Launched the world’s most radical population policy which is credited with bringing down the fertility rate from 5-6 children per woman in 1970 to an estimated 1.5 today.
China’s national family planning programme began in earnest in 1971 with the wan xi shao policy which advocated later marriage, longer birth intervals and fewer children. In 1979 the Government introduced the ‘one-child family’ policy. Enforcement was relaxed somewhat in the mid-1980s through the ‘one small hole’ shift, which enabled couples in rural areas whose first child was a girl to have a second child. But it was tightened in 1988 and again in the 1990s.
