ABSTRACT
The smooth figures of population projections for China disguise the huge implementation problems of Chinese birth control documented in this study. International family-planning circles tend to celebrate the fall of Chinese fertility levels that in recent years has contributed to a major downward revision of world population forecasts by the United Nations. This outlook differs from the views of many Chinese politicians, who worry about the stability of low fertility. Instead of falling after the turn of the century, the population will outgrow the originally defined ceiling of 1.2 billion, so that by 2050 more than double the size of the often proclaimed optimum figure of 700 million will be reached. More than 300 million births averted by birth control will then be matched by more than 300 million people in excess of the original plan. Seen from this perspective, Chinese birth control may be equally termed a huge success and a gigantic failure. This would apply not only to the twists and turns in the first three decades of the People’s Republic but also to the original, ambitious targets of the one-child policy. While they underestimated the internal dynamics of population growth and the social resistance to radical birth rationing, they overestimated state power.
