Population Control In China

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How much control is too much? What happens when a government controls the size families? Since the beginning of their civilization, China has been growing rapidly. The growth rate from 1950 until the late 1970’s has grown exponentially, which caused numerous issues. As China’s population grew the food supply became depleted. The rapid growth of China made the government want to enforce population containment. Since 1949, the communist Chinese government has put policies into place that control families, including regulations on late marriage, the spacing of children, and restrictions of family size. On September 25, 1980, the communist party of China declared families to limit their family to one child, or face severe consequences. In January…show more content…
They had lots of propaganda promoting the need for population control. The government created family planning committees that went to each providence and urged the citizens to use their methods to plan a family. Some providences wouldn’t allow men to get married until he was 22 and she was 20. While this worked for a short period of time, it didn’t have the effect the government wanted. In 1970, the government told families to have only two children and urged them to have the children four years apart, which didn’t work well (Lewis,…show more content…
The citizens knew that all policies created by the government were not flexible and ‘absolute’, so they complied to the policy. Also, the citizens of China saw this as an opportunity to be a model for other developing nations and took it as their obligation to show other countries how to control a population. The government continued to use propaganda and the State Family Planning Commission help the citizens follow this policy. Every January was family planning month, where thousands of people from the commission would visit citizens and tell them “the state of China’s population, the trend of its development, and the improvement of living conditions” (Lewis, 241). The Chinese people were happy to help improve and fix the country’s problem and were reminded through billboards, signs, and postage stamps to follow the policy. The State Family Planning Commission encouraged the use of contraceptives and sterilization. The commission would give away free contraceptives and forms of birth control. Every year the commission would have wives fill out a questionnaire and answer questions involving if they use the methods of family planning, what types of methods are used, if the couple wants a child, if the couple wants a second child, etc. If the couple says they want a child, someone from the commission would visit them (Lewis,

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