ABSTRACT
Like the great majority of other policy arenas, Chinese birth control has been overshadowed by the personal beliefs and interventions of Mao Zedong during the first three decades of the People’s Republic. In September 1949, on the eve of the founding of the new state, Mao declared:
Each time the Chinese overthrew a feudal dynasty it was because of the oppression and exploitation of the people by the feudal dynasty, and not because of any overpopulation.… It is a very good thing that China has a big population. Even if China’s population multiplies many times, she is fully capable of finding a solution; the solution is production. The absurd argument of Western bourgeois economists like Malthus that increases in food cannot keep pace with increases in population was not only thoroughly refuted in theory by Marxists long ago but has also been completely exploded by the realities in the Soviet Union and the Liberated Areas of China after their liberation.… Revolution plus production can solve the problem of feeding the population. 1
