China Reverses Birth Control Policy

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29908, 23 August 1962, Page 13

China Reverses Birth Control Policy

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) LONDON, August 22. A birth control campaign is once more being advocated by the Chinese press in an apparent reversal of the policy, proclaimed by Mao Tse-tung in 1958, that China’s growing population was its greatest asset.

The Chinese press was now advising its readers about “reliable contraceptives recommended for general use,” according to the “Guardian” commentator, Victor Zorza.

traceptives—no pills were mentioned —was the second prong of a campaign which started earlier this year, Zorza said. The campaign first prevailed on the youth of China to delay their marriages, and thus to limit the number of new births. The article was a down-to-earth and clinically pure description of the methods and facilities recommended, but it did not make it clear whether they were available on the massive scale necessary to make an impact on China’s birth rate. Tadpole Method

put it at between 650 and 700 million, Zorza said. The famine conditions of the last few years were thought to have reduced the expected annual births of between 12,000,000 and 15,000,000, he said.

They also appeared to have contributed to the new realisation in Peking that, whatever Mao Tse-tung might have thought and said in 1058, a more active birth control campaign was now necessary so that more of the scarce food should remain available for those engaged directly in production.

Zorza said that Mao's view, expressed in an article in the “Red Flag” was that China might not need as much time to catch up with capitalist countries as was previously thought—because of her 600 million people. Birth control was not actively discouraged with this new statement of policy, but the national propaganda campaign which alone could have achieved some effect was discontinued. The article in the Peking “Daily Worker” which now recommended and explained the use of conventional con-

When the Chinese Communists abandoned their ideological objections to birth control on a previous occasion, they went over to the other extreme and even recommended to the populace the consumption of tadpoles as a means of birth control.

This method, as published in the Chinese press, required the swallowing alive of 24 tadpoles and was said to result in sterility in women for five years. If repeated for two* consecutive years, the treatment was supposed to result in lasting sterility. The tadpoles it was said, should be washed clean before being swallowed.

China’s population for 1962 was given as 624 million and more recent estimates have