Adaptation of a political bureaucracy to economic and institutional change under socialism: The Chinese state family planning system

Politics and Society

Volumn 32, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 231-256

  Merli, M Giovanna ^a   Qian, Zhenchao ^b   Smith, Herbert L ^c,d  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

^b OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c School of Arts and Sciences   (United States)

^d UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

Author keywords

China; Family planning; Market transition; Postcommunism; Reproductive health

Indexed keywords

EID: 2642537036     PISSN: 00323292     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0032329204263073     Document Type: Article

References (100)

1. Victor Nee, "Social Inequalities in Reforming State Socialism: Between Redistribution and Markets in China," American Sociological Review 56 (1991): 267-82.
2. Kenneth Lieberthal and David Lampton, eds., Bureaucracy, Politics and Decision Making in Post-Mao China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
3. Jean C. Oi, Rural China Takes Off. Institutional Foundations of Economic Reform (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999)
4. The abundance of studies on economic bureaucracies is offset by a scarcity of studies of other major bureaucratic sectors. This imbalance has to do with greater access to the former given to foreign scholars as part of a decision by Chinese leaders to intensify the country's economic relations with the outside world. See: Kenneth Lieberthal and David Lampton, eds., Bureaucracy, Politics and Decision Making in Post-Mao China.
5. I b i d.
6. For the increase in expenditures and personnel in one Chinese province, see Susan Greenhalgh, Zhu Chuzhu, and Li Nan, "Restraining Population Growth in Three Chinese Villages, 1988-93," Population and Development Review 20, no. 2 (1994): 365-95.
7. Conspicuously absent from this list is the population itself - "the people," or women who labor under the existing policy. The measurement of public opinion via sample surveys is in general difficult in China (see Tianjian Shi, "Survey Research in China," Research in Micropolitics 5 [1996]: 213-50), especially for subjective matters related to fertility and family planning (Albert Hermalin and Xian Liu, "Gauging the Validity of Responses to Questions on Family Size Preferences in China," Population and Development Review 16, no. 2 [1990]: 337-54), although we have elsewhere attempted to use survey data to tease out changes in acceptance of the family planning program (M. Giovanna Merli and Herbert L. Smith, "Has the Chinese Family Planning Policy Been Successful in Changing Fertility Preferences?" Demography 39, no. 3 [2002]: 557-72). The focus of the current paper, however, is on policy and its implementation as can be observed from the formal and informal statements (and behaviors) of those formulating and administering policy.
8. Conspicuously absent from this list is the population itself - "the people," or women who labor under the existing policy. The measurement of public opinion via sample surveys is in general difficult in China (see Tianjian Shi, "Survey Research in China," Research in Micropolitics 5 [1996]: 213-50), especially for subjective matters related to fertility and family planning (Albert Hermalin and Xian Liu, "Gauging the Validity of Responses to Questions on Family Size Preferences in China," Population and Development Review 16, no. 2 [1990]: 337-54), although we have elsewhere attempted to use survey data to tease out changes in acceptance of the family planning program (M. Giovanna Merli and Herbert L. Smith, "Has the Chinese Family Planning Policy Been Successful in Changing Fertility Preferences?" Demography 39, no. 3 [2002]: 557-72). The focus of the current paper, however, is on policy and its implementation as can be observed from the formal and informal statements (and behaviors) of those formulating and administering policy.
9. Conspicuously absent from this list is the population itself - "the people," or women who labor under the existing policy. The measurement of public opinion via sample surveys is in general difficult in China (see Tianjian Shi, "Survey Research in China," Research in Micropolitics 5 [1996]: 213-50), especially for subjective matters related to fertility and family planning (Albert Hermalin and Xian Liu, "Gauging the Validity of Responses to Questions on Family Size Preferences in China," Population and Development Review 16, no. 2 [1990]: 337-54), although we have elsewhere attempted to use survey data to tease out changes in acceptance of the family planning program (M. Giovanna Merli and Herbert L. Smith, "Has the Chinese Family Planning Policy Been Successful in Changing Fertility Preferences?" Demography 39, no. 3 [2002]: 557-72). The focus of the current paper, however, is on policy and its implementation as can be observed from the formal and informal statements (and behaviors) of those formulating and administering policy.
10. Tyrene White, "The Origins of China's Birth Planning Policy," in Engendering China: Women, Culture, and the Slate, ed. Christina K. Gilmartin, Gail Hershatter, Lisa Rofel, and Tyrene White (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 250-78.
11. James Lee and Wang Feng, "Malthusian Models and Chinese Realities: The Chinese Demographic System 1700-2000," Population and Development Review 25, no. 1 (1999): 33-65: "China's leaders... launched the largest program in the twentieth century on the foundation of little more than nineteenth-century social theory" (p. 52).
12. James Lee and Wang Feng, "Malthusian Models and Chinese Realities: The Chinese Demographic System 1700-2000," Population and Development Review 25, no. 1 (1999): 33-65: "China's leaders... launched the largest program in the twentieth century on the foundation of little more than nineteenth-century social theory" (p. 52).
13. Hua Guofeng, "Hua Guofeng on the Promotion of Family Planning in China," Population and Development Review 6, no. 4 (1980): 685. For the countervailing view, that "within relatively wide limits, the size of China's population will have little effect on per capita food supplies or real per capita incomes" (p. 504), see D. Gale Johnson, "Effects of Institutions and Policies on Rural Population Growth with Application to China," Population and Development Review 20, no. 3 (1994): 503-31.
14. Hua Guofeng, "Hua Guofeng on the Promotion of Family Planning in China," Population and Development Review 6, no. 4 (1980): 685. For the countervailing view, that "within relatively wide limits, the size of China's population will have little effect on per capita food supplies or real per capita incomes" (p. 504), see D. Gale Johnson, "Effects of Institutions and Policies on Rural Population Growth with Application to China," Population and Development Review 20, no. 3 (1994): 503-31.
15. Hua Guofeng, "Hua Guofeng on the Promotion of Family Planning in China," Population and Development Review 6, no. 4 (1980): 685. For the countervailing view, that "within relatively wide limits, the size of China's population will have little effect on per capita food supplies or real per capita incomes" (p. 504), see D. Gale Johnson, "Effects of Institutions and Policies on Rural Population Growth with Application to China," Population and Development Review 20, no. 3 (1994): 503-31.
16. Tyrene White, "Two Kinds of Production: The Evolution of China's Family Planning Policy in the 1980s," in "The New Politics of Population: Conflict and Consensus in Family Planning," supplement, Population and Development Review 20 (1994): 137-58.
17. Yves Blayo, Des Politiques Démographiques en Chine (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, Institut Nationale d'Études Démographiques, 1997), 155-66.
18. Elisabeth J. Croll, Delia Davin, and Penny Kane, eds., China's One-Child Family Policy (London: Macmillan, 1985); Judith Banister, China's Changing Population (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987); Karen Hardee-Cleaveland and Judith Banister, "Fertility Policy and Implementation in China, 1986-1988," Population and Development Review 14, no, 2 (1988): 245-86; Susan Greenhalgh, "The Evolution of the One-Child Policy in Shaanxi, 1979-1988," China Quarterly 121 (1990): 191-229.
19. Elisabeth J. Croll, Delia Davin, and Penny Kane, eds., China's One-Child Family Policy (London: Macmillan, 1985); Judith Banister, China's Changing Population (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987); Karen Hardee-Cleaveland and Judith Banister, "Fertility Policy and Implementation in China, 1986-1988," Population and Development Review 14, no, 2 (1988): 245-86; Susan Greenhalgh, "The Evolution of the One-Child Policy in Shaanxi, 1979-1988," China Quarterly 121 (1990): 191-229.
20. Elisabeth J. Croll, Delia Davin, and Penny Kane, eds., China's One-Child Family Policy (London: Macmillan, 1985); Judith Banister, China's Changing Population (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987); Karen Hardee-Cleaveland and Judith Banister, "Fertility Policy and Implementation in China, 1986-1988," Population and Development Review 14, no, 2 (1988): 245-86; Susan Greenhalgh, "The Evolution of the One-Child Policy in Shaanxi, 1979-1988," China Quarterly 121 (1990): 191-229.
21. Elisabeth J. Croll, Delia Davin, and Penny Kane, eds., China's One-Child Family Policy (London: Macmillan, 1985); Judith Banister, China's Changing Population (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987); Karen Hardee-Cleaveland and Judith Banister, "Fertility Policy and Implementation in China, 1986-1988," Population and Development Review 14, no, 2 (1988): 245-86; Susan Greenhalgh, "The Evolution of the One-Child Policy in Shaanxi, 1979-1988," China Quarterly 121 (1990): 191-229.
22. Hardee-Cleaveland and Banister, "Fertility Policy and Implementation in China"; John S. Aird, "Coercion in Family Planning: Causes, Methods, and Consequences," in Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, China's Economy Looks Toward the Year 2000, The Four Modernizations, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1986), 184-221.
23. Hardee-Cleaveland and Banister, "Fertility Policy and Implementation in China"; John S. Aird, "Coercion in Family Planning: Causes, Methods, and Consequences," in Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, China's Economy Looks Toward the Year 2000, The Four Modernizations, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1986), 184-221.
24. Tyrene White, "Family Planning between Plan and Market: The Impact of Reform on China's One-Child Policy," in Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, China's Economic Dilemmas in the 1990s: The Problems of Reform, Modernization, and Interdependence, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1991), 252-69. Quotas are set by localities based on projections of numbers of marriages and births in each village. Couples intending to marry and have a child are required to obtain marriage and birth permits from local family planning offices. Although quotas are based in large measure on individual-specific conformity with population policy (zhence) - only those families whose total fertility is within the tight bounds of the One-Child Policy and its variants are typically eligible for births under the quota (zhibiao) - it is very useful to maintain the distinction between the two. The Chinese certainly do.
25. Cai Yongshun, "Between State and Peasant: Local Cadres and Statistical Reporting in Rural China," China Quarterly 163 (2000): 783-805. Small wonder that the statistical reporting of population data has declined dramatically in China in the past decade; see, Isabelle Attané, "La Fécondité Chinoise à L'aube du XXIe Siècle: Constats et Incertitudes," Population 55, no. 2 (2000): 233-64; Isabelle Attané and Sun Minglei, "Natalité et Fécondité en Chine: Quel Crédit Accorder aux Données Récentes?" Population 53, no. 4 (1998): 847-58; and M. Giovanna Merli, "Underreporting of Births and Infant Deaths in Rural China: Evidence from Field Research in One County of Northern China," China Quarterly 155 (1998): 637-55.
26. Cai Yongshun, "Between State and Peasant: Local Cadres and Statistical Reporting in Rural China," China Quarterly 163 (2000): 783-805. Small wonder that the statistical reporting of population data has declined dramatically in China in the past decade; see, Isabelle Attané, "La Fécondité Chinoise à L'aube du XXIe Siècle: Constats et Incertitudes," Population 55, no. 2 (2000): 233-64; Isabelle Attané and Sun Minglei, "Natalité et Fécondité en Chine: Quel Crédit Accorder aux Données Récentes?" Population 53, no. 4 (1998): 847-58; and M. Giovanna Merli, "Underreporting of Births and Infant Deaths in Rural China: Evidence from Field Research in One County of Northern China," China Quarterly 155 (1998): 637-55.
27. Cai Yongshun, "Between State and Peasant: Local Cadres and Statistical Reporting in Rural China," China Quarterly 163 (2000): 783-805. Small wonder that the statistical reporting of population data has declined dramatically in China in the past decade; see, Isabelle Attané, "La Fécondité Chinoise à L'aube du XXIe Siècle: Constats et Incertitudes," Population 55, no. 2 (2000): 233-64; Isabelle Attané and Sun Minglei, "Natalité et Fécondité en Chine: Quel Crédit Accorder aux Données Récentes?" Population 53, no. 4 (1998): 847-58; and M. Giovanna Merli, "Underreporting of Births and Infant Deaths in Rural China: Evidence from Field Research in One County of Northern China," China Quarterly 155 (1998): 637-55.
28. Cai Yongshun, "Between State and Peasant: Local Cadres and Statistical Reporting in Rural China," China Quarterly 163 (2000): 783-805. Small wonder that the statistical reporting of population data has declined dramatically in China in the past decade; see, Isabelle Attané, "La Fécondité Chinoise à L'aube du XXIe Siècle: Constats et Incertitudes," Population 55, no. 2 (2000): 233-64; Isabelle Attané and Sun Minglei, "Natalité et Fécondité en Chine: Quel Crédit Accorder aux Données Récentes?" Population 53, no. 4 (1998): 847-58; and M. Giovanna Merli, "Underreporting of Births and Infant Deaths in Rural China: Evidence from Field Research in One County of Northern China," China Quarterly 155 (1998): 637-55.
29. Isabelle Attané, "La Fécondité Chinoise à l'Aube du XXIe Siècle."
30. Griffith Feeney and Wang Feng, "Parity Progression and Birth Intervals in China: The Influence of Policy in Hastening Fertility Decline," Population and Development Review 19, no. 1 (1993): 61-101; Wang Feng, "A Decade of the One-Child Family: Achievements and Implications," in China: The Many Facets of Demographic Change, ed. Alice Goldstein and Wang Feng (Boulder, CO.: Westview, 1996), 97-120; Wang Feng and Yang Quanhe, "Age at Marriage and the First Birth Interval: The Emerging Change in Sexual Behavior among Young Couples in China," Population and Development Review 22, no. 2 (1996): 299-20.
31. Griffith Feeney and Wang Feng, "Parity Progression and Birth Intervals in China: The Influence of Policy in Hastening Fertility Decline," Population and Development Review 19, no. 1 (1993): 61-101; Wang Feng, "A Decade of the One-Child Family: Achievements and Implications," in China: The Many Facets of Demographic Change, ed. Alice Goldstein and Wang Feng (Boulder, CO.: Westview, 1996), 97-120; Wang Feng and Yang Quanhe, "Age at Marriage and the First Birth Interval: The Emerging Change in Sexual Behavior among Young Couples in China," Population and Development Review 22, no. 2 (1996): 299-20.
32. Griffith Feeney and Wang Feng, "Parity Progression and Birth Intervals in China: The Influence of Policy in Hastening Fertility Decline," Population and Development Review 19, no. 1 (1993): 61-101; Wang Feng, "A Decade of the One-Child Family: Achievements and Implications," in China: The Many Facets of Demographic Change, ed. Alice Goldstein and Wang Feng (Boulder, CO.: Westview, 1996), 97-120; Wang Feng and Yang Quanhe, "Age at Marriage and the First Birth Interval: The Emerging Change in Sexual Behavior among Young Couples in China," Population and Development Review 22, no. 2 (1996): 299-20.
33. State Statistical Bureau, China Statistical Yearbook 2000 (Beijing: China Statistical Publishing House, 2000).
34. H. Yuan Tien, "Second Thoughts on the Second Child: A Talk with Peng Peiyun," Population Today 7, no. 4 (1989): 6-9.
35. Susan Greenhalgh and Li Jiali, "Engendering Reproductive Practice in Peasant China: For a Feminist Demography of Reproduction," Signs 20, no. 3 (1995): 601-41.
36. Li Jiali, "China's One-Child Policy: How and How Well Has It Worked? A Case Study of Hebei Province, 1979-1988," Population and Development Review 21, no. 3 (1995): 563-85; Tu Ping, "IUD Discontinuation Patterns and Correlates in Four Counties in North China," Studies in Family Planning 26, no. 3 (1995): 169-79; Feng Guoping and Hao Linna, "Zhongguo de 28 ge Difang Jihua Shengyu Tiaoli Zongshu" (Summary of 28 Regional Family Planning Regulations in China), Renkou Yanjiu (Population Research) 4 (1992): 28-33.
37. Li Jiali, "China's One-Child Policy: How and How Well Has It Worked? A Case Study of Hebei Province, 1979-1988," Population and Development Review 21, no. 3 (1995): 563-85; Tu Ping, "IUD Discontinuation Patterns and Correlates in Four Counties in North China," Studies in Family Planning 26, no. 3 (1995): 169-79; Feng Guoping and Hao Linna, "Zhongguo de 28 ge Difang Jihua Shengyu Tiaoli Zongshu" (Summary of 28 Regional Family Planning Regulations in China), Renkou Yanjiu (Population Research) 4 (1992): 28-33.
38. Li Jiali, "China's One-Child Policy: How and How Well Has It Worked? A Case Study of Hebei Province, 1979-1988," Population and Development Review 21, no. 3 (1995): 563-85; Tu Ping, "IUD Discontinuation Patterns and Correlates in Four Counties in North China," Studies in Family Planning 26, no. 3 (1995): 169-79; Feng Guoping and Hao Linna, "Zhongguo de 28 ge Difang Jihua Shengyu Tiaoli Zongshu" (Summary of 28 Regional Family Planning Regulations in China), Renkou Yanjiu (Population Research) 4 (1992): 28-33.
39. An exhaustive discussion of policy and program changes in the 1990s is provided by Winckler, who describes the new initiatives as a combination of stability and change ("dynamic stability"). See Edwin A. Winckler, "Chinese Reproductive Policy at the Turn of the Millennium," Population and Development Review 28, no. 3 (2002): 379-418.
40. Document no. 8, Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Enhancing Work of Population and Ensuring Stable and Low Level of Birth, Zhong Fa (March 2, 2000).
41. White, "Two Kinds of Production."
42. Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, China's Population and Development in the 21st Century (Beijing: China Intercontinental Press, 2000).
43. Tyrene White. "Post-Revolutionary Mobilization in China: The One-Child Policy Reconsidered," World Politics 43 (1990): 53-76.
44. "People's Republic of China Law on Population and Birth Planning," Population and Development Review 28, no. 3 (2002): 579-85.
45. For a detailed analysis of the Family Planning Law and its meanings, see Winckler, "Chinese Reproductive Policy."
46. But not necessarily the policy that proscribes births to women with one son and/or two children (where the first is a girl); see note 15, above.
47. Susan Greenhalgh, "The Peasantization of the One-Child Policy in Shaanxi," in Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era, ed. Deborah Davis and Stevan Harrell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 219-50; Greenhalgh, Zhu, and Li, "Restraining Population Growth."
48. Susan Greenhalgh, "The Peasantization of the One-Child Policy in Shaanxi," in Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era, ed. Deborah Davis and Stevan Harrell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 219-50; Greenhalgh, Zhu, and Li, "Restraining Population Growth."
49. See Martin King Whyte, "The Social Roots of China's Economic Development," China Quarterly 142 (1995): 999-1019, on the adaptability - including demographic adaptability - of the Chinese family to political change and economic opportunity.
50. Zeng Yi, "Dilemmas of Family Size Norms in China," In Proceedings of the International Population Conference, October 11-17, 1997, Beijing (Liège, Belgium: International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, 1997), 1405-18; White, "Domination, Resistance and Accommodations," 102-19. In the economic perspective, the coercive, mandated population policy has been essentially unnecessary; see Amartya Sen, "Population Policy: Authoritarianism versus Cooperation," Journal of Population Economics 10 (1997): 3-22; and Carol A. Scotese and Wang Ping, "Can Government Enforcement Permanently Alter Fertility? The Case of China," Economic Inquiry 33 (October 1995): 552-70. Economic change would have sufficed. But Johnson, "Effects of Institutions and Policies," 503-31, notes that certain Chinese institutional policies (e.g., restrictions on rural-urban migration) were pronatalist, and that there is no implication that the policies, institutions, and conditions affecting fertility in China and the other developing countries have been the same or that China would have achieved the same rates of fertility decline without its current population control programs. (P. 506)
51. Zeng Yi, "Dilemmas of Family Size Norms in China," In Proceedings of the International Population Conference, October 11-17, 1997, Beijing (Liège, Belgium: International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, 1997), 1405-18; White, "Domination, Resistance and Accommodations," 102-19. In the economic perspective, the coercive, mandated population policy has been essentially unnecessary; see Amartya Sen, "Population Policy: Authoritarianism versus Cooperation," Journal of Population Economics 10 (1997): 3-22; and Carol A. Scotese and Wang Ping, "Can Government Enforcement Permanently Alter Fertility? The Case of China," Economic Inquiry 33 (October 1995): 552-70. Economic change would have sufficed. But Johnson, "Effects of Institutions and Policies," 503-31, notes that certain Chinese institutional policies (e.g., restrictions on rural-urban migration) were pronatalist, and that there is no implication that the policies, institutions, and conditions affecting fertility in China and the other developing countries have been the same or that China would have achieved the same rates of fertility decline without its current population control programs. (P. 506)
52. Zeng Yi, "Dilemmas of Family Size Norms in China," In Proceedings of the International Population Conference, October 11-17, 1997, Beijing (Liège, Belgium: International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, 1997), 1405-18; White, "Domination, Resistance and Accommodations," 102-19. In the economic perspective, the coercive, mandated population policy has been essentially unnecessary; see Amartya Sen, "Population Policy: Authoritarianism versus Cooperation," Journal of Population Economics 10 (1997): 3-22; and Carol A. Scotese and Wang Ping, "Can Government Enforcement Permanently Alter Fertility? The Case of China," Economic Inquiry 33 (October 1995): 552-70. Economic change would have sufficed. But Johnson, "Effects of Institutions and Policies," 503-31, notes that certain Chinese institutional policies (e.g., restrictions on rural-urban migration) were pronatalist, and that there is no implication that the policies, institutions, and conditions affecting fertility in China and the other developing countries have been the same or that China would have achieved the same rates of fertility decline without its current population control programs. (P. 506)
53. Zeng Yi, "Dilemmas of Family Size Norms in China," In Proceedings of the International Population Conference, October 11-17, 1997, Beijing (Liège, Belgium: International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, 1997), 1405-18; White, "Domination, Resistance and Accommodations," 102-19. In the economic perspective, the coercive, mandated population policy has been essentially unnecessary; see Amartya Sen, "Population Policy: Authoritarianism versus Cooperation," Journal of Population Economics 10 (1997): 3-22; and Carol A. Scotese and Wang Ping, "Can Government Enforcement Permanently Alter Fertility? The Case of China," Economic Inquiry 33 (October 1995): 552-70. Economic change would have sufficed. But Johnson, "Effects of Institutions and Policies," 503-31, notes that certain Chinese institutional policies (e.g., restrictions on rural-urban migration) were pronatalist, and that there is no implication that the policies, institutions, and conditions affecting fertility in China and the other developing countries have been the same or that China would have achieved the same rates of fertility decline without its current population control programs. (P. 506)
54. Zeng Yi, "Dilemmas of Family Size Norms in China," In Proceedings of the International Population Conference, October 11-17, 1997, Beijing (Liège, Belgium: International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, 1997), 1405-18; White, "Domination, Resistance and Accommodations," 102-19. In the economic perspective, the coercive, mandated population policy has been essentially unnecessary; see Amartya Sen, "Population Policy: Authoritarianism versus Cooperation," Journal of Population Economics 10 (1997): 3-22; and Carol A. Scotese and Wang Ping, "Can Government Enforcement Permanently Alter Fertility? The Case of China," Economic Inquiry 33 (October 1995): 552-70. Economic change would have sufficed. But Johnson, "Effects of Institutions and Policies," 503-31, notes that certain Chinese institutional policies (e.g., restrictions on rural-urban migration) were pronatalist, and that there is no implication that the policies, institutions, and conditions affecting fertility in China and the other developing countries have been the same or that China would have achieved the same rates of fertility decline without its current population control programs. (P. 506)
55. Lee and Wang, "Malthusian Models and Chinese Realities."
56. Ann Anagnost, "A Surfeit of Bodies: Population and the Rationality of the State in Post-Mao China," in Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Policy of Reproduction, ed. Faye D. Ginsberg and Rayna Rapp (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 22-41.
57. Merli and Smith, "Has the Chinese Family Planning Policy Been Successful?"
58. And have proposed alternatives: See, e.g., John Bongaarts and Susan Greenhalgh, "An Alternative to the One-Child Policy in China," Population and Development Review 11, no. 4 (1985): 585-617; Johnson, "Effects of Institutions and Policies."
59. And have proposed alternatives: See, e.g., John Bongaarts and Susan Greenhalgh, "An Alternative to the One-Child Policy in China," Population and Development Review 11, no. 4 (1985): 585-617; Johnson, "Effects of Institutions and Policies."
60. The formal Introducing New Contraceptives in Rural China (INCRC) project was a field experiment conducted by the State Family Planning Commission of China between 1991 and 1996 with technical input from Peking University and the University of Pennsylvania.
61. Population Council, Report on the International Symposium on Quality of Care in China (New York: Population Council, 2000); Gu Baochang, "Reorienting China's Family Planning Program: An Experiment on Quality of Care since 1995" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, March 2000, Los Angeles); Ruth S. Simmons, Gu Baochang, Zhang Erli, Xie Zhenming, and Sheila Ward, "Initiating a Quality of Care Transition in China" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America Meetings, March 2000, Los Angeles).
62. Population Council, Report on the International Symposium on Quality of Care in China (New York: Population Council, 2000); Gu Baochang, "Reorienting China's Family Planning Program: An Experiment on Quality of Care since 1995" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, March 2000, Los Angeles); Ruth S. Simmons, Gu Baochang, Zhang Erli, Xie Zhenming, and Sheila Ward, "Initiating a Quality of Care Transition in China" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America Meetings, March 2000, Los Angeles).
63. Population Council, Report on the International Symposium on Quality of Care in China (New York: Population Council, 2000); Gu Baochang, "Reorienting China's Family Planning Program: An Experiment on Quality of Care since 1995" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, March 2000, Los Angeles); Ruth S. Simmons, Gu Baochang, Zhang Erli, Xie Zhenming, and Sheila Ward, "Initiating a Quality of Care Transition in China" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America Meetings, March 2000, Los Angeles).
64. Herbert L. Smith, "Introducing New Contraceptives in Rural China: A Field Experiment" (paper presented at the Conference on Progress and Prospects for Place Based Randomized Trials, November 2002, Bellagio, Italy).
65. Herbert L. Smith, Tu Ping, M. Giovanna Merli, and Mark Hereward, "Implementation of a Demographic and Contraceptive Surveillance System in Four Counties in North China," Population Research and Policy Review 16, no. 4 (1997): 289-314.
66. Edward Friedman, Paul G. Pickowicz, and Mark Selden, Chinese Village, Socialist State (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991).
67. We say "reported" because this would make Pangxie the county with the highest income among the four that we studied, and this strikes us as unlikely. (Ciqixian is almost certainly better off economically; Huasheng, too.) These income statistics evince a spurious precision, and are better taken as (at best) order of magnitude estimates. In this sense, what is relevant here is that Pangxie, like China more generally, has experienced substantial economic progress during the past decade.
68. Ciqixian is actually a district of Zibo city, but with the majority of its population (87 percent) classified as rural.
69. Zhonggong zhongyang (central Committee, Chinese Communist Party), "zhonggong zhongyang guanyu kongzhi wo guo renkou zengchang wenti zhi quanti gongchangdang yuan, gongqingtuan yuan de gongkai xin" (Open Letter of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee to Party Members and Youth League Members about Control of Population Growth), September 25, 1980, in Jihua Shengyu Wenjian Huibian (Collection of Documents), ed. State Family Planning Commission, Policy and Regulations Office (Beijing: Zhongguo minzhu fazhi chubanshe, 1992), 5-9.
70. Michael A. Lev, "Clock Is Ticking on China's One-Child Policy," Chicago Tribune, May 1, 2000.
71. Griffith Feeney, Wang Feng, Zhou Mingkun, and Xiao Baoyu, "Recent Fertility Dynamics in China: Results from the 1987 One Percent Population Survey," Population and Development Review 15, no. 2 (1989): 297-322.
72. Our experience in trying to do an experiment - the INCRC project - that involved perceived benefits for some townships, but not others, is that neighboring townships, counties, etc. are acutely aware of what is going on elsewhere and that provincial and municipal family planning officials did not find it easy to implement the treatment in some areas but not others.
73. Rural instability has been a major concern of the leadership over the last decade as reports of protests by peasants about excesses enforced by local cadres are on the rise. See Lianjiang Li and Kevin J. O'Brien, "Villagers and Popular Resistance in Contemporary China," Modern China 22, no. 1 (1996): 28-61.
74. A cadre is technically a government or party official whose income is paid by the state. This is the case of township and county cadres, the first and second formal rungs in the local government hierarchy, but not of village officials, who are paid by the village administration. For simplicity, however, we shall refer to village officials as village cadres.
75. Melanie Manion, "The Behavior of Middlemen in the Cadre Retirement Policy Process," in Bureaucracy, Politics and Decision Making (see note 2), 216-44.
76. David S. G. Goodman, "The Localism of Local Leadership Cadres in Reform Shanxi," Journal of Contemporary China 9, no. 24 (2000): 159-83.
77. Cai, "Between State and Peasant".
78. Oi, Rural China Takes Off.
79. The evaluation of local cadres obtains beyond the realm of family planning. It was instituted to evaluate the economic performance in the rural industrial sector. Susan H. Whiting, Power and Wealth in Rural China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 100-18, provides an exhaustive description of the evaluation system of rural cadres, including performance criteria and incentive structure.
80. This compares with 50 percent of the fine to the township, 20 percent to the county, and 30 percent to the village, as reported for a county in Henan by Cao Jinqing, Huanghe bian de Zhongguo: Yige Xuezhe Dui Xiangcun Shehui de Guancha yu Sikao (China Along the Yellow River - A Scholar's Observations and Meditations on Chinese Rural Society) (Shanghai: Wenyi Chubanshe, 2000).
81. These figures roughly correspond to those reported by Cao, Huanghe bian de Zhongguo, for one county in Henan where the amount of the fines collected increased from 2,000 and 3,000 yuan in 1993-1994 for the first and second birth above the limit, to 5,000 and 7,000 in 1995, and 7,000 and 10,000 in 1996 - amounts which, in 1996, were equivalent to about five and eight times a village per capita annual income. See: Susan E. Short and Zhai Fengying, "Looking Locally at China's One-Child Policy," Studies in Family Planning 29, no. 4 (1998): 373-87, for a range of fines in sampled communities for the period 1989-1993 (p. 381).
82. Winckler, "Chinese Reproductive Policy," 192.
83. Zhang Weiguo, "Implementation of State Family Planning Programmes in a Northern Chinese Village," China Quarterly 157 (1999): 202-30.
84. This mirrors the government's renewed effort to raise the center's role in revenue collection through fiscal reforms, which allow the center to play a significant redistributive role. See Zhang Leyin, "Chinese Central-Provincial Fiscal Relationships, Budgetary Decline and the Impact of the 1994 Fiscal Reform: An Evaluation," China Quarterly 157 (1999): 115-41.
85. Zhongguo jihua shengyu weiyuan hui (State Family Planning Commission of China), Zhongguo jihuashengyu nianjian 1999(1999 Chinese Family Planning Yearbook) (Beijing: Zhongguo jihua shengyu weiyuan hui, 1999), 343.
86. Nearly 30 percent of birth planning expenditures for some counties and over 60 percent of family planning expenditures for some townships. See Sheng Lang, "Establish a Stable System for Guaranteeing Investment in Birth Planning," in Family Planning Yearbook 2001, 245 [in Chinese], quoted in Winckler, "Chinese Reproductive Policy," 404.
87. Nearly 30 percent of birth planning expenditures for some counties and over 60 percent of family planning expenditures for some townships. See Sheng Lang, "Establish a Stable System for Guaranteeing Investment in Birth Planning," in Family Planning Yearbook 2001, 245 [in Chinese], quoted in Winckler, "Chinese Reproductive Policy," 404.
88. Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, China's Population and Development in the 21st Century (Beijing: Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, 2000), http://www.cpirc.org.cn/whitepaper.htm.
89. Document no. 8, Decision of the Central Committee, 25.
90. Guojia jihua shengyu weiyuanhui jihua caiwu si (State Family Planning Commission, Department of Planning and Finance), Renkou yu jihua shengyu gongzuo changyong shuju shouce (Booklet of Frequently Used Data on Population and Family Planning Work) (Beijing: Guojia jihua shengyu weiyuanhui jihua caiwu si, 1999), 80; ibid. (Beijing: Guojia jihua shengyu weiyuanhui jihua caiwu si, 2000), 86.
91. Guojia jihua shengyu weiyuanhui jihua caiwu si (State Family Planning Commission, Department of Planning and Finance), Renkou yu jihua shengyu gongzuo changyong shuju shouce (Booklet of Frequently Used Data on Population and Family Planning Work) (Beijing: Guojia jihua shengyu weiyuanhui jihua caiwu si, 1999), 80; ibid. (Beijing: Guojia jihua shengyu weiyuanhui jihua caiwu si, 2000), 86.
92. Winckler, "Chinese Reproductive Policy," 395.
93. Approximately three hundred to four hundred thousand yuan from the social management fee, 20 percent of the county family planning budget.
94. Zhongguo jihua shengyu weiyuan hui (State Family Planning Commission of China), Zhongguo jihuashengyu nianjian 1999, 343.
95. The rivalry between the family planning system and the health system is not new. It dates back to the administrative separation of these two bureaucracies in the mid-1980s. See Joan Kaufman, Zhang Zhirong, Qiao Xinjian, and Zhang Yang, "The Creation of Family Planning Service Stations in China," International Family Planning Perspectives 18, no. 1 (1992): 18-23.
96. For this view, see Edwin A. Winckler, "Re-enforcing State Birth Planning," in Transition from Communism: Institutional and Comparative Analyses, ed. Edwin A. Winckler (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999), 181-203.
97. Cao, Huanghe bian de Zhongguo, 91-92.
98. Jean C. Oi, "Commercializing China's Rural Cadres," Problems of Communism 35, no. 5(1986): 1-15.
99. Mark Strand and Alice Chen, "Rural Health Care in North China in an Era of Rapid Economic Change," Yale-China Health Journal 1 (autumn 2002): 11-20; Shi Leiyu, "Health Care in China: A Rural-Urban Comparison after the Socioeconomic Reforms," Bulletin of the World Health Organization 71, no. 6 (1993): 723-36.
100. Mark Strand and Alice Chen, "Rural Health Care in North China in an Era of Rapid Economic Change," Yale-China Health Journal 1 (autumn 2002): 11-20; Shi Leiyu, "Health Care in China: A Rural-Urban Comparison after the Socioeconomic Reforms," Bulletin of the World Health Organization 71, no. 6 (1993): 723-36.