Social Changes and the One Child Policy

Social reform and modernisation

After Mao’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping emerged as China’s leading reformer in 1978. His programme of modernisation depended on more than changes to farms and factories. China also needed educated workers, skilled professionals and improvements in living standards. Education and family life therefore became important areas of government policy.

These reforms did not mean that the Communist Party was withdrawing from people’s lives. Educational reform still required political loyalty, while population policy extended state control over decisions previously made within families.

Education: knowledge mattered again

During the Cultural Revolution of 1966–1976, academics and intellectuals had been attacked and formal education severely disrupted. Young people sent to work in the countryside could lose years of educational opportunity. Rebuilding education therefore meant restoring both the value of knowledge and opportunities to study.

A major practical change came in 1977, when China restored the gaokao, its national university entrance examination. Recent school-leavers could apply alongside older candidates whose education had been interrupted. About 5.7 million candidates sat the examination in December, but only about 273,000—4.8 per cent—were admitted. Their university courses began in 1978.

For successful candidates, the examination opened a route from factory or agricultural work into higher education and professional careers. Shuang Liu, for example, had been tightening screws on a factory assembly line before gaining a place to study English at Heilongjiang University. However, the small proportion admitted shows that restored opportunity did not mean a university place for everyone: competition was intense.

Deng wanted education to support economic development. In his 1978 speech to the National Conference on Education, he attacked the Gang of Four for treating academic knowledge as politically suspect. He argued that China needed workers who were both ‘red and expert’: loyal to socialism, but also equipped with scientific knowledge and professional skills.

This was a change in emphasis. Studying science, the humanities and other academic subjects was not to be treated as a distraction from the revolution. Deng argued that learning these subjects properly would help build a stronger socialist China. Modern equipment was of little use without people who understood how to operate, maintain and improve it.

Rebuilding schools and supporting teachers

Deng’s proposals covered the whole education system. Primary and secondary schools should improve their teaching and introduce suitable scientific knowledge. Vocational and technical schools should train people for the jobs the economy needed. Universities and other institutions should strengthen specialist training, while radio and television could help extend education and teacher training.

Deng also defended examinations as a way of checking students’ learning and teachers’ performance. He supported demanding academic standards, but warned against treating examinations as the only measure of achievement or placing unnecessary pressure on pupils who struggled.

Teachers were central to these plans. Deng called for greater respect for them, better training and a review of their pay. However, he acknowledged that China’s economic limitations prevented an immediate large improvement in their material conditions. These proposals show the intended direction of reform, rather than proving that all the improvements had already been achieved.

Educational opportunity still had political limits

Deng’s approach was not a move towards politically independent schools. He continued to insist on socialist consciousness, discipline and loyalty to the Communist system. Education was intended to develop competent people who would serve the state’s economic and political purposes.

The important distinction is between greater value placed on expertise and continued political control. Academic achievement could be encouraged without allowing pupils or teachers freedom to reject Communist rule.

Women: participation in modernisation

Women’s position under Deng included both inherited opportunities and continuing restrictions. Under Mao, more women had gained formal education and employment outside the home. Women’s participation in education and paid work therefore did not begin with Deng.

The Fourth National Women’s Congress in September 1978 connected women’s advancement with modernisation. Kang Keqing, elected head of the National Women’s Federation, argued that the Four Modernisations needed women and that women needed the Four Modernisations. Women were encouraged to contribute to science, technology and other skilled occupations, rather than being seen only as wives and mothers.

Yet paid employment did not automatically remove domestic responsibilities. The congress called for more nurseries, laundry and sewing services to reduce the household work that limited women’s opportunities. Writing in March 1979, Soong Ch’ing-ling also called for men and women to share housework fairly. These demands recognised the gap between equality of rights and equality in everyday life; they were goals, not proof that domestic inequality had disappeared.

Employment pressures could also work against women. When young people sent to the countryside returned to cities in 1978–1979, jobs were needed for them. Through dingti, a child could take over a retiring parent’s job. Mothers rather than fathers usually took this early-retirement option. It could help a child find work, but at the cost of the mother’s own working life. Modernisation therefore brought neither uniform gains nor complete equality for women.

Women’s reproductive lives and family expectations

Population policy exposed a different side of the relationship between women and the state. The government treated women’s reproductive lives as something officials could monitor and regulate. Smaller families might leave more time and resources for work and education, but compulsory controls restricted women’s ability to decide whether to have another child.

Traditional preferences also persisted. Many families valued sons because married sons and their wives were expected to care for the husband’s parents. Restricting family size could intensify the importance attached to having a boy. Economic modernisation did not automatically remove unequal attitudes towards girls and women.

Why introduce the One Child policy?

In 1979, China introduced the One Child policy, seeking to limit most couples to one child. Deng and his allies believed that rapid population growth would absorb resources needed for modernisation. More people meant greater demands for housing, schools, health care, land and water. They argued that slower population growth would make it easier to improve living standards.

This was not China’s first attempt at family planning. The earlier ‘Later, Longer, Fewer’ campaign encouraged later childbearing, longer intervals between births and smaller families. Fertility was already falling before 1979, partly because of earlier family planning, urbanisation and women’s education and employment. The One Child policy therefore tightened existing controls; it did not begin the decline in fertility.

Enforcement and its social impact

The government used persuasion as well as punishment. Public messages presented small families as modern and prosperous, suggesting that parents could devote more resources to one child’s health and education. This linked a national aim—economic development—to a family’s hopes for its child.

Enforcement could also be coercive. Local officials monitored women’s fertility, imposed fines for births beyond permitted limits and used forced abortions and sterilisation. Implementation varied, so the policy should not be imagined as a single rule applied identically throughout China.

The central social change was the state’s increased power over family size. Parents faced pressure to fit government population targets, and women bore particularly intrusive controls. The promise of better living standards existed alongside a loss of reproductive freedom. This illustrates a wider feature of Deng’s reforms: greater emphasis on practical improvement did not mean an end to Communist control over everyday life.