ABSTRACT
During the 1950s birth planning was entrusted to the health departments, with some token participation of other ministries and mass organizations. Handling it as a Party affair is an invention of the 1960s and the Cultural Revolution period, which replaced organization with indoctrination and left many decisions to the discretion of grass-roots units. With the beginning of the third birth-planning campaign in the early 1970s, the revolutionary committees, followed by Party committees, stepped in to fill the vacuum left by the weakening of central government institutions. Repeated admonitions to the local Party secretaries to take over coordinating tasks became standard fare at that time. Since 1978 they have intensified.
