ABSTRACT
Clearly one of the key factors in China's modernization is the success or failure of its extraordinary Family Planning Program. With one quarter of the world's population, 80 percent of whom are rural peasants, the need to control the rate of population growth is among the most urgent in the nation. All third-world countries have some fertility-limiting policy although Asia leads the current movements, being more rigorous in its family planning efforts than Africa or Latin America. This is a reflection of the enormous ecological pressures in Asia which is more densely populated than other parts of the world. Two suburban communes, one near Canton and one near Shanghai provided the most dramatic example of the differences the study group found. The Shin Hua Commune in suburban Canton and the MaLu Commune in suburban Shanghai took basically different approaches to implementing the family planning program.
