Planning and evaluation

Since 1971, population targets have been incorporated into the five-year plan and the annual plans. In the following years the practice was widened to include population plans for all lower-levels units from the provinces to the counties. This ushered in a veritable mass movement for drawing up local population plans in 1972 and 1973. However, as no reliable population data were available at the time, the plans were strong on ideological propaganda and political mobilization but largely devoid of precise targets and concrete projections. At most, they could employ approximate figures for births and natural increase and some numbers for contraceptive supplies. ¹ The increasing complexities of the one-child policy, the census of 1982 and the renewed emphasis on scientific planning quickly made the earlier procedures obsolete. They were replaced by a new concept of state-controlled fertility decline that all too clearly betrayed its design by engineers working within a framework of a command economy.