Making love "legible" in China: Politics and society during the enforcement of civil marriage registration, 1950-66

Politics and Society

Volumn 29, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 447-480

  Diamant, Neil J ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0035614150     PISSN: 00323292     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0032329201029003006     Document Type: Article

References (160)

1. Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); Charles Tilly, "State-Making as Organized Crime," in Peter Evans, Dietrich Reusche'meyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back in (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Margaret Levi, Of Rule and Revenue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
2. Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); Charles Tilly, "State-Making as Organized Crime," in Peter Evans, Dietrich Reusche'meyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back in (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Margaret Levi, Of Rule and Revenue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
3. Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); Charles Tilly, "State-Making as Organized Crime," in Peter Evans, Dietrich Reusche'meyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back in (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Margaret Levi, Of Rule and Revenue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
4. According to Mann, "infrastructural" power refers to the "institutional capacity of a central state, despotic or not, to penetrate its territories and logistically implement decisions." Despotic power, by contrast, refers to the "distributive power of state elites over civil society," which is largely coercive. Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, vol. II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 54-75.
5. James Traer, Marriage and the Family in Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980), 81-82.
6. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 2-3.
7. James Hammick, The Marriage Law of England (London: Shaw and Sons, 1873), 220-21, 238. William III admitted that "Acts were passed to enforce a registry of marriages, births, and burials as a source of revenue for the state."
8. W. Cunningham Glen and Alexander Glen, The Law Relating to the Registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages in England, and the Duties of the Registration Offices and the Marriage of Dissenters (London: Knight, 1875), 21, 43.
9. M. J. Cullen, "The Making of the Civil Registration Act of 1836," Journal of Ecclesiastic History 25, no. 1 (January 1974): 39.
10. Ibid., 54-56.
11. W. Muller-Freienfels, "Soviet Family Law and Comparative Chinese Developments," in David Buxbaum, ed., Chinese Family Law and Social Change in Historical and Comparative Perspective (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978).
12. Roderick Philips, Family Breakdown in Late 18th Century France: Divorces in Rouen, 1792-1803 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1980).
13. H. Kent Geiger, The Family in Soviet Russia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968).
14. An exhaustive search of the social science and historical literature uncovered only one article dealing with marriage registration in the context of state building: Deborah Posel's "State, Power, and Gender: Conflict over the Registration of African Customary Marriage in South Africa, 1910-1970," The Journal of Historical Sociology 8, no. 3 (September 1995): 223-56.
15. National Center for Health Statistics, Marriage and Divorce Registration in the United States (Washington, DC: US Department of Health, Education, and Wefare, 1966), 1; United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Handbook on Marriage Registration (Washington, DC: National Center for Heath Statistics, 1972), 3.
16. National Center for Health Statistics, Marriage and Divorce Registration in the United States (Washington, DC: US Department of Health, Education, and Wefare, 1966), 1; United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Handbook on Marriage Registration (Washington, DC: National Center for Heath Statistics, 1972), 3.
17. Ralph Crozier, Traditional Medicine in Modem China: Science, Nationalism and the Tensions of Cultural Change (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968); David Strand, Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).
18. Ralph Crozier, Traditional Medicine in Modem China: Science, Nationalism and the Tensions of Cultural Change (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968); David Strand, Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).
19. Neil J. Diamant, "China's 'Great Confinement'?: Missionaries, Municipal Elites and Police in the Establishment of Chinese Mental Hospitals, 1897-1937," Republican China 19, no. 1 (November 1993): 3-50; C. M. Ch'iao, Warren S. Thompson, and D. T. Chen, An Experiment in the Registration of Vital Statistics in China (Oxford, OH: Scripps Foundation, 1937), 6.
20. Neil J. Diamant, "China's 'Great Confinement'?: Missionaries, Municipal Elites and Police in the Establishment of Chinese Mental Hospitals, 1897-1937," Republican China 19, no. 1 (November 1993): 3-50; C. M. Ch'iao, Warren S. Thompson, and D. T. Chen, An Experiment in the Registration of Vital Statistics in China (Oxford, OH: Scripps Foundation, 1937), 6.
21. Susan Brownell, Training the Body for China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People's Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
22. M. J. Meijer, Marriage Law and Policy in the Chinese People's Republic (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1971), 179.
23. This article does not deal with the success or failure of these aspects of the People's Republic of China marriage reform, only marriage registration. Readers interested in the impact of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) liberalization of divorce requirements are invited to read my "Reexamining the Impact of the PRC's 1950 Marriage Law: State Improvisation and Local Initiative," The China Quarterly, no. 161 (March 2000): 171-98.
24. Meijer, 179.
25. Nanfang Ribao, 13 February 1952.
26. On marriage as a method for upward mobility during the Qing (Ch'ing) period (1644-1911) see Susan Mann, "Grooming a Daughter for Marriage: Brides and Wives in the Mid-Ch'ing Period," in Rubie S. Watson and Patricia B. Ebrey, eds., Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 204. On women's marriage preferences (wealth, political clout) see Elizabeth Croll, The Politics of Marriage in Contemporary China (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 86-97.
27. On marriage as a method for upward mobility during the Qing (Ch'ing) period (1644-1911) see Susan Mann, "Grooming a Daughter for Marriage: Brides and Wives in the Mid-Ch'ing Period," in Rubie S. Watson and Patricia B. Ebrey, eds., Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 204. On women's marriage preferences (wealth, political clout) see Elizabeth Croll, The Politics of Marriage in Contemporary China (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 86-97.
28. Liu Binyan, A Higher Kind of Loyalty (New York: Pantheon, 1990), 61; Tiejun Cheng and Mark Selden, "The Origins and Social Consequences of China's Hukou System," The China Quarterly, no. 139 (September 1994): 644-68.
29. Liu Binyan, A Higher Kind of Loyalty (New York: Pantheon, 1990), 61; Tiejun Cheng and Mark Selden, "The Origins and Social Consequences of China's Hukou System," The China Quarterly, no. 139 (September 1994): 644-68.
30. On the success of the household registration system in the 1950s and 1960s and its role in the reform period, see Hein Mallee, "Migration, Hukou, and Resistance in Reform China," in Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden, eds., Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance (London: Routledge, 2000), 83-88; Cheng and Selden, "The Origins and Consequences"; Kam Wing Chan and Li Zhang, °The Hukou System and Rural-Urban Migration in China: Processes and Changes,° The China Quarterly, no. 160 (December 1999), 818-55.
31. On the success of the household registration system in the 1950s and 1960s and its role in the reform period, see Hein Mallee, "Migration, Hukou, and Resistance in Reform China," in Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden, eds., Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance (London: Routledge, 2000), 83-88; Cheng and Selden, "The Origins and Consequences"; Kam Wing Chan and Li Zhang, °The Hukou System and Rural-Urban Migration in China: Processes and Changes,° The China Quarterly, no. 160 (December 1999), 818-55.
32. On the success of the household registration system in the 1950s and 1960s and its role in the reform period, see Hein Mallee, "Migration, Hukou, and Resistance in Reform China," in Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden, eds., Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance (London: Routledge, 2000), 83-88; Cheng and Selden, "The Origins and Consequences"; Kam Wing Chan and Li Zhang, °The Hukou System and Rural-Urban Migration in China: Processes and Changes,° The China Quarterly, no. 160 (December 1999), 818-55.
33. Liu Binyan, "Jiang Zemin's 'Stressing Politics,'" China Focus 4, no. 4 (April 1996): 1.
34. Jianying Zha, China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids, and Bestsellers are Transforming a Culture (New York: New Press, 1995), 139.
35. Unfortunately, there is no reliable statistical evidence on compliance with marriage registration in rural China. As will be shown in the following paragraphs, registrars were often remiss about collecting such data, and petitioners for marriage and divorce frequently misreported their own situation to them. My arguments are based more upon qualitative material such as complaints about administrative behavior, confessions, and the like indicators in intraparty reports than on statistics. For a recent study on the limits of statistical reporting and analysis in rural China, see Yongshun Cai, "Between State and Peasant: Local Cadres and Statistical Reporting in Rural China," The China Quarterly, no. 163 (September 2000), 783-805. In his account, he cites one exasperated statistician who said, "I am the person to suffer if I stick to the Statistical Law, but neither the person who tells me to stick to the Statistical Law nor the person who violates the Law suffers" (p. 796, n. 55).
36. In assessing state-society relations and the exercise of state power in China through the prism of marriage registration, I am relying primarily on newly opened archival sources in the PRC. Such documents are intended primarily for internal reference and thus undergo far less censorship and editing than articles that reach the public press. Although they are not without some drawbacks, they are, at least as this stage, the best material available regarding the internal workings of the registration bureaucracy.
37. Joseph W. Esherick, "Deconstructing the Construction of the Party-State: Gulin County in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region," The China Quarterly, no. 140 (December 1994): 1053.
38. Joel Migdal, "The State in Society: An Approach to Struggles for Domination," in Joel Migdal, Atul Kohli, and Vivienne Shue, eds., State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
39. Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg, Policy Making in China: Leaders, Structures and Processes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), chap. 2
40. Shanghai Municipal Archives (SMA) B168-1-824, 5.
41. Dongcheng District Archives (Beijing) (DCA) 11-7-224, 5.
42. DCA 11-7-100,1.
43. SMA B168-1-815, 68, 80; SMA B168-1-792, 7; SMA B168-1-793, 9.
44. SMA 8168-1-815, 56.
45. SMA B168-1-824, 3-4.
46. Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture Archives (Yunnan Province) (CXA) 11-36-14B-1, 84-85.
47. Chen Yung-fa, Yenan ti yinying (Nankang, T'aipei: Chungyang yenchiuyüan chintaishih yenchiusuo, 1990).
48. Beijing Municipal Archives (BMA) 84-3-21, 7; emphasis mine.
49. DCA 11-7-211, 2.
50. BMA 84-3-21, 7.
51. DCA 1-1-194, 11-13.
52. SMA B168-1-815, 78.
53. Ibid., 78, 82.
54. Jiangsu Provincial Archives (JPA) 35, 28.
55. CXA 11-97-14B-1, 63.
56. SMA B168-1-792, n.p.
57. CXA 16-27-A1, 26.
58. BMA 84-3-28, 8.
59. SMA E81-2-120, 103.
60. CXA 11-36-148-1, 84.
61. SMA B168-1-815, 56, 68, 80; SMA B168-1-792, 7.
62. Shanxi sheng minzheng ting, "Lihun dengji gongzuo jiaoxiang shiban jianhou," Neiwu bu tongxun, no. 3 (1957): 18.
63. BMA 84-3-28, 6-7; in North China see Shanxi sheng, "Lihun dengji," 19.
64. DCA 11-7-224, 4; DCA 11-7-102, 17.
65. CXA 11-97-14B-1, 64.
66. Shanxi sheng, 19.
67. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985).
68. Yue Daiyun, Intellectuals in Chinese Fiction (Berkeley: Institute for East Asian Studies, 1985), 110; Liu Binyan, A Higher Kind of Loyalty, 61.
69. Yue Daiyun, Intellectuals in Chinese Fiction (Berkeley: Institute for East Asian Studies, 1985), 110; Liu Binyan, A Higher Kind of Loyalty, 61.
70. See, for instance, John Gardner, "The Wu-fan Campaign in Shanghai: A Study of the Consolidation of Urban Control," in A. Doak Barnett, ed., Chinese Communist Politics in Action (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969).
71. Bureau of Investigation Archives, no. 589.8026 (Taibei), 2-3.
72. DCA 11-7-3, 50.
73. Cited in C. K. Yang, The Chinese Family in the Communist Revolution (Cambridge: Technology Press, 1959), 36-37.
74. DCA 11-7-224, 4.
75. Michel Foucault, of course, noted the connection between power and individual bodies in Discipline and Punish. He notes that "the classical age discovered the body as object and target of power." See Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1979), 136.
76. Brownell, Training the Body, 56-62.
77. SMA 6168-1-815, 78.
78. DCA 11-7-224, 25.
79. CXA 16-12-61, 56.
80. CXA 16-15-B1, 21.
81. JPA 35, 30.
82. Yunnan Provincial Archives (YNA) 89-1-55, 45.
83. JPA 35, 30.
84. Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Emergence of Japanese Industrial Policy, 1925-1975 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982); Peter Evans, "The State as Problem and Solution: Predation, Embedded Autonomy and Structural Change," in Stephen Haggard and Robert Kaufmann, eds., The Politics of Economic Adjustment: International Constraints, Distributional Conflicts and the State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992).
85. Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Emergence of Japanese Industrial Policy, 1925-1975 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982); Peter Evans, "The State as Problem and Solution: Predation, Embedded Autonomy and Structural Change," in Stephen Haggard and Robert Kaufmann, eds., The Politics of Economic Adjustment: International Constraints, Distributional Conflicts and the State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992).
86. SMA A71-2-1864, 4, 6.
87. Xuhui Archives (Shanghai) (XHA), 1951, 48.
88. SMA C32-1-369, 58.
89. JPA 35, 32.
90. SMA 8168-1-815, 56.
91. DCA 11-7-224, 26.
92. SMA C31-2-979, 87.
93. YNA 89-1-82, 40.
94. DCA 11-7-224, 26.
95. CXA 16-12-B1, 55.
96. YNA 89-1-82, 40.
97. Mindie Lazarus-Black and Susan F. Hirsch, eds., Contested States: Law. Hegemany and Resistance (New York: Routledge, 1994), 10.
98. SMA C1-2-1154, 123.
99. Neil J. Diamant, Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949-1968 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), chaps. 2, 5.
100. BMA 84-5-15, 97.
101. Sulamith Heins Potter and Jack Potter, China's Peasants: The Anthropology of a Revolution (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 182-83.
102. JPA 35, 30.
103. Ibid., 28.
104. Ibid., 30.
105. SMA C31-2-469, 72-73.
106. CXA 16-75-B1 (1963), 73; CXA 16-77-B1 (1963), 43.
107. Ibid.
108. Karl Marx, "The German Ideology," in Robert Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, 2d ed. (New York: Norton, 1978), 160.
109. See "The Soul of Man under Socialism," in Hesketh Pearson ed., Essays by Oscar Wilde (London: Methuen, 1950), 233.
110. On this point see Shaoguang Wang, "The Politics of Private Time: Changing Leisure Patterns in Urban China," in Deborah Davis, Richard Kraus, Barry Naughton, and Elizabeth Perry, eds., Urban Spaces in Contemporary China: The Potential for Autonomy and Community in Post-Mao China (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1995), 150.
111. Ibid., 152.
112. Ibid., 153-54.
113. See E. P. Thompson, "Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism," Past and Present 38 (1967): 56-97.
114. In the 1920s and 1930s, many Chinese cities developed districts and streets that were known nationwide for their entertainment establishments. Peasants who flocked to cities in search of work were often amazed at the variety of things to do, although for many the costs of cinema, dancing, and the like were out of reach. Sophisticated urbanites who were able to patronize these places referred to peasants as "country bumpkins" (tu baozi). On these developments in cities, see Joseph W. Esherick, "Modernity and Nation in the Chinese City," in Joseph W. Esherick, ed., Remaking the Chinese City: Modernity and Identity, 1900-1950 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000), 10-11.
115. Hsiao-tung Fei and Chih-I Chang, Earthbound China: A Study of Rural Economy in Yunnan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), 40-43.
116. SMA C31-2-228, 45.
117. SMA C1-2-1443. 17.
118. BMA 84-3-30 (1955), 24.
119. SMA C31-2-228, 46.
120. DCA 6-1-36, 10.
121. SMA C31-2-369 (1955), 13-4; DCA 11-7-10 (1954), 14.
122. SMA C31-2-368 (1956), 9.
123. Potter and Potter, China's Peasants, 57, 55; Croll, Politics of Marriage in Contemporary China, 89-92; William L. Parish and Martin King Whyte, Village and Family in Contemporary China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 179.
124. Potter and Potter, China's Peasants, 57, 55; Croll, Politics of Marriage in Contemporary China, 89-92; William L. Parish and Martin King Whyte, Village and Family in Contemporary China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 179.
125. Potter and Potter, China's Peasants, 57, 55; Croll, Politics of Marriage in Contemporary China, 89-92; William L. Parish and Martin King Whyte, Village and Family in Contemporary China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 179.
126. BMA 84-3-28 (1954), 34.
127. DCA 11-7-212, (1954), 29.
128. SMA C31-2-417, (1955), 10-11.
129. "Quanguo fulian huiyi jilu," JPA, 1956.
130. On this campaign, see Thomas P. Bernstein, Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages: The Transfer of Youth from Urban to Rural China (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977).
131. "Bufen zhigong huixiang hou fasheng hunyin jiating jiufen he zisha shijian," (Incidents of suicide and marriage disputes occurring after workers return to the countryside), Funü qingkuang fanying, no. 7 (December 1963): 1-3.
132. BMA 84-3-30 (January 1955), 24.
133. "Guanyu hunyin wenti de qingkuang fanying," (Marriage Problems) Funü Qingkuang Fanying, (August 1965), CXA 16-85-B1, 36; CXA 16-77-B1 (1963), 57; For Jiangsu see JPA 1898 (1965), 14.
134. "Guanyu hunyin wenti de qingkuang fanying," (Marriage Problems) Funü Qingkuang Fanying, (August 1965), CXA 16-85-B1, 36; CXA 16-77-B1 (1963), 57; For Jiangsu see JPA 1898 (1965), 14.
135. CXA 16-82-B1, (1964), 57.
136. CXA 16-75-B1 (1963), 87.
137. Croll, Politics of Marriage, 42.
138. SMA C31-2-417 (1955), 9.
139. BMA 84-3-30 (1955), 24; DCA 11-7-212, 27.
140. SMA C31-2-417, (1956), 42.
141. DCA 11-7-212, (1954), 27.
142. SMA 84-3-28 (1954), 20.
143. Ibid.
144. Ibid.
145. SMA C31-2-228, (1954), 46.
146. SMA C1-2-611 (1951), 3.
147. BMA 84-3-28 (1954), 45-46.
148. QPA 48-2-59, 81.
149. CXA 16-12-B (1954), 55. Such assertions were made without offering statistical evidence to support them. Extremely few rural Chinese officials had any sort of statistical training, and collecting this sort of information was definitely not a priority.
150. JPA 35 (1956), 29-30.
151. Fei Yuke, "Luetan chuli nongcun diqu hunyin wenti de tihui," Zhengfa Xuexi 5-6, (1958): 57.
152. My emphasis on the need to disaggregate the state and to look at how different parts of it interact with social forces is not particularly novel. For other examples see Joel Migdal, "Introduction," in Migdal, Kohli and Shue, State Power and Social Forces; Kevin O'Brien and Li Lianjiang, "The Politics of Lodging Complaints in Rural China," The China Quarterly, no. 143 (September 1995): 782; Kevin O'Brien, "Rightful Resistance," World Politics 49, no. 1 (October 1996): 31-33. Elizabeth J. Perry, "Trends in the Study of Chinese Politics: State-Society Relations," The China Quarterly, no. 139 (September 1994), 704-13.
153. My emphasis on the need to disaggregate the state and to look at how different parts of it interact with social forces is not particularly novel. For other examples see Joel Migdal, "Introduction," in Migdal, Kohli and Shue, State Power and Social Forces; Kevin O'Brien and Li Lianjiang, "The Politics of Lodging Complaints in Rural China," The China Quarterly, no. 143 (September 1995): 782; Kevin O'Brien, "Rightful Resistance," World Politics 49, no. 1 (October 1996): 31-33. Elizabeth J. Perry, "Trends in the Study of Chinese Politics: State-Society Relations," The China Quarterly, no. 139 (September 1994), 704-13.
154. My emphasis on the need to disaggregate the state and to look at how different parts of it interact with social forces is not particularly novel. For other examples see Joel Migdal, "Introduction," in Migdal, Kohli and Shue, State Power and Social Forces; Kevin O'Brien and Li Lianjiang, "The Politics of Lodging Complaints in Rural China," The China Quarterly, no. 143 (September 1995): 782; Kevin O'Brien, "Rightful Resistance," World Politics 49, no. 1 (October 1996): 31-33. Elizabeth J. Perry, "Trends in the Study of Chinese Politics: State-Society Relations," The China Quarterly, no. 139 (September 1994), 704-13.
155. My emphasis on the need to disaggregate the state and to look at how different parts of it interact with social forces is not particularly novel. For other examples see Joel Migdal, "Introduction," in Migdal, Kohli and Shue, State Power and Social Forces; Kevin O'Brien and Li Lianjiang, "The Politics of Lodging Complaints in Rural China," The China Quarterly, no. 143 (September 1995): 782; Kevin O'Brien, "Rightful Resistance," World Politics 49, no. 1 (October 1996): 31-33. Elizabeth J. Perry, "Trends in the Study of Chinese Politics: State-Society Relations," The China Quarterly, no. 139 (September 1994), 704-13.
156. Although it might be tempting to trace the origins of the one-child-per-family policy to this societal resistance in the 1950s, there is very little evidence for it. The origins of the policy are far more prosaic: in the early 1950s Mao Zedong encouraged Chinese to have large families to strengthen the Chinese nation and this resulted in a large "baby boom." It was only in the early 1960s that the state made a half-hearted effort to reduce the population, but this was interrupted by the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Only when Mao died and the post-Mao leadership consolidated its power could the state return to what it had started two decades earlier.
157. The national fertility rate is 1.8 children per woman but this includes hundreds of millions of women in cities who have one child. In cities, it should be noted, the "success" of the one-child-per-family policy in limiting birth rates is in large part due to the fact that urban families often prefer to have small families in any case, owing to cramped living space, two career families, and the high cost of living. As Tyrene White notes, "Even in the absence of China's one-child policy, surveys suggest that most couples would prefer no more than two or three children, while many would continue to have only one, particularly in urban areas." See Tyrene White, "Domination, Resistance, and Accommodation in China's One-Child Campaign," in Perry and Selden, eds., Chinese Society, 117, n. 1.
158. White, 105-6.
159. Ibid., 108-9.
160. Ibid., 107.