China decides enough is enough

Press, 21 February 1980, Page 16

China decides enough is enough

By

DENIS BLOODWORTH

in Singapore

China stubbornly continues to exceed annual production targets for the one commodity of which it already has a surplus — Chinese.

As far back as 1952 Mao denounced family planning as “a means of killing Chinese,” and when Ma Yinchu, a distinguished economist and educationalist, publicly advocated birth control a few years later, he was branded “a lifelong opponent of the Party, Socialism, and Marxism-Leninsim.” China under Mao was a capricious State, and just one year after that, a winsome little interpreter in Canton hauled me through an explicit poster exhibition on how to avoid pregnancy that brutally by-passed the birds and bees. But ..family planning in China remained half-hearted, for the Chairman himself was changeable on the subject. In consequence Ma Yip? chu, who is 98. has survived to see the population 1 of China all but double in the 30 years since the People’s Republic was founded. In 1949 .it was 540 million; by last December the official Press was talking of “a billion Chinese’,’ . and more than half of those are under 21. ‘

China’s other output can-

not move fast enough to keep up with this treadmill of fertility, and the first concern of the leadership in Peking, -as Vice-Premier Deng Xiaoping said recently, is to see that the Chinese ‘‘have enough to eat.” 2 By 1977 the average man was getting only a little more rice or wheat than he did in 1951, if he was lucky. - In parts of Sichuan province, the most populous in China, the monthly grain ration was some nine pounds less in 1976 than it had been 10 years earlier. Arable land and housing have contracted ominously. The area cultivated to feed one Chinese has shrunk by more than one-third, and the floorspace, he can occupy by 10 square feet. Basic- needs like cotton cloth and cooking oil are in short-supply. There are no places in primary school for six out of every hundred children, only 5 per cent of all students can go to college,'‘and ‘last year it was estimated that there were 20 million unemployed, most of them young. The, Administration is therefore taking drastic steps to cut the birth-rate. “Strive-to • fulfil the provincial quota for termination of pregnancies,” demands 1 Radio Canton, meaning that the current target for abortions

must be reached, if not sur passed. But China, the inventor of the paper pill, does not rely solely' on abortions, of course, any more than on the contraceptive properties of tadpoles when swallowed live — a tip much publicised some years ago. Early marriage is frowned on. Apart from free condoms, there are now oral contraceptives for men, and vasectomy is encouraged because it is simpler and safer than female sterilisation. In spite of the übiquitous propaganda, many peasants still shy away from birth control. Condoms end up as balloons for children, and 30 per cent of all families have three or more children. The planners, who want between 90 per cent and 95 per cent of all married couples to have only one child, have set out to achieve their object through a system of tempting rewards for the frugal and formidable punishments for the -feckless* ■*' These vary from province to province, but broadly speaking the single child is given a free education, free medical care, and an adult rice ration, and can expect his ‘(or her) name to go to the top of the list for available places in school and plum jobs thereafter.

His parents will go to the top of the list for better housing, and are entitled to the accommodation of a two-child family. They may also be paid for their prudence with a supplement of up to $7 a month and bigger pension when they retire. If they are peasants, they will receive extra work-points. Those with two children are still given an even break, but after that the penalties can hurt badly. The parents of a third child

may be docked 10 per cent of their wages or workpoints, and 5 per cent more for every additional infant. However many, children they have, they will be entitled only to the living space of a two-child family.

They will have to pay for medical services, and the extra children will not be given food rations until they are 14. If the parents refuse sterilisation, their own rations majl be reduced, and any child born after that

may be deprived not only of rations but even of a residence permit.

Couples who have no children may continue to be paid their full wages when they retire, but a father of nine is thrown out of his job for flouting official fam? ily planning policy. Thus Socialist principle is being turned upside down, for each is rewarded in inverse ratio to his needs. Copyright — London Ob* server Service.