The Press TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 1957. China Adopts Malthus

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28224, 12 March 1957, Page 10

The Press TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 1957. China Adopts Malthus

Until recently, China has been

quite as industrious as Russia in damning the “ discredited ” Malthus. In Communist theory there should be no such thing as over-population because the factors of production and technical advances should work in such a way as to provide for all. Birth control, the Communist argument went, was a practice of capitalist society which demonstrated the well-known capitalist hatred of life. But the apparently well-conducted Chinese census of. 1953 shocked China’s planners as much as it surprised the West, though the pride of a people numbering nearly a quarter of the world helped to sustain the Communist claim that the new ideology would cope with this vast population.

The census showed that China’s population was 600 million, possibly 100 million more than had been estimated, and that the rate of increase was 2.2 per cent.—about six times New Zealand’s total population—a year. The planned economic development, no matter how faithfully carried out, could not keep pace with such growth. By 1967, when the third five-year plan is scheduled to be completed, the population, at its present rate of growth, will be more than 700 million. Under the five-year plans, food production is to be doubled by 1967; doubled, that is, for a population of 600 million, many of whom, in spite of the remarkable industrial and agricultural progress made so far, are living at, or not far above, subsistence level. The pressure of population and the need for an agricultural surplus to provide the capital for the vast planned expansion of heavy industry were behind the movement to speed the collectivisation of the farms, about which there were clearly differences* in the political bureau of the Chinese Communist Party, and in the countryside, too. Mr Mao Tsetung must be well satisfied with his decision to press this work in spite of the opposition and with the rapid progress towards complete socialisation of the land. But it is not enough. Food production and the production of surpluses for capital are still the Government’s most critical problems. At the present rate of growth, China’s population at the end of the century will be twice that of Europe.

The improbability of being able to fill those Chinese mouths in the year 2000 is the cause of the planners’ concern. Either industrial expansion plans would have to be considerably curtailed so that China could concentrate on growing food for these unborn millions, or the Chinese would have to reduce the rate of population growth. Here, in essence, is the vindication of Malthus’s argument—that population tends to increase by geometrical, food supplies by arithmetical,. progression. China has approached the problem cautiously. In 1954, the National People’s Congress discussed a Health Ministry recommendation on birth control, which, though disowning population reduction as such, argued on health grounds for the spacing of a family. Later, the official “ New China’s “ Women ’’ argued that to introduce scientific methods of contraception to the masses “ was “ entirely compatible with the “ State policy for the protection “of the health of women and “ children So the importance of birth control became officially recognised though not officially proclaimed; indeed there were still sporadic outbursts in some party magazines condemning Malthusianism. But the policy won more and more official favour and it seems likely that the early diffidence was merely a fear that the change of policy might be interpreted as a lack of the earlier confidence in China’s capabilities. Now the party newspaper, the Peking “ People’s Daily ”, has openly advocated birth control and admitted that economic development, however fast, could not catch up with China’s population increase. In addition, abortion is to be legalised and sterilisation is to be permitted if requested. The Chinese are to be encouraged not to marry until they are 25. China has indeed adopted Malthus. There are two aspects of this change that should be gratifying to the West and to Asia. First, it shows that China will not hold unreasonably to Communist dogma when that dogma is out of touch with reality; and second, there is at least some room to hope that China will not be driven to imperialist expansion by an intolerable pressure of population. Asia’s fears of becoming, in the future, part of a Chinese “co-prosperity “ sphere ” may yet prove groundless.