ABSTRACT
This chapter details population control policies and their implementations in China. Specifically, it describes five population control policy periods: the limiting family planning period between 1949 and 1953, the fluctuating policy period between 1954 and 1970, the voluntary but effective family planning period between 1971 and 1979, the one-birth-per-couple policy period between 1980 and 2015, and the relaxing policy period since 2016. This chapter describes how China’s population control policies have changed from prohibiting birth control in the early 1950s to a restrictive one-birth-per-couple policy in the 1980s. Then, it describes how China’s policies changed again to a two-children-per-couple policy in 2016 and a three-children-per-couple policy in 2021. It also discusses how Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Xi Jinping have influenced these policies differently. With detailed population data between 1949 and 2020, the chapter analyzes how the different policies affected China’s population growth and socioeconomic development. Finally, the chapter evaluates the population control policies and their implementations in China.
