What has been the effect of China's focus on minimal reproduction as the centerpiece of the country's effort to regulate population growth? This book tells the full story of China's Strategic Demographic Initiative, tracing its evolutions and assessing its results and significance in the context of China's socioeconomic development. Early consensus in population planning gave rise to voluminous rules, massive drives, vigorous exhortations, varied sanctions, and above all, strict enforcement. The one child per couple policy begun in 1978-79 stirred up strong emotional debate both within China and throughout the outside world. This text demonstrates the approach, scope, and tempo of China's population planning.

China's Strategic Demographic Initiative is presented in three parts. First, the overall circumstances which helped to shape China's population planning effort are revealed. Next the startup, evolutions, and objectives of the Strategic Demographic Initiative are interwoven with objections and obstacles to implementation. Finally, the issue of collective intervention in childbearing and the limits to population planning bring in social and economic issues. Major lessons are reviewed. An epilogue updates the direction of China's population planning effort amid continuing internal dispute over tactics.