Let us consider the figure of 27,464,000 derived above. The theoretical age of the graduates of the full 6 years of secondary schools is 18. This is almost meaningless in terms of any effort to estimate ages of the population with this level of education. Although certainly many young people complete several years of secondary education while in their teens, it is very common for secondary_level education to be delayed anywhere from a year to 10 or more years. In order to account for those people who delayed their secondary education, the 27,464,000 is increased by 15 percent to 31,596,000. Having made this adjustment it is not unreasonable to assume that on the average, persons completing at least 2 years of secondary education are 20 years of age. These adjustments and assumptions are represented in the following table: Combining and rounding the secondary school graduates into 5-year age groups and estimating the male-female ratio results in the following table: Ages 20 to 24. 25 to 29 30 to 34. 35 to 39. 40 and over. Total. AGE-SEX COMPOSITION OF GRADUATES OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS (2 TO 6 YEARS), 1970 Note: The percentage of females in secondary schools was reported as follows: 1952, 23.5%; 1957, 30.8%; and 1958, 21.3% ("Ten Great Years," Peking 1960). These figures represent a basis for the above estimates. The 40 years and over group is a projection of the reported secondary graduates between 1912 and 1948 ("Chung-kuo Nien-chien" [Chinese Educational Yearbook), Shanghai, 1948). C. PERSONS WITH HIGHER EDUCATION Peking has published more figures on higher education than on any other level, so that relatively speaking these estimates are the most reliable. Anyone with at least 2 years of higher education is included in the figures which follow. As in the case of secondary education, an even larger number of persons embark on higher education after interrupting their schooling, so that a somewhat higher average age-25 to be exact-is assumed for persons completing higher education. Note: Figures for the years 1949 through 1966 are from L. A. Orleans, "Communists China's Education: Policies, Problems, and Prospects," IN: U.S. Joint Economic Committee, "An Economic Profile of Mainland China," Washington, 1967, p. 511. Although for 3 years after 1966 all universities were closed, as a form of "tokenism" it is assumed that a few thousand individuals either managed to do some work or, having had their education interrupted after finishing 2 or more years, may be considered as having completed their studies. It is also possible to make a reasonable argument that the ascending number of graduates between 1967 and 1970 should be reversed. Since the final table combines ages 25 through 29 the argument, although still valid, becomes academic. The following table combines the above figures into 5-year age groups and distributes the totals between males and females. AGE-SEX COMPOSITION OF GRADUATES OF HIGHER EDUCATION (2 OR MORE YEARS), 1970 Note: In the pre-1949 period, females were reported to have constituted 18 percent of the graduates of higher education. tis figure increased to 25 percent in the late 1950's. It is estimated that this trend has continued since then. POPULATION POLICY AND DEMOGRAPHIC PROSPECTS IN THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA By JOHN S. AIRD After 22 years of Communist rule, demographic prospects in the People's Republic of China (PRC) are still in doubt. The future course of fertility and mortality depends on the direction of official policies and on the evolution of those facets of society that affect the vital rates. There can be no certainty in regard to any of these matters. Recent history is the best basis for surmise about the future, but the record is equivocal. The official attitude toward family limitation has been among the least stable aspects of Peking's domestic policy. The specific questions most critical for China's future demographic development are whether or not a sustained program for contraception, sterilization, abortion, and late marriage will be mounted in the cities and throughout the vast countryside, whether economic and social changes supportive of family limitation will take place, and whether administrative intervention can impose family planning on those who will not adopt it voluntarily. Related to these questions are other, more basic questions as to the degree of ideological dogmatism or pragmatism with which future leaders of the PRC will approach population policy and other issues of domestic adminstration, the effectiveness of the administrative system, the continuity of central leadership, and the course of economic development. None of these questions may be answered with certainty. Domestic policies and programs in the PRC have shown considerable variation in the past 22 years. In fact, there is some support for the thesis that political and economic management has followed a cyclical pattern of oscillation between extremes. At times the official position has been doctrinaire; political principles have taken precedence over economic practicalities, and decision-making has been highly centralized. At other times political ideals have been sacrificed to economic necessity and considerable discretionary latitude has been allowed to local authorities to solve practical problems and achieve concrete objectives. To the extent that policy has been cyclical, it has lacked continuity. The discontinuities have undoubtedly rendered central policies less effective than they might otherwise have been and contributed to the tendency of the cadres at all levels to distrust central initiatives and to protect themselves against the hazard of policy instability by the universal bureaucratic tactics of delay, avoidance of personal commitment, superficial compliance without significant action, and deceptive reporting to higher levels. Whether the failure of the local authorities to implement the more extreme central policies has held back the drive for national economic development or has instead saved the central authorities from the consequences of their own bad judgment may be debatable, but the long term, noncyclical EDITOR'S NOTE.-See heading "General Note" on p. 331 for abbreviations used in the footnotes to this paper. Lecline in altruistic idealism among the cadres, who joined the regime vith great enthusiasm in the years immediately after the Communist ictory in 1949, must represent a dissipation of a vital administrative esource that cannot easily be restored. Other evidence suggests that changes in domestic policy in the PRC cannot be fully explained as reactions to swings of the political pendulum. The record does not seem to justify the conclusion often reached prematurely by foreign observers during the waning phases of a period of political extremism that the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) learn from experience and tend toward moderation. Too often an interval of apparent pragmatism has been followed by a new plunge into adventurism. Yet the new extremes have not been mere reversions to former positions. The Party leaders neither abandon their fundamental principles nor implement them in the same form in which they failed in prior trials. Hence, it is necessary to examine the total experience of the wavering family limitation efforts in the PRC before extracting from it whatever meaning it may have for the future. This paper traces the development of family limitation policies in the PRC in relation to population problems, population theories, economic trends, and other aspects of civil administration that seem to have influenced_official decision-making. The record of population policies in the PRC can be subdivided into six fairly discrete periods: (1) from 1949 to September 1954, during which policy on family limitation was strongly negative; (2) from September 1954 to June 1958, during which the regime moved from the first indecisive steps toward support of family limitation into an all-out campaign to lower the birth rate; (3) from June 1958 to January 1962, during which first political euphoria and then economic anxiety held family limitation in abeyance; (4) from January 1962 to June 1966, the span of the second family limitation campaign; (5) from June 1966 to the summer of 1969, when birth control work was interrupted by the "cultural revolution"; and (6) from the summer of 1969 to the present, when family limitation has for the third time become official policy. Particular attention will be addressed to the first family limitation campaign, when press coverage was relatively complete and candid and revealed more clearly than in any other period the determinants of official policy and the conditions that limited its success. After discussing developments. during each of the six periods, the implications of these developments for demographic prospects during the next two decades will be assessed and represented quantitatively in alternate model population projections. I. THE PERIOD OF DOCTRINAIRE MARXISM: 1949 to 1954 When Mao Tse-tung and his associates established their new regime in the fall of 1949, they at first assumed a posture of boundless confidence on the population question. Ostensibly, they accepted the promises of Marxism at face value, but it is doubtful whether the Party Central Committee took as simplistic a view of the relationship of ideology to actuality as the official position might imply. There is little doubt that the Party leaders believed in the ultimate wisdom of their Marxist precepts, yet they also recognized the need to adapt Marxism to the specific circumstances of China. In fact, the adaptation of Marxism, a product of Western industrial societies, to an Asian peasant society is the basis of Mao's claim to a place in the Marxist hagiology. In reinterpreting Marxism in the light of conditions in China, the Party leaders introduced an option of flexibility which they have sometimes exercised with considerable freedom without openly departing from Marxist premises. The degree of conformity had to be sufficient to convince the Party functionaries down in the ranks, if not the people as a whole, that official policies remained faithful to the spirit and essence of Marxist theory, and that compliance was therefore right and proper, or at least unavoidable. While it was not necessary that the Party leaders have as simplistic a trust in ideology as the lower echelon cadres, the leaders could not afford to abandon altogether their belief in the theoretical rational which legitimized their authority, justified whatever exercise of power was necessary to impose their will, and confirmed their confidence that the tide of history was running in their favor. Thus, the Party leaders were neither the slaves nor the masters of ideology in any absolute sense. Unfortunately, the mandate of Marxism on the subject of population was not every explicit except in the negative. Marx denounced Malthus in scathing terms. The explanation of overpopulation in Malthusian theory was contrived, according to Marx, to justify the use by capitalist societies of induced unemployment as a means of exploiting the workers. However, in socialist society, which placed the means of production in the hands of the workers, such manipulation would not occur, and hence there would be no unemployment and no surplus population. Marx held that overpopulation was never "absolute" (resulting from demographic or economic necessity) but only "relative" (derivative of the pattern of social and economic organization). Hence each type of society had its own peculiar "law of population." The particulars of the socialist law of population were never elaborated. Marxists believed that state ownership would inspire the workers to such hitherto unknown levels of productivity and inventiveness that economic adversity, including population problems, would soon be banished forever. If ever a socialist society should face such problems, Engels said, it could more easily solve them than could any other kind of society. Lenin added, however, that the fact that the masses had no use for Malthusianism did not in any way prevent a socialist society from repealing laws against abortion and contraception. The confidence of these declarations was warming but their vagueness and equivocation made it difficult to ascertain on what logical basis the confidence rested. The Initial Posture: Unqualified optimism The Chinese Communist leaders interpreted the Marxist precepts to mean that China's abundant population was an asset to economic development, which could be accomplished without the need for large capital investment. Full mobilization of China's human resources, they expected, would speedily raise the country to the status of a first-class power. China's perennial population problems were the heritage of indigenous Chinese "feudalism" and foreign capitalist exploitation. Under the leadership of the CCP, the politically awakened masses would soon change all these things. |