Population Control and State Coercion in China

Abstract

To observers of contemporary China, few Chinese policies are as controversial as its population control policy. Critics term the policy practice “Orwellian” and “Gestapo-like” and focus on its toll on human rights (Mosher, 1983; Aird, 1990; and Carter, 1998). In contrast, those impressed by China's success in taming its fertility trends – mostly academic researchers – stress the need to make allowances for China's overwhelming demographic challenges in evaluating the population control policy. However, even sympathetic observers view the policy as a necessary evil and would distance themselves from some of the practices that have occurred under the rubric of population control. Indeed, in a cruel historical twist, whereas the post-Mao economic reforms have expanded the freedom of production in China, the implementation of a stringent birth control policy has severely limited the freedom of reproduction that the Chinese people had enjoyed for centuries. Thus, greater economic freedom has gone hand in hand with less personal freedom to control one's own body. In this paper we use both qualitative and quantitative data to examine how the post-Mao Chinese state has maintained the draconian birth control policy in an era of economic liberalization. First, we provide a narrative of the birth control policy's evolution. Then we discuss the issue of state capacity in implementing birth control' with emphasis on the government's efforts at institutional building and mobilization. Next we offer an analysis of the patterns of state coercion in population control.

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