ABSTRACT
This chapter compares seven major social and cultural factors that have affected the adoption of population control policies and how implementations of these policies differ in China and India. After a brief discussion of how the two nations have developed differently in history and how the two societies have been affected by external influences, this chapter compares seven social and cultural differences that have influenced population control policies and their implementations in the two nations. These seven factors are as follows: religion and traditional differences, different traditional values related to population, ethnicity and language differences, social class differences, family differences, differences in social status and education of women, and functional differences in the government. These factors closely relate to each other, and together, they have affected not only population control policy but also the functioning of the two countries. Finally, this chapter also discusses how these seven factors have changed in the past century in China and India and how these factors remain fundamental to the Chinese and Indian societies.
