ABSTRACT
One quarter of the human race lives in mainland China, and what happens to these people in the several decades immediately ahead directly or indirectly affect most of the rest of the world. Mainland China is presently "modernizing" economically, and main thrust of Western analyses of this phenomenon is that mainland China is taking positive strides, making accomplishments, and rising toward the status of a "middle-level developed country." Many of the more hopeful estimates of the chances of mainland China's reform effort have rested on population projections which have proven to be woefully inaccurate. Mainland China's population remains overwhelmingly rural. Rapid population growth during several decades prior to the 1970s is principal reason for mainland China's labor surplus. The major policy selected by mainland China's leaders for limiting population growth is the single-child family policy. Economic growth in mainland China, however, has thus far been pursued and attained without very much economic modernization or what some would term "economic development.".
