Chinese county reins in birth-rate – without a one-child limit
Yicheng's birthrate is lower than China's national average, but without the unpopular population-control policy in place.
from the February 27, 2007 edition
Page 4 of 4
"Much of the decline in fertility can be traced to social and economic change," says Henry Winckler, a demographer at Columbia University in New York. "Probably relatively little ... resulted from making the small family mandatory and from using heavy-handed techniques to enforce it."
Liang, an outspoken critic of the policy, agrees. "[It] is like tilting at windmills," he scoffs. "If the policy Yicheng adopted was successful there, it could have been successfully adopted anywhere else in China."
Top officials at the National Population and Family Planning Commission dispute that. "Experiments are only experiments." points out Dr. Yu. "We dare not make a conclusion that the success" of Yicheng's policy "can represent other experiences."
Yu doubts that the enthusiasm with which Yicheng's leadership applied the policy – ensuring no third births and enforcing birth spacing – could be matched nationally.
In Yicheng, experts express disappointment at the government's failure to extend their policy elsewhere in China. One senior local official, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue, suggested that Beijing "is worried by population pressures and doesn't want to make any mistakes. They are very cautious."
Liang is blunter. "The leaders who make decisions don't understand the nuances of the Yicheng policy and don't want to learn about them," he complains.
Behind the reluctance, suggests Susan Greenhalgh, an expert on China's birth-control policy at the University of California, Irvine, lie wider considerations. The one-child policy is too deeply embedded in the post-Mao political consensus, she believes. "Advocating change of this ... involves political risks that, so far, no national political leader – or not enough of them – feel in a position to take."
Yicheng's time may now have come, however. Officials say the one-child policy will be maintained until 2010, but it is clear that they are studying alternatives.
"Now that the fertility rate is low, the government has expressed interest in researching directions for future adjustments in family-planning policy," says Yu. "Yicheng's experience should provide a good reference point for us."
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