China - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 270

This policy shifted in 1955 when the Communist Party announced that
“reproduction be appropriately restricted.” The purposes were to improve
maternal health and provide for education. The effort was ineffective
because of lack of contraceptives and squeamishness of the party cadres
to discuss sexual behavior. As the Communists consolidated power,
however, population control seemed a more appropriate function of the
government. Over a million people were resettled in Inner Mongolia
and the northern and western frontiers in order both to strengthen their
defense against the Soviet Union and to relieve crowding in the east. The
growth of the cities was getting out of control. In 3 years, 840,000 people
moved into Shanghai. In 1957 Mao Zedong announced a 10-year program
for family planning. 11 Almost at once, the policy got lost with Mao's Great
Leap Forward. According to official propaganda, agricultural and indus-
trial productivity would solve the problem of poverty. At the same time,
China still felt threatened militarily. The Soviets withdrew their friend-
ship and ended economic aid. Tibet began an armed revolt, border warfare
began with India, and the Nationalists seemed to threaten an invasion.
The Chinese leaders feared that the United States and the Soviet Union
would begin a suicidal nuclear war. A larger population seemed to offer at
least some protection.
By 1963 the birth control program was back on track. The Great Leap
Forward proved a great disaster, an estimated 30 million died, and the
military threats passed. Food was scarce, and deaths exceeded births
in at least one year. From 1966 to 1969, China suffered another convul-
sion of Communist direction with its Cultural Revolution. Mao Zedong
decided that the country had lost its Marxist zeal and had fallen into bour-
geois error. One remedy was to order professional cadres from the cities
to move to rural areas where they could be reeducated. This was also a
way to remove Red Guards, often out of control, from the cities. Millions
were sent to the countryside. Part of the rejection of urban expertise was
to create thousands of “barefoot doctors,” who were supposed to care for
the medical ailments in spite of having few professional qualifications.
While overall the Cultural Revolution was another disaster, it did expose
the urban experts to the poverty and backwardness of the countryside.
Moreover, the barefoot doctors were ideal for the low-level medical func-
tions of running a birth control program.
China's return to normalcy after the Cultural Revolution saw renewed
concern about population size. It no longer seemed so vulnerable mili-
tarily, and its growth rate was an astounding 2.5% a year. The Fourth