ABSTRACT
Condemnation of birth control as a reactionary policy and an anti-Chinese, imperialist plot characterized the first years of the People’s Republic. After tumultuous decades of war and revolution, the nation celebrated large birth numbers as a sign of recovery. China’s first modern census of July 1953 seems to have lent renewed legitimacy to the anti-natalist position and triggered Chinese birth-control efforts. In fact, census work continued well into 1954, and official results were delayed until November of that year. The final result of more than 580 million people surpassed the number that had been expected on the basis of estimates from the 1930s and 1940s by approximately 70 million. 1 Provisional numbers from five provinces and sobering internal projections of a population total of 800 million for 1967 were already available in autumn 1953.
