ABSTRACT
The most oft-quoted statement on the Chinese population question is Chairman Mao Zedong's pronouncement on September 16, 1949: It is a very good thing that China has a big population. The highest governmental unit for family planning work in China is the State Council's Planned Birth Staff Office which came into existence in the mid-1960s. In Chi Lung's words, Population increase in a planned way is China's established policy. Huang Shu-tse termed China's policy as "the planned regulation of the rate of population growth." One noteworthy point is the linkage of planned population growth to the issue of accumulation and consumption. Family planning, as it is conventionally understood in the West, refers to the desire and decision of individual couples to limit and space childbirths according to personal circumstances. The making of a population plan and its implementation are very different from the planning of family size at the level of the individual couple.
