I saw an offhand comment in another post that China's current high population level was a result of the policies of Chairman Mao. My knowledge of the PRC period is woefully shallow, and I was wondering what sort of policies caused the massive population growth. I had only been familiar with the famines during the Great Leap Forward period, which would obviously have decreased the population rather than increasing it.

Thank you.

Hello TangXiucai!

Infant mortality was high in China, so families would produce more children. According to the Chinese Government between 1970 and 1980, the crude birth rate dropped from 36.9 per 1,000 to 17.6 per 1,000. This was due to more women marrying later in life. I think that Mao was trying to control births, rather than increase births. These statistics show that birth rates actually dropped, nevertheless population increased.

The Chinese population was going to increase like Fibonacci numbers (alright I know that is a hyperbole!) with or without Mao. In the 1960s the Chinese population was about 700 million. Even if a small proportion had children the numbers would esculate. Many parts of China still followed traditional customs of producing more children. This would exponentially increase the Chinese poulation until the One Child Policy was implemented.

To Emphasis on the hyperbole

i think all because a chinese saying, great population come to great power,

I agree with HappyHistorian, population growth was almost an ineveitability. I am not sure of any specific policies that might have caused a population spiral though...

China does not have high population. The population density of China is one third of India and Japan, and is half of German. With China's one child policy, in one generation, China will become the center of immigration.

This is deceptive - how much land did China actually use and how much land does China occupy are two completely different concept. Canada has a large chunk of land covered in ice, excellent for skiing bad for living. China have lots of waste land that no one lives.

It actually has more arable land than Russia, though.

Comparisons by population density e.t.c have to be used with caution, as they can produce misleading pictures of countries.

So instead of develop those waste land,China decide to reduce its own population. Is it what they call cut the foot to fit the shoe?

By the way, both Canada and Russia are screaming that they want more people. Actually, China is the only country that want to cut down its population. West Europe, Russia, Canada, USA and Brazil are all open to immigrants. They have to. Their own women don't want babies.

Exactly. and that's why West scream that China are overpopulated. What they mean is that China is too muscular and thus intimating.

The problem is their own women don't want babies anymore and that really scare them. They know the consequence.

China's population explosion had developed with Mao's policy. From 1900 to 1950, China's population was quite stable. The Korean War could be said to be the start of the communist policy to encourage baby-bearing.

The recent familyhood planning was a failure as a result of the breakdown of government apparatus. In China, there is the phenomenon of concubines, i.e., second wives, everywhere. The government, in pursuing financial gains, had used the one-child policy as a means to fine people.

I can't vouch for the other countries, but living in Britain in Western Europe i'm not sure i share your demographic sentiments. The UK has restrictive immigration policies, not with the intention of boosting population but 1) for migrant labour and 2) because it has to have open borders under the Schengen Agreement of the European Union. If Britain 'closed its doors' it would have to leave the E.U. And the birth rate is at a high enough level to refute the idea that 'their own women don't want babies', which seems to me to be a bit of a generalisation.

That seems like a trend in Western countries. Their own population cannot sufficiently replenish their numbers due to a lower fertility rate. The population worldwide will gradually increase but not at the rate needed to have a stong labour force. So immigration is essential in our globalising economy.

The reasons for Mao's policies of encouraging birth (leading to huge population) is because of:

1. Mao's People's Warfare

Mao's developed the strategy of "people's warfare" requiring all people (in particular peasants) in China to fight against the enemy. In Mao's time, China believed that it was surrounded by "imperialist forces" from USA, Soviet etc. In this sense, Mao encourages more growth of population so that there would be more people to 'fight' against the enemy.

2. Proletariat/Peasants

China during Mao's time remained a largely agra-society (agriculture-based) and more people were needed to help out in the farms to produce more food for China. Mao also believed that the source of his power came from the peasants, and thus encourage birth from the peasants.

3. Productivity comes from labour

Mao's had this obsolete idea that productivity of a nation comes from people. Rather than transforming the economy into industrialized and mechanized production, he believed that more people will lead to greater productivity. He did not realize that more people means a greater population to feed and thus a greater burden to the nation.

So from 1900 to 1950, China was in its best shape? Japan got to regret that it did not wait for China to go downhill like now before it invade China.

After World War II, as percentage of the world population, China drop down from 25% to 20% now. Where is the population explosion?

China did not win World War II because of their sheer numbers, the Allies won the war for China. The population did grow very quickly from 700 million in the 1960s to 1,300 million where it is now. Therefore there was a population explosion.

With those stats, china's population grew 15 million per year if this progression was a constant and not exponential- even that flat average is an explosion. And as HappyHistorian says, it was the allies and specifically their atomic bombs that won the war for China, not the efforts of china itself.

Your statement should be revised as:

it was the JOINT EFFORTS of allies and specifically their atomic bombs that won the war for China & THE WORLD, not the MERE efforts of china itself.

By the way, your war heros, Peng Dehuai and Zhu De did not ever engage in a battle against a Shidan equialent of Japanese Army throughout the war.

About China's population explosion: In the old days, my maternal and paternal grandmas both had 6-10 child bearings, with 5-6 survivors each. The difference was some women chose to have less, and some women chose to have none. In Mao's days, it was a political task for women to bear children.

In today's China, there is a loophole to one child policy. Anyone who had a divorce could re-marry to have another child. We don't want to talk about the high divorce rate to know the one child policy was a bankrupt scheme.

It wasn't really a join effort really thinking about it- the USA got the bomb, and it was the USA that ended the war in Asia with it. And Chinese efforts had very little part to play in victory- the a-bomb achieved this alone... Its a bit of an over simplification, but the importance of the atomic bomb cannot be stressed enough...

Yes I do agree that the joint effort between the Chinese and the Allies led to victory. I do not accept that the dropping of the atomic bombs led to victory. Japan was on the verge of defeat, even without the A-Bomb. China kept the Japanese Army busy, while the Allies fought primarily the Japanese Navy.

During Mao's time there were still large families as it was customary to do so.

I thought about what would happen if a Chinese person wanted to get a divorce in the current system in Chinese Family Law. Even if they divorce and conceive another child, I don't think it will expand the population too greaty more than it already is. By 2050 China is estimated to have a population of 1.4 billion people. So that is an increase of 200 million, which is not the exponential increase of 600 million between the 1960s to the present. Therefore China's population will grow and contract.

Interesting... i just rationalise it that if the bomb had been dropped but China had not fought against the Japanese the war would still have been won, whereas the other way around i can certainly see the conflict in Asia dragging on into the future, resulting in further loss of life... but each to their own eh?

That is a fair statement. Japan could never match the economic power of the USA. Japan was nearly bankrupt from the war, while only 10% of America's GDP was spent on the war. Also USA could easily fight in two theatres of war: Europe and the Pacific.

Are you saying if Japanese forces were freed up from China, they would not advance any further? If funding for army were moved [due to not fighting a large scale all out war in China] into the navy, US would still take out Japan piece by piece?

Its hard to know exactly- all i was saying was that chinese involvement in the war was not as decisive as the creation of nuclear weapons by the USA...