in China are similar to those in other countries. China's population is aging rapidly, for example, as are the populations of other countries, such as the United States, Germany, and China's neighbor, Japan. China is facing health challenges that are similar to those seen in many, mostly wealthier, countries, such as heart disease. China is experiencing high levels of internal migration, but other countries across the world have internal migration rates that are similar or even greater than China's; as is true in China, this migration has presented challenges, such as how to best accommodate newcomers to cities. It is important to keep in mind these and other similarities between China and other societies so that we don't mistakenly make China seem to be unlike all other places, in either positive or negative ways.
But even as China has some similarities with other societies, there are also important differences that we should recognize. China's mortality and fertility both underwent rapid and extensive declines, some of the most rapid declines ever seen in a large population. The speed and extent of the declines were particularly notable because at the time, China was still a poor country; such rapid declines are most often seen in countries that have industrialized and which have more resources than did China. And while rural to urban migration is a factor in many societies, in China, that migration is particularly shaped by explicit government policies that limit the ability of migrants to succeed in the city.
Indeed, when we look at those changes in fertility, mortality, and migration, and try to understand the causes and consequences of them, inevitably our attention must turn to the state. The Chinese state has taken an interest and direct role in changing population outcomes to an extent that is not found in many other places. The state's role may be most noticed and discussed in the area of fertility. But as we will see, the Chinese state has been just as active in the areas of mortality and public health and in migration. State intervention in all areas of population has been influential, but other factors – changing economy, political upheavals, and social stability, to name a few – have also played significant roles in population outcomes. We need also keep in mind that the state is in fact involved in shaping population outcomes in most countries; sometimes that intervention is direct, such as prohibiting abortion (shaping fertility outcomes) or requiring vaccination against childhood diseases (which influences mortality and morbidity rates). Even more often, state involvement is indirect, and might involve how different levels of property taxes or support of public schools shape migration within borders or even to other societies. Or how public support of preschools or parental leaves from the labor force influence families in their decisions about whether to have children, when to do so, and how many children they want. Along with its direct interventions, the Chinese state has also influenced population outcomes in indirect ways; for example, we will see that different levels of state support of rural and urban areas over the past decades has been a key influence in migration today.
Thus, there are many facets to China's past and current population experience, and this volume will draw attention to some of the key pieces and players. Those acquaintances who have spoken to me about why it is a good thing to study and understand China's population were certainly right. The state's involvement is unusual, but also not always understood by many who hear only part of China's population story. China's enormous population size also makes it important to understand its dynamics. The language used by the mass media in the West makes it clear that there are times when size is not simply interesting, but worrisome: China was labeled as the world's first “demographic billionaire,” with the positive and negative connotations – success and threat – that such a term implies. That mixed message reflects the way China is both feared and admired more generally. It is also the lens through which China's population and its policies have sometimes been understood and assessed.
But whatever initial reaction someone has to China's population, population dynamics are an important part of any society, including China. Understanding where China is now or where it is going requires understanding its demographic history and the complexities of its current situation.
While the study of demography at one level focuses on specific processes – migration, fertility, and mortality most traditionally – these processes also involve making connections across economic, political, social, and other areas. One branch of demography focuses strictly on measuring those processes, giving us information about how many births took place this year in a particular population, or counting the number of people who have moved from one place to another. But most scholars who study demography and most policy makers who use demography are interested in what is sometimes called “social demography,” looking to go well beyond those numbers to interpret and understand them. Few would argue that demography is destiny; the context of any demographic event or change is as important as the event or change itself, influencing the meaning and outcome of any demographic event. For example, low fertility is occurring in many countries across the world, with women having fewer than two children, thus below replacement level (the number of births a population needs to continue its current size over time). Whether that is seen as good or bad – for the family, the country, or the world – will depend on the context of that low fertility. For some, low fertility may mean more resources for the children who are born, giving families a better standard of living because they have smaller families to support. But it also might be interpreted negatively, because as those children grow up, there will be fewer workers to power the economy and support those who are not working, such as children or elderly. Similarly, while it is important to know how many people are migrating from one place to another, how to interpret that migration is often under debate. As I write this, thousands of migrants are fleeing Syria and trying to make their way into European countries; the media is full of debates about what this migration means – to Syria, to potential receiving countries, but also to migrants themselves. These Syrians are escaping a war-ravaged country, but they face future challenges too, as they try to start anew in a new place. Will these migrants be a benefit to or a drain on the receiving countries? Disagreement on this issue is widespread.
Those who study population are also interested in what causes population changes. Why do the fertility levels of a population decline or rise? Raising children is expensive. Does fertility fall because of the inherent difficulties of finding the resources needed to raise many children? Or do parents now believe that more resources are needed to raise a child properly? How do expectations about gender and men's and women's roles inside and outside the family factor into those decisions about children? We know that population shifts are intimately and deeply tied to changes in other areas of society, to the social, economic, and political landscapes. These connections move in both directions; population changes can effect social change but as often are themselves affected by other social change. Thus, parents’ decision to have fewer children may come from a woman's decision (or need) to be actively engaged in the labor force and a recognition that her work will not permit raising more than one or two children. On the other hand, if women want only one or two children, and have access to the means to do so – through family planning, for example – that may permit them to develop job skills and allow them to be more involved in the labor force. These kinds of interactions happen at this individual level but also at the societal level. For example, as Japan faces an increasing number of elderly people in its population, there is more focus on how Japan's low fertility has contributed to the challenges facing its aging population, challenges that are felt by individuals, families, and the nation as a whole. Should the government intervene and, if so, how? Government support might involve building new elderly housing and assisted living facilities, which might help to ease the burden on families struggling to care for elderly family members. But another route to changing the country's demographic profile is to make it easier for families (and particularly women) to bear and raise more children. The provision of child care might allow women to balance work and family responsibilities more easily; tax breaks might make children more affordable. In any society, fertility rates are significant at societal, family, and individual levels, with the issues at each level deeply integrated with those at the other levels. Thus, we are mindful of how society and population shape one another in all places. Even population policy is not simply an independent nor a dependent force in any situation. It is intertwined with, and interacts with, a number of other social, economic, and political features of any society.
As is true in all other societies, China's population experience has to be understood as a complex, multi-pieced phenomenon, part of the larger social, economic, and political context. China's population policy has arisen from the Chinese society of the time. In this volume, we will see how the policies that have been so important in Chinese society and, at times, important in how the world views China, are best understood in a particular context. Demographic changes have occurred amidst other widespread social changes (especially the economic changes that have impacted most aspects of Chinese life).
Making sense of China's population requires taking account of several key features. Because of its very large size, whatever changes happen in that single population affects many other societies across the globe. Because of the intricate connections between economy, society, and population, when China's population changes in some way – there are more or fewer people there than there were a decade ago, or there are increasingly large numbers of elderly – those changes not only affect the balance of people and resources in the world, but they can also impact the smallest of the world's economies or even ones that seem only distantly related to China's.
A second feature of China's population history is the speed with which some aspects have changed, and under what conditions. The country has experienced significant changes in mortality, fertility, and in migration, and all of those changes have happened at near-record speed. Particularly fast has been the decline in fertility; we will see that that speed itself has had, and will have, implications beyond the actual change in fertility China has experienced. The speed of mortality decline and migration has also been rapid. That the changes in all of these processes – mortality, migration, and fertility – occurred even while China was still a poor country is also intriguing and worth attention.
The timing and speed of demographic change necessarily brings us to the third important facet of China's population history, the role of the government. As mentioned above, governments are often involved in shaping population, both implicitly and explicitly. But state involvement in China has been very significant and very explicit. Understanding that involvement allows us lessons in these processes and under what conditions governments can step in to shape demographic change; how successful it has been – or not – gives us further insight into these processes. The Chinese state's role in fertility change has garnered the most attention, but the state's role in public health and migration has been equally revealing and influential. At various times, the Chinese state has taken strong stances on issues of health and mortality, and we have often seen statistics on deaths, illnesses, and public health respond immediately. We can also see the state's power in its ability to control movement within China over several decades. But as powerful as the state has been in all demographic processes and changes that have taken place in China over the last several decades, it is certainly not the only player, and migration provides evidence for that: now that people are moving in vast numbers, we can also see how individuals and families use migration to further their own goals.
Thus, this volume will be examining China's population policy as part of Chinese society. For example, to outsiders, these policies can seem heavy handed. Indeed, we will see that there have been times and places when that seems abundantly evident. But when we assess those policies as part of the heavy state involvement in most aspects of social and economic life in China, including some of the most intimate aspects of the lives of its citizens, China's population program can be better understood as part of a particular historical moment and political vision. In addition, there are major differences between social organization in China and most Western countries. In China, most believe that population control is within the purview of the state; this is one of the reasons that's China's population policies are not referred to as “family planning” policies but “birth planning” policies. “Family planning” suggests that families decide about how many children to have and when to have them. But in China, the state has been focused on planning the population of the country, in ways that are similar to how it has planned the economy, and has used birth planning policies to do so. There was generally shared agreement on the state role in China; from that perspective, the birth policies were not a new or foreign way of state interaction in the daily lives of its people, but part of the larger way of how the government operated, one in which the state has worked to shape nearly every aspect of society, economy, and politics. Even so, it does not necessarily follow that there was not disagreement and resistance to the birth planning policies and goals, and recognizing that resistance is also part of the overall picture of population experience in China.
Understanding that the Chinese state leaders believed they needed to plan population growth and movement as they did the economy allows us to see that China's population policies are not simply oppressive policies imposed by a state onto an unresponsive citizenry, though there is a strong narrative along that line within the mass media and some scholarly writings. Rather, population goals and policies arose at a time in the country's history when Chinese leaders were striving to “modernize” the country; the belief in modernization and the desire of China's leaders to become modern were very much part of the development of population policy (Greenhalgh 2010). To Chinese leaders, modernization necessarily included controlling the size, growth, “quality” [suzhi], and movement of population as much as it included the economic reform that has taken place over the last three decades.
Assessing the population situation in China and the role of the state necessitates examining both positive and negative outcomes of demographic change. One of the overarching questions that scholars have asked is how much of the change that occurred can be attributed to state interventions and how much of it would have come about without them? Even the fertility decline, many argue, would have happened (if not as quickly) without the birth planning policy. Answering such questions is complex but allows a pathway into assessing the policies and whether the state needed to be as involved as it was to achieve its goals.
Another way to assess demographic change in China is to look at the unintended consequences of population policies; things did not always turn out as the government planned. The three most significant demographic consequences of state policies that need to be considered are the “missing girls,” the rapid aging of the population, and the recent results of massive migration from rural to urban areas. All were unanticipated and all three are challenges that the state and country face as China looks to the future. Some wonder whether these outcomes reflect mistakes the state has made. But others suggest that these were inevitable results of population change, no matter what the government involvement was, and do not enter into assessment of population policies themselves. At any rate, evaluating population policies must take account of these outcomes as we consider the efficacy of population policy.
In addition to unexpected and unwanted outcomes, resistance to the policies has been widespread, suggesting another route of evaluation of state programs. Outside of China, many have written critically about the Chinese state's role in shaping families. Within China, resistance has been most often at the individual level, as women and their families avoid the birth restrictions in any number of ways, from hiding babies who were born “out of plan” to removing intrauterine devices (IUDs). Even state workers charged with enforcing the policy have resisted, by turning a blind eye to those couples violating policy or by manipulating statistics to hide the true number of births in their village. Resistance to migration restrictions has also been widespread, as individuals and families organize their lives to maneuver around the restrictions and roadblocks the state has put up which some see as keeping them from attaining their goal of living in the city and making a better life for themselves. Looking at these many acts of resistance is another way to assess the policies overall.
China's population and policies have arisen from a particular social, economic, and political landscape, one where there is wider support for state involvement in births and movement than there is in other societies. Even so, the resistance that has followed much state action in population underscores how tensions remain between individual, family, and state regarding population goals. Those tensions have existed for a long time, show themselves in numerous ways, and have actually shaped policy. We will see, for example, how the state relaxed its “one child” restriction in rural areas in 1984 because of the very strong resistance by rural peasants, including the rural workers charged with enforcing the policy. In its restrictions on migration as well, the state has met resistance and responded with some changes in its policies. These events and outcomes remind us that even in a society like China, where the state plays a strong role, the state does not always have the last say on policy development.
A final lesson we can learn from looking at China's population experience is that just as societal changes help to influence population change and policies, so does population change prompt changes in the society. In China, we can watch what it means that so many Chinese children grow up as only children. Or how the huge migration underway in China today influences life for those left in the villages. The interactions of population and other social changes are constant, widespread, and intricate.
When government intervention in population is the end of discussion of population changes, we may miss the similarities between China and other countries and even the similarities between the Chinese state and government influence in population outcomes in other societies. In this volume, we assume that China is much like other societies – in its goals, and even in the role the state plays. As is true for the leaders of other countries, China's leaders want China to be a dominant player on the world stage. They seek protection of its people from what they perceive as dangers – from internal processes such as shortage of resources, and from external forces – and they resist international criticism of how China is governed. As is true of the governments of many other countries, China's has strong modernizing goals that have often organized policies, including population policies.
At the same time, we must also acknowledge the differences that China's population experiences reflect. While family is an important institution in nearly all societies, the role of family in the construction and organization of Chinese society has been even stronger than in others. And the particular family structure – patriarchal, patrilocal, patrilineal – has been a key factor in demographic change and outcomes. In particular, the role, structure, and function of family have implications for the aging of the population and for the way that gender has been a part of recent changes.
The Chinese state has also been more explicitly involved in shaping the population than happens in most societies. As we try to understand the principles behind state involvement, we often see socialist principles that are the basis of the country's founding. But even those principles differ in different historical moments. For example, achieving a modern state while adhering to socialist principles has been a goal of most Chinese leaders since the founding of the People's Republic. But the means employed to achieve that modernity have differed greatly over the decades since its founding. The historical context becomes clearer when we recognize that the rhetoric and interventions that have been part of economic reform since the 1980s would likely be unrecognizable to Chinese leaders of the 1950s or 1960s.
As we examine China's population experience, state intervention, and demographic outcomes, we must remember how these processes were part of a particular society at particular historical moments, within China and across the world. In the next chapters, I take up key demographic changes, exploring how China's experience is both like that of many other countries, and also quite different. I begin with an overview of recent demographic changes (chapter 2) and then begin to examine how the Chinese state sought to control fertility through birth planning policies in chapter 3. Chapter 4 examines mobility and the control of movement and chapter 5 looks at public health and mortality in recent decades and the government's role in the health status of the population. Chapter 6 and 7 look at outcomes of demographic change and population policies, with chapter 6 focused on the role of gender in these processes and chapter 7 examining the effects of such rapid and far-reaching demographic change on family in China. In the last chapter, I look briefly into the future to discuss the challenges that China continues to face, and how it might meet those challenges. Throughout the volume, demographic change and population policy will be set into historical and social context, allowing us to better understand China's recent history from a demographic perspective.