Science, modernity, and the making of china's one-child policy

摘要

China's one-child-per-couple policy represents an extraordinary attempt to engineer national wealth, power, and global standing by drastically braking population growth. Since its introduction in 1979-80, officials claim, the policy has averted over300 million births, with profound effects on virtually every aspect of Chinese life. Outside China the policy has attracted acute attention from a world surprised by the fall in fertility to subreplacement levels and troubled by the human costs incurredin the process. Yet despite the policy's external notoriety and internal might, its origins remain shrouded in mystery. Where did the idea come from of restricting all the couples in a country of 1 billion to one child? What made such a radical idea thinkable? Such questions have rarely been posed, let alone satisfactorily answered.