t 5)&$)*/"+063/"-/P
e post-1970 campaign in no way relied simply upon persuasion or voluntary
compliance. Many of the coercive enforcement techniques that became notori-
ous aer the one-child policy was launched in 1980 actually date from this “later,
longer, fewer” campaign of the 1970s.
16
e state bureaucratic hierarchy in charge
of enforcing birth control then oversaw grass-roots birth planning workers in
each village, urban work unit and neighborhood. ese birth planning enforcers
kept detailed records on each woman of child-bearing age under their respon-
sibility, including past births, contraceptive usage and even menstrual cycles, in
many reported instances becoming “menstrual monitors” who tried to detect
out-of-quota pregnancies at an early stage.
17
In some factories, there were quotas
for reproduction as well as for production, and a woman employee who did not
receive a birth allotment was not supposed to get pregnant (even if she had not
yet reached her two-child maximum). Women who became pregnant without
permission were subjected to regular harassment to get an abortion, with pres-
sure also on their husbands and other family members. In rural areas, women
who gave birth to a third child were similarly pressured to get sterilized or have
IUDs inserted, while urban women were more trusted to continue using eective
contraception until they were no longer fertile (although not trusted enough to
dispense with regular menstrual cycle checks). Families were threatened that, if
they persisted in having an over-quota birth, the baby would be denied house-
hold registration (and thus denied opportunities for ration coupons, schooling
and other essential benets that depended upon registration).
Published statistics from Chinese ocial sources conrm the coercive,
campaign-driven nature of China’s birth planning program in the 1970s. As
shown in Figure 1, although not as extreme as China’s 1983 sterilization and
abortion high tide following the launch of the one-child policy, birth-control op-
erations (abortions, IUD insertions and sterilizations) shot up several times dur-
ing the 1970s in association with the campaign to enforce birth limits. In the early
16. In the interviews which Martin Whyte and William Parish conducted in Hong Kong in 1972–74 with
former residents of Guangdong villages, the early stages of this stricter birth planning enforcement were
described. William Parish and Martin King Whyte, Village and Family in Contemporary China (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 138–54. Similarly, former residents of a variety of cities whom Whyte
and Parish interviewed in Hong Kong in 1977–78 provided details on the enforcement of the “later, longer,
fewer” program in urban China during that period. See Martin King Whyte and William Parish, Urban Life in
Contemporary China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), particularly pp. 160–61.
17. See the translation of one such form used in the early 1970s, in William Parish and Martin King
Whyte, Village and Family in Contemporary China, p. 143. Almost two decades earlier, when China’s rst
voluntary birth planning campaign was being launched during the mid-1950s, a resident French journalist
presciently observed, “I seriously think that this regime is probably the rst in history which could ocially
adopt birth control as a compulsory measure, and make sure that its orders will be universally obeyed . . . And
who will control the birth control? Quite simple: the street committee. It will x the quotas, give advice, and
keep an eye on married couples.” Robert Guillain, 600 Million Chinese (New York: Criterion Books, 1957),
p. 295. While obedience was far from universal aer 1970, the CCP’s grass-roots control structures made it
possible to contemplate enforcing mandatory birth planning.