U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–0001

82–487 PDF 2002

WOMEN’S RIGHTS AND CHINA’S NEW FAMILY

PLANNING LAW

ROUNDTABLE

BEFORE THE

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE

COMMISSION ON CHINA

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

SEPTEMBER 23, 2002

Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.cecc.gov

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

Senate House

MAX BAUCUS, Montana, Chairman

CARL LEVIN, Michigan

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California

BYRON DORGAN, North Dakota

EVAN BAYH, Indiana

CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska

BOB SMITH, New Hampshire

SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas

TIM HUTCHINSON, Arkansas

DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska, Co-Chairman

JIM LEACH, Iowa

DAVID DREIER, California

FRANK WOLF, Virginia

JOE PITTS, Pennsylvania

SANDER LEVIN, Michigan

MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio

JIM DAVIS, Florida

EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

PAULA DOBRIANSKY, Department of State

GRANT ALDONAS, Department of Commerce

D. CAMERON FINDLAY, Department of Labor

LORNE CRANER, Department of State

JAMES KELLY, Department of State

IRA WOLF, Staff Director

JOHN FOARDE, Deputy Staff Director

(II)

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

STATEMENTS

Aird, John S., former chief, China Branch and senior research specialist

on China, U.S. Bureau of the Census, Silver Spring, MD ................................ 1

Glick, Bonnie, former Foreign Service Officer and member, 2002 U.S. Assessment Team to China ............................................................................................ 4

Winckler, Edwin A., research associate, East Asian Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY ......................................................................................... 8

Greenhalgh, Susan, professor of anthropology, University of California at

Irvine, Irvine, CA ................................................................................................. 11

Scruggs, Stirling, director, Information and External Relations Division,

United Nations Fund for Population Activities [UNFPA], New York, NY ...... 14

APPENDIX

PREPARED STATEMENTS

Aird, John S ............................................................................................................. 36

Glick, Bonnie ............................................................................................................ 44

Winckler, Edwin A ................................................................................................... 46

Greenhalgh, Susan .................................................................................................. 53

Scruggs, Stirling ...................................................................................................... 57

(1)

WOMEN’S RIGHTS AND CHINA’S NEW FAMILY

PLANNING LAW

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2002

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE

COMMISSION ON CHINA,

Washington, DC.

The roundtable was convened, pursuant to notice, at 2:30 p.m.,

Ira Wolf (staff director) presiding.

Also present: John Foarde, deputy staff director; Holly Vineyard,

U.S. Department of Commerce; Anne Tsai, specialist on ethnic

minorities; Matt Tuchow, Office of Representative Sander Levin;

Susan Weld, general counsel; and Chris Billing, director of communications.

Mr. WOLF. I would like to welcome everybody here today to this

staff-led roundtable of the Congressional-Executive Commission on

China.

Today, we are looking at Women’s Rights and China’s New Population and Family Planning Law. We have got a number of experts

before us today. I will quickly introduce them.

John Aird is former chief of the China Branch and senior research specialist on China at the U.S. Bureau of the Census;

Bonnie Glick was part of the 2002 U.S. Assessment Team to China

and currently with IBM, but she is here in her private and personal capacity today; Edward Winckler is research associate at the

East Asian Institute at Columbia University; Susan Greenhalgh is

professor of anthropology at the University of California at Irvine;

and Stirling Scruggs is currently director of the Information and

External Relations Division of the U.N. Population Fund, with long

hands-on experience in China.

We welcome you all today.

We will start with John Aird, if you would, please.

STATEMENT OF JOHN S. AIRD, FORMER CHIEF, CHINA

BRANCH AND SENIOR RESEARCH SPECIALIST ON CHINA,

U.S. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS, SILVER SPRING, MD

Mr. AIRD. Thank you, Mr. Wolf.

How will China’s new family planning law affect reproductive

freedom in China, particularly the rights of women? To answer

these questions, we need to know what was the purpose of the law,

why it was adopted at this time, and how it is likely to affect the

implementation of family planning in China.

To address that first question, what was the purpose of the law,

the best indication of its purpose is the justifications for it that

2

were given in Chinese domestic sources during the 23 years in

which the government struggled to produce it.

On this count there is little doubt. When Vice Premier Chen

Muhua first proposed it in July 1979, she said that it was ‘‘to

quickly and further reduce the population growth rate.’’ She added

that ‘‘parents having one child will be encouraged, and strict measures will be enforced to control the birth of two or more babies.’’ Other references to the law in Chinese sources over the next 4

years repeated these ideas. The timing was also significant, because 1979 was the first year of the one-child policy. This policy

was bound to encounter opposition and it needed all the reinforcement it could get.

When the crash program of compulsory birth control surgeries in

1983 created such a backlash that the Chinese authorities felt

obliged to relax controls in order to take care of what they called

‘‘the alienation of the masses from the Party,’’ all mention of the

national law disappeared from the Chinese media. Nothing further

was heard about it until 1988. During a period when coercion is not

necessary, law is not needed for reinforcement.

In March 1988, a demographic journal said that persuasion alone

would not work without ‘‘the necessary legal and administrative

measures.’’ In 1989, Peng Peiyun, then head of the State Family Planning

Commission [SFPC], said that the problem in family planning had

become crucial. There had been a rebound in the birth rates in the

middle- to late 1980s, and a law would be enacted in October 1990.

But that did not happen.

In 1990, another source said family planners wanted the law to

be passed to make policies more authoritative and forceful. Still, it

did not happen. In September 1999, after another hiatus, a vice

minister of the State Family Planning Commission said the law

would be enacted within 3 years and that it would ‘‘tighten the rule

of law in carrying out family planning.’’ In December 2000, Zhang Weiqing, then the minister in charge

of the State Family Planning Commission, said the new law was

‘‘to ensure the status of the national family planning policy and the

realization of birth control targets.’’ He made other statements at

that time.

Up to this point, the rationale for the law had not changed. Its

purpose was to strengthen control of fertility and add legal force

to the administrative enforcement of measures already in use.

But when the law was finally made public December 29, 2001,

Zhang Weiqing announced, in an English-language dispatch aimed

at foreigners, that it neither tightens nor relaxes population policy.

That statement made very little sense. Why did the government

work 23 years to adopt a policy that made no change in the implementation of family planning rules? Why had they gone to all that

trouble?

The most likely explanation for the change in the way it was represented, was several things that happened in the meantime that

made coercion once again an embarrassing issue for the Chinese

Government.

First, a number of instances of extreme coercion had been

reported by the Chinese international media since the late 1990s,

3

including some loss of life by family planning violators, and at least

one instance of the deliberate drowning of a baby born without a

birth permit.

Second, the private investigation by the right-to-life organization

PRI claimed to have discovered coercion in one of the United Nations Fund for Population Activities’s [UNFPA] 32 experimental

counties in China where, of course, the measures were supposed to

be absent.

Then there were two other investigations shortly on that challenged those findings, and then still later in May 2002, a fourth

investigation, in which Bonnie Glick participated, came out with a

finding that there were still coercive measures in the Chinese

policy.

Obviously, under these circumstances this is not the time to

draw foreign attention to a hard-fisted family planning law. The

tightening had to be denied. Shortly, there were people even

arguing—including Jiang Zemin himself—that the purpose of the

law was to put an end to coercive abortion in China. That had

never been mentioned as a purpose for this law in all the 23 years.

Besides, no law is needed for that purpose.

If the central authority simply relaxed the demands that drive

the coercion in the system, the coercion will stop very quickly. It

did in 1978, it did again in 1980, and it did in 1984. You do not

need a law to stop coercion when it is the central authority that

is the impetus for coercion.

You simply relax the impetus. Family planning operatives at the

lower level have always regarded family planning as the most

difficult work under heaven, and it is also elsewhere described as

something nobody wants to attend to. The coercion will immediately disappear.

In any case, that cover story will be somewhat hard to promote

because the text of the law is already in print. It contains some

rather suggestively tight-fisted measures. The UNFPA itself has

objected to three provisions, three different articles of the law.

It, however, did not object to the one I would have thought it

would object to first of all, and that is a provision in Article 11 that

says ‘‘specific population and family planning measures shall

provide for detailed population control quotas.’’

The UNFPA has been saying that not only are quotas abolished

in the experimental counties, but the tendency is spreading across

China. This does not make that sound very likely.

Furthermore, the law says nothing at all about the basic components of reproductive freedom of the ICPD [International Conference on Population and Development] in the 1994 plan of action.

It does not acknowledge the rights of couples and women to ‘‘determine the number and spacing of their children.’’ That could gut the

one-child policy.

It does not guarantee their right to choose their own form of contraception, which presumably would include the right to choose

none. That would run afoul of the constitutional provision, again

repeated in the law, about the citizens’ duty to practice family

planning.

Taking all the evidence available into account, I think one must

conclude that the purpose of the law is still what it has always

4

been. That is, to lend more compulsion to an already compulsory

program.

There still remains the question of what effect the law is likely

to have. I think that as long as the coercion issue is a focus of

international attention, efforts to present the law as curbing coercion will probably continue, largely in communications addressed to

foreign audiences. There are not many statements of that sort

currently being addressed to domestic audiences.

In fact, it may be used to add reinforcement to the 1995 ‘‘Seven

Prohibitions’’ document, which did not preclude all forms of coercion in the program, but only those that were most likely to create

popular opposition and thus do damage to the program itself.

But once world attention—which faces many other distractions in

these years—turns elsewhere, I think efforts will be made to use

the law to shore up citizen compliance with family planning rules.

Whether it will succeed in doing that may be open to question.

There are many factors operating in China today which are

weakening the administrative system in general and the implementation of family planning in particular. These run simultaneously

with renewed extreme efforts to enforce family planning that come

into the international press from time to time, and I can document

a number of those.

There will also be a continuation of the problems brought about

by family planning in China, including the sex ratio imbalance, the

excessive aging, adverse effects on marital relations, and damage

to demographic statistics.

I think these are likely to continue. But, in the long run, I think

the attempt will probably fail. The program, which is still very unpopular in China, will become increasingly unenforceable, law or no

law. However, the time for that is not yet.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Aird appears in the appendix.]

Mr. WOLF. Thank you very much.

Bonnie Glick.

STATEMENT OF BONNIE GLICK, FORMER FOREIGN SERVICE

OFFICER AND MEMBER, 2002 U.S. ASSESSMENT TEAM TO

CHINA, BETHESDA, MD

Ms. GLICK. Thank you.

At the beginning of May, I traveled to China as a member of a

three-person team selected by the White House to conduct an assessment of whether the U.N. Population Fund has supported or

participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion

or involuntary sterilization in the People’s Republic of China

[PRC].

These concerns were codified in 1985 in U.S. legislation known

as the Kemp-Kasten amendment. Since 1998, the Chinese State

Birth Planning Commission has conducted a special program with

UNFPA participation in 32 of the PRC’s approximately 2,800

counties.

Given the controversy that has existed in the Congress on the

issues of coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization, great

emphasis was placed on making this a mission of objective factfinding and assessment.

5

After we received an overview of the population situation in

China, we began our travels through 5 of the 32 UNFPA counties.

The five counties were selected by the U.S. Embassy and they

represented a cross-section of urban and rural, poor and middle

income.

During the next 10 days, we traveled approximately 6,000 miles

by air and road through urban and rural China. The five counties

visited were Rongchang County, 100 kilometers outside of

Chongqing Municipality, Pingba County, 21⁄2 hours from Guiyang

in Guizhou Province, Xuanzhou and Guichi Counties in Anhui

Province, and Sihui City in central Guangdong Province.

We were accompanied on our travels by Mr. Hongtao Hu, a member of the State Birth Planning Commission. Mr. Hu received no

more than 24 hours advance notice of our daily travel plans. Our

visits were often unannounced and with no notice. We stopped in

at 3 factories, 2 schools, 11 village birth planning substations, 5

municipal birth planning centers, and 3 hospitals.

I held discussions with women in the streets and agricultural

fields who were going about their daily lives. I went to China with

open eyes and with an objective point of view, and with a narrow

mandate. We went to as many counties and as many villages as

possible.

We also made a variety of unscheduled stops. Although our sample size was small, I believe the results are representative, and

that we varied our methodology through random visits and with little to no notice given to Chinese Government authorities, thereby

decreasing biases in the observed data.

I would like to address the conversations I had with women

throughout our travels. In my years as a Foreign Service officer, I

often found that women around the world, particularly women in

societies that tend to be dominated by men, are willing to open up

to foreign women to discuss personal issues.

Thus, in speaking with Chinese women, I was able to elicit direct

and thoughtful responses to probing questions. Culture played an

enormous role in these conversations.

Often, I found myself asking indirect questions in order to obtain

genuine responses, such as, how many children do you plan or hope

to have? How do you feel about the policy of the Chinese Government that ostensibly limits your ability to have more than one

child? Do you know any women who have been coerced to have

abortions or forced involuntarily to become sterilized? Do you know

anyone who has to pay social compensation fees because she had

more than one child?

If I sensed that a woman—especially a professional woman—in

one of the health clinics was suspicious of my line of questioning,

I would change the way in which I asked my questions. I might ask

her, perhaps not in this county, but have you heard of women in

other counties who might have been coerced to have abortions or

sterilizations?

In one pharmaceutical manufacturing and packaging factory, I

had the opportunity to talk to a group of 15 or so women all working on an assembly line. We talked as they packaged pharmaceuticals. The conditions in which they were working were good,

6

clean, and comfortable. They considered themselves lucky to have

these stable jobs.

When I asked them questions about their family planning practices, nearly all said they had just one child. One woman had two

children, several had none. All commented that it is expensive to

raise children.

I met with two women in a health clinic in Rongchang County

who had just had abortions due to pregnancies arising, they said,

from failed contraception. I asked each of them why they chose to

abort. The first woman said that she already had twins and neither

wanted, nor could afford, a third child. She and her husband, she

said, were happy with their two children and they had not planned

on a third.

The other woman, a 22-year-old, said that she and her husband

were not yet ready to have children. They themselves were children, she said, and she wanted to wait until she was ready for a

‘‘perfect birth.’’ The Chinese Government, it seems to me, through public service

announcements in all forms of media, has convinced women of the

merits of marrying late, delaying births, and focusing on a ‘‘perfect

birth.’’ What is a perfect birth? This is a potentially dangerous question

to ask. Since abortions are legal in China, women take great care

to ensure that fetuses they carry are perfect. If they fear that a

fetus is in any way less than perfect, the inclination among

Chinese women is to abort.

While the practitioners with whom we met said they do not promote abortion as a form of birth control, they were well aware that

many women abort rather than waste their one opportunity to give

birth on a less than perfect child.

As many of us are aware, this attitude has no doubt led to the

skewed gender ratios in Chinese births. With 116 male children

born for every 100 female children, the numbers speak for themselves. This skewed birth ratio, when considered among a population of 1.3 billion people, demonstrates that the demographic

challenges facing China today and into the future are staggering.

I was initially surprised by the near uniformity of responses I received to the questions I asked Chinese women. However, after several days I realized that the similarity of responses was due to the

tremendous public service campaign the Chinese Government has

undertaken to promote its one-child policy.

Generally speaking, women in China genuinely and faithfully adhere to the one-child policy, now codified with the new population

law. Although it is hard for Americans to accept the concept of limitations on family size, we must all think for a moment about the

particulars of the situation in China.

In a country with a population of at least 1.3 billion people, and

where the current generation of women of child-bearing age was

raised with the philosophy of one child only, it is easy to see

women in China accepting the limitation on births as part of their

civic and patriotic duty.

This public service campaign, if you will, to discourage multiple

births has been so prevalent and so effective, that few women I met

seemed willing to rock the boat.

7

Indeed, all the women I met talked about how expensive it is to

raise children, the underlying implication being that it is even

more expensive to raise multiple children, given the coercive social

compensation fees levied on families daring enough to have

multiple births.

Clearly, China is sitting on a demographic time bomb. If the

population continues to grow at its current rate, it will run into

problems of resource allocation. I went to China to look into the resources of the U.N. Population Fund, all $3.5 million of its annual

budget.

When comparing the budget of the UNFPA with the overall

budget of the Chinese State Birth Planning Commission, $3.6 billion, it quickly becomes apparent that China is not interested in

UNFPA for its money.

Rather, the PRC is interested in the fig leaf UNFPA provides in

its attempt to show the world that it conforms to the international

norms and conventions for family planning.

By having an UNFPA presence in China, the PRC can hold this

fact up to the world as evidence that it follows generally accepted

norms vis-a-vis family planning. In fact, it does not. The limited

presence of UNFPA in China may actually hurt efforts to bring the

country’s policies more in line with international norms.

This leaves UNFPA with only two options, as I see it: Either

expand into more counties in China, which is unlikely given its tremendous resource constraints, or scale back and demand real

reform of the Chinese Government before agreeing to share international expertise and before granting international acceptance of

Chinese practices.

Given the codification on September 1 of China’s one-child policy,

UNFPA should act forcefully to demand changes to this law, to the

coercive fines, and so-called social compensation fees.

The opportunity I had to travel relatively freely throughout

China is one that is afforded to few people. The Chinese Government was accommodating in that we were allowed to travel

anywhere we chose in the country. Were we fully free? Doubtful.

Everywhere we went, we were accompanied by an official of the

State Birth Planning Commission.

At the initiation of our trip, I did not think it would be possible

to operate as freely as I would have liked. In truth, the representatives of the State Birth Planning Commission were more token

than anything else. Mr. Hu facilitated our encounters in health

centers and in factories, nothing more.

In closing, I would like to express my thanks to those who facilitated the visit, while assiduously avoiding any effort to color our

team’s impressions or influence our opinions. These include individuals in the State Department, the American Embassy in Beijing,

and the Consulates General in Shanghai and Guangzhou.

I would urge this Administration to continue to monitor closely

this aspect of Chinese life. As I mentioned, China’s continued population explosion is the elephant in the room that no one wants to

discuss and all would rather ignore.

It will place ever-increasing strains on natural resources, public

services, and employment. These strains will be felt up and down

8

the political spectrum and they must be factored into our decisionmaking as we deal with China in this new century. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Glick appears in the appendix.]

Mr. WOLF. Thanks very much.

Edwin Winckler, please.

STATEMENT OF EDWIN A. WINCKLER, RESEARCH ASSOCIATE,

EAST ASIAN INSTITUTE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK

CITY, NY

Mr. WINCKLER. I appreciate the Commission inviting me. I have

to leave out all courtesies, because in 10 minutes I cannot even

mention what needs to be covered, so I am just going to dive right

in.

Let me say that Susan Greenhalgh and I wrote a 250-page report

for the Immigration and Naturalization Service a year or two ago

explaining the very profound changes that have been occurring in

the Chinese birth limitation program in the last 5 to 10 years. We

are revising that report as a book for Stanford University Press.

Since I had to update that report for the book, I wrote a 40-page

article about the new national law—the programs first national

law—explaining what it is doing. That article will be posted on

your Website and it will be coming out pretty soon in Population

and Development Review. Given that I cannot explain the law to

you in 10 minutes, please consult that article for what the law is

all about. I also made my own translation of the law, which the

Commission will not only post, but also print with my prepared

statement. So while I talk, I am going to stick to the outline of my

prepared written statement and refer you to that article for details.

However, there is something new I want to get on the table,

which is that at the beginning of this month the birth planning

program in China had a very important work conference where

they summed up 2 years’ of experiments about how they are going

to go about implementing the 2001 law, which is the most concrete

indication that we have of where things will be going in the next

couple of years. I hope we can get into that a little bit in the

question period.

Now, the first part of my prepared statement is about change. If

nobody remembers anything else from my presentation, I hope you

will remember that there have been extraordinary and extensive

changes going on in the birth program, as in everything else about

China. It would be remarkable if the program were not changing

a great deal. I wish somebody would ask me a question afterward

about the political nature of this process, because it is a very convoluted process and it is very easy to misread from the outside. I

cannot go into that and still tell you anything concrete about the

change, so may I ask that somebody ask me about that?

Now, the three changes that I want to call to your attention are,

first of all, demographic change. The whole reason for the reorientation of policy at the turn of the millennium is that it is not 1983

any more. China is now facing a low fertility rate, not a high fertility rate. The problem now, as they phrase it, is to ‘‘maintain’’ the

low fertility rate and not to drive it down any further. This is a

very different kind of problem, so it gives them the latitude to

make some changes, and it requires some changes.

9

The second kind of change noted in my prepared statement is political change, which my article discusses at greater length. We all

know that there have been great political changes in China. As Mr.

Aird said, the current leadership is much weaker than the old one

was. It is going out of its way not to do things to the population

that will create unnecessary popular discontent. There is also systemic change, the contraction of the government out of large areas

of the economy and other sectors. So it is not as though the

changes in the program are being driven by public relations concerns about what foreigners think. The changes in the program are

being driven by very powerful systemic changes in China itself.

The third kind of change is change in the program itself. Again,

I cannot go into it in any detail. But let me say that the previous

peak of nasty enforcement was around 1991. Coming out of that,

they realized that they had leaned on the populace too hard and

unnecessarily, given how low fertility was. So, on the one hand, beginning around 1993, they launched a series of reforms to clean up

their own bureaucratic act, to clean up their state-centric program.

They cleaned it up by professionalizing it and by putting a lot more

money into it—by not having periodic crash campaigns by amateur

cadres, but instead financing a professional core of birth planners

and reproductive health workers. That is the positive side. The

negative side, in terms of cleaning up their act, was removing all

sorts of stupid abuses from the system, coercive implementation

and enforcement abuses, and also corruption and misallocation of

local funds abuses. I would be happy to go into that.

On the other hand, beginning about 1995, and particularly later

in the decade, they began moving toward a more client-centered approach, what you might call liberalization or deregulation. They

themselves decided that they had too much red tape in the program, that it was not necessary for their purposes. It was creating

opportunities for corruption, it was irritating the public, and they

did not need it. They launched a process, which they are now continuing dramatically, of getting rid of this unnecessary red tape.

Now, another process of change in the program you could say

embraces all of these kinds of reforms. Let us call it the process

of legalization. The main point I want to make about that is that

passing the law in 2001 had a long preparatory period. They could

not pass the law until they cleaned up their enforcement act

enough to narrow the gap between what the Chinese Constitution

would require in the name of a law and what they were actually

doing. The ‘‘Seven Don’ts’’ and the cleaning up the act were much

more than cosmetic. It made clear to local cadres that they were

not supposed to use grossly coercive implementation measures.

The upshot—you know this because you have heard many

sessions about it—is that the whole country is moving toward legalization of institutions, lawful implementation in all areas. So

you end up at the end of the 1990s with buzz words like ‘‘implementation according to the law,’’ which means no beating people

over the head and other things that were said in the ‘‘Seven

Don’ts,’’ and ‘‘legitimate rights and interests of citizens,’’ which

means, among other things, that citizens have a right not to be

abused by family planning workers. That is the language that is

the upshot of the 1990s reforms and that does appear in the law,

10

and that does address the issue of coercion, albeit not using that

word.

The second part of my prepared statement is about the 2001 law.

Here again, I ask that somebody ask me a question about the principles behind the law, because some people talk as though China

is like Sierra Leone, some kind of group of thugs, running around

acting in some unprincipled way or beating up on people for no

purpose. No, birth limitation is a public policy in China and there

are a lot of complicated considerations that go into it. I would love

to talk about that if somebody would like to ask.

Now, under the 2001 law, I have three topics. The first topic is

duties. Some people say there are two incompatible interpretations

of Chinese birth policy, voluntary versus coercive. This is not very

helpful, because the policy is both. Limiting your fertility is mandatory, like paying your taxes or serving in the draft in a war. So,

it is not voluntary. But compliance with the policy is now, as

Bonnie just explained, largely voluntary, as a result of 20 years of

enforcement, propaganda, and socioeconomic change.

But there is still some non-compliance. People try to get away

with things. There is, therefore, enforcement now in the form of the

quite large ‘‘social compensation fee.’’ So arguing about whether

there is total reproductive freedom or whether the program is completely voluntary or not is a complete waste of time. The policy is

mandatory and it is a duty of Chinese citizens to comply with the

policy. That is a matter of considered public policy, and that is not

going to change.

My second topic about what the 2001 law is trying to do, is that

the national political leadership has a huge interest in restraining

the local state. Local governments in China tend to be very predatory, they try to extract too many resources from the public. Some

have gone hog-wild in their administrative behavior. The national

leadership is terrified of this. They do not want a rebellion against

them on account of this maladministration. So one of the basic

purposes of the law is to reign in maladministration.

Accordingly, when you see demands for lawful implementation

and punishments for unlawful implementation in order to guarantee citizens’ rights, this is not boilerplate. The idea that it is not

mentioned domestically is absolutely preposterous. The law came

into effect on September 1, and the entire birth planning system

spent the entire month of August running one of its huge educational campaigns in order—of all things, in a post-totalitarian

system—to make sure that all citizens understood their legal rights

and interests. That is not just altruistic. The point is that the government wants the citizens, from the bottom up, to exercise control

over the sometimes-out-of-control local state. I would love to talk

more about restraining the local state and I would love to cite the

articles in the law that address this, but there is no time.

My third topic about the 2001 law is its positive side. Restraining

the local State addresses the negative rights of citizens not to be

abused. The provision of benefits addresses positive rights. What is

really extraordinary here is that the Chinese Government is in the

process of making up new rights on behalf of its citizens right and

left, rights that are not in the Constitution, rights to reproductive

health care, rights to free this and that. I am not saying that it

11

is paradise over there, but my talk is titled, ‘‘Positive Recent Developments’’ because if you do not recognize the positive developments

when you see them, you cannot foster them.

The third part of my prepared statement was about implementation. The main thrust of what I talked about there—and you can

look at it—are the practical problems that the government will

have in carrying out the 2001 law, particularly the cost of delivering these positive reproductive health services and we all know

how expensive that is. But, here again, I make a plea that somebody ask me a question about implementation, because now I have

something much more concrete to talk to you about, which is this

recent work conference, which is the implementation of the 2001

law and which is a positive development of such positiveness that

I would not have dared hope for it when I made up the title.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Winckler appears in the

appendix.]

Mr. WOLF. Susan Greenhalgh, please.

STATEMENT OF SUSAN GREENHALGH, PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT IRVINE,

IRVINE, CA

Ms. GREENHALGH. Thank you.

Since China launched its controversial one child policy in 1980,

influential voices in this country have advanced a powerful critique

of the state-sponsored coercion used in the name of limiting population growth. While the focus on coercion has been helpful in

drawing attention to the human rights abuses in the Chinese program, it has outlived its usefulness.

Three limitations bear note. First, the existence of coercion in the

Chinese program is by now very stale news. Few people on earth

do not know about this.

Second, and more importantly, the exclusive focus on coercion

has kept us from seeing, to say nothing of understanding, new developments in China’s population policy. The coercion story divides

the world into two opposed systems—capitalist/socialist, free/coercive, good/bad—and defines the presence of coercion as the only

thing worth noticing about the Chinese program. Evoking an older

bipolar cold war world, the coercion perspective ignores forces of

globalization that are profoundly transforming China’s State and

society, fostering not only change in the State program, but also

the emergence of new and progressive quasi-state and non-state

sites of political activity. While some Americans have been turning

over every stone looking for coercion, since 1993–1994 Chinese reformers have been quietly dismantling the old target-oriented system, replacing it piece by piece with one focused on reproductive

health. These gigantic changes remained invisible when we are

only looking for coercion.

Third, the exclusive focus on coercion has limited our responses

to new developments in Chinese population affairs. The coercion

critique has elicited punitive responses from the American

Government, rather than constructive engagements with Chinese

reformers.

The official American response has been less helpful than it

could have been. China is changing. While continuing to draw

12

attention to human rights violations in the Chinese program, it is

time to move beyond that single-minded focus on coercion to see

the remarkable transformations that are taking place and the opportunities they present for constructive American response.

This brief presentation draws on nearly 20 years of active scholarly research on China’s population dynamics, policy, and birth

planning program. That research has involved numerous trips to

China where I have conducted extensive interviews with both the

makers of China’s policy and the peasants who are its main objects.

In those 20 years, I have heard many heartbreaking stories and

seen many deeply appalling things. In my scholarly articles, many

focused on the human costs of the Chinese policy, I have sought not

to criticize China, but to understand how those troubling practices

came about. That has seemed a more productive approach.

Today I want to make three points. First, despite the heavy cost

China’s restrictive population policy has imposed, and continues to

impose, on women and girls, important pro-woman changes are occurring not only within the Chinese population establishment, but

also outside the state, that is, beyond the scope of formal law,

which often follows as much as leads social change in China. Given

the growing role of non-state forces in Chinese politics, it is important to attend to and support these developments.

The second big point. The promising changes that have occurred

in China have stemmed, not from foreign coercion, but from a combination of internal critique and constructive engagements with

international organizations. This history contains important

lessons for the formation of American policy toward China in the

future.

The third big point. The prospects for further reform to advance

women’s rights and interests will be shaped by a variety of cultural, political, and demographic factors which present both challenges and opportunities. In this, as in other domains, China will

continue to follow a Chinese path to reform that will bear the

marks of that nation’s distinctive culture and politics. We must not

expect Americanization.

Since the early 1990s, two streams of women-focused critique

and reform of the birth planning program have developed within

China.

Reforms in the State Birth Planning Commission.—In the early

1990s, facing rising birth rates, the Commission oversaw the use

of harsh administrative measures to reach targets. By early 1993,

those in charge realized that fertility had fallen to a level far below

what they had imagined possible. With pressure to produce results

off, in 1993 and 1994, Commission leaders began to grow concerned

about the social, physical, and political price that had been paid for

pushing the numbers down so fast.

These domestic concerns were supported by China’s growing involvement with the international movement for women’s reproductive health, associated with the 1994 Cairo conference. In the wake

of that conference, collaborations with foreign organizations

advancing reproductive health agendas multiplied. From those organizations, reformers in the Commission received a vocabulary of

reform, financial resources, and organizational and technical knowhow to pursue more woman-centered health-oriented approaches.

13

As documented in detail elsewhere, since the mid–1990s the State

has introduced a package of programmatic policy and legal reforms

culminating in the new law designed to improve the delivery of

services, while retaining control over population growth.

New voices outside the state.—Meantime, another dynamic has

been developing outside the population establishment. Since the

mid–1990s, a loosely defined group of women scholar-activists has

begun to speak out about the harmful, as well as helpful, effects

of birth planning on women’s health and well-being.

Crucial to the emergence of these activists has been the multiplying connections to transnational agencies and feminist and reproductive health networks forged at the Fourth World Conference

on Women held in Beijing in 1995. Since the conference, a number

of women’s rights activists have begun to work to raise consciousness about the effects of State birth planning on women and girls

and to promote policy and program changes to alleviate the negative ones. Women’s advocates in China must exercise great caution

in criticizing what remains ‘‘a basic state policy.’’ In this restrictive

political climate, transnational links have been critical, for they

have given these women and men new concepts, political support,

and external resources to pursue their agendas.

NGO [non-governmental organizations] projects on behalf of

women and girls.—Recent work has highlighted the significant innovations in the state program, but initiatives emerging from

NGOs are significant as well. Such projects include women’s income-generating activities, magazines for rural women that include

special sections on reproductive health, telephone hotlines providing advice on sexual and reproductive health and rights, and

many other things. Many of these projects have been developed on

local initiative and supported, in part, by foreign organizations.

So far, I have talked only about the projects initiated by urban

elite actors. But China’s rural people are also taking matters into

their own hands and working to alleviate some of the costs strict

birth control has imposed on rural women and girls. In the countryside, for example, a whole informal culture of adoption has developed that flourishes largely outside of the official apparatus of

the state. The legal development of women’s rights is important,

but so, too, are informal practices that bolster women’s status and

rights on the ground.

Challenges and opportunities ahead.—First, the challenge of

political economy. In the reform area, the advance of global capitalism, coupled with the retreat of the State from direct intervention in many areas of life, have left women vulnerable to many

forms of discrimination. New notions of the virtuous wife and good

mother who has left the public sphere to men will complicate efforts to promote women’s status and rights.

Second, the challenge of traditional culture. The notion of women’s independent rights has few precedents in traditional Chinese

culture, a culture in which women’s social and legal place was

within the male-defined family. These cultural constructs will

shape the way legal notions of women’s rights develop.

Third, the challenge of an unknowable demographic future.

Today’s relaxation has been contingent on the achievement and

maintenance of low birth rates over the last 10 years. Today, by

14

the way, the TFR [total fertility rate] is estimated at 1.8, quite astonishing. Should the birth rate, though, somehow rise or turn out

to be higher than current estimates suggest, the reforms may well

slow.

Fourth, the opportunity presented by social change. Twenty

years of reform and economic advance have dramatically lowered

child-bearing preferences. In many parts of the countryside couples

want, at most, two children, and in some areas they want only one.

These changes in Chinese society have made, and will continue to

make, high-pressure tactics in the birth planning program increasingly unnecessary.

Fifth, the opportunity offered by a new gender consciousness in

the state. Since the mid-1990s, the Chinese State has made

women’s economic, political, and educational development a newly

important part of its ongoing reforms. While implementation faces

obstacles, this new commitment to women is a promising

development.

Thank you. Thanks very much.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Greenhalgh appears in the

appendix.]

Mr. WOLF. Stirling Scruggs.

STATEMENT OF STIRLING SCRUGGS, DIRECTOR, INFORMATION AND EXTERNAL RELATIONS DIVISION, UNITED

NATIONS FUND FOR POPULATION ACTIVITIES [UNFPA], NEW

YORK, NY

Mr. SCRUGGS. Thank you, sir.

I will spend a few minutes talking about UNFPA’s history of

work in China, what it has done in the area of advocacy, and its

current program.

UNFPA first began work in China in 1980. During our first 10

years, we focused mainly on projects that had to do with self-sufficiency, UNFPA supported China’s first modern census, with assistance by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.N. Population Division.

We also supported contraceptive research in China with WHO,

believing that a breakthrough in contraceptive technology could

come from China because they had such an extensive research

program.

We began academic training for Ph.D candidates from 23 universities in China and who were sent away to United States, United

Kingdom, and Australian universities for their degrees. We also

worked in the first 10 years on contraceptive production, assisting

China to upgrade, and in some cases build, contraceptive factories.

We did not pay for the building, but for the equipping and the

training.

In about 15 years, China became totally self-sufficient in

high-quality international-standard modern contraceptives, including pills, condoms, IUDs [intra-uterine devices], injectables, and

foam. We were assisted in this work by the Program of Appropriate

Technology in Health [PATH], a Seattle-based NGO.

Beginning in the 1990s when I arrived in China, we assisted

with another census. We worked with the returning Ph.Ds so they

could establish academic programs in their own universities in the

subject areas of sociology, demography, and statistics. This way

15

they could provide research that told Chinese decisionmakers about

the problems inherent in their policy, and some of what Susan

Greenhalgh was talking about.

We continued contraceptive research and we established a highquality maternal and child health and family planning program in

310 counties. The focus of the program was on safe deliveries,

acute respiratory infections, diarrhea, breast feeding, and the use

of high-quality contraceptives manufactured in Chinese factories.

Our partners in this endeavor were UNICEF and WHO [World

Health Organization].

We established a special inter-personal counseling and informed

consent program which was also executed by the Seattle group

PATH.

The creation of China’s first women’s empowerment projects in

36 counties in 11 provinces was probably the most gratifying field

projects I have ever been associated with. Of course, beginning in

1997 we initiated the current program, which includes the now

very well-known 32 counties project.

In the area of advocacy, we began in 1980, as soon as we arrived

in China, advising the Chinese against the use of the one-child policy. We have maintained a constant dialog since that time with the

Chinese as representatives of the United Nations and international

standards.

In 1983, as John Aird pointed out earlier, it became apparent

that there was a massive coercive campaign of sterilizations and

abortions. We sent our deputy executive director the day after we

learned of this injustice, and I myself, when I was in China, met

with the ministers and vice ministers frequently to criticize and

discuss various aspects of coercion that would appear in the press

or that I would learn about.

When I arrived in China, my first field trip was based on a

human rights event. That is a law that was passed in several provinces to sterilize the mentally retarded. The law was put together

without scientific evidence or consideration for human rights.

I went to villages in the northwestern part of China where there

were a significant number of people who were suffering from mental retardation, much more than in a normal population. I went

back and worked with WHO to bring in a team of experts. They

came in and discovered that micro nutrients were missing from the

diet and set up a massive iodine program to add iodine to the diet.

That was financed and executed by UNDP [U.N. Development Programme] and UNICEF.

In 1992, I put together a research project with the Alan

Guttmacher Institute, WHO, and Beijing University to try to

convince the Chinese to stop using the steel ring IUD, which was

ineffective and caused significant difficulties for the women who

used them—some 75 million at that time.

The research convinced the government to switch to copper-based

IUDs 2 weeks after the report was released. Over a 10-year period,

which just ended last year, the researchers estimated that 41 million pregnancies, 26 million abortions, and 14 million births were

prevented just by the switch of IUDs, and that a million miscarriages were prevented, along with 360,000 child deaths and

84,000 maternal deaths.

16

In 1994, armed with the Cairo program of action, the Action Plan

of the International Conference on Population and Development, a

needs-based and human rights-based blueprint for global action, we

were able to push the Chinese harder to accelerate pro-human

rights changes in their program. The fourth country program was

put together with that in mind.

The objectives of the program in 1997 were to improve and provide access to quality reproductive health services for women and

men in a small, limited area, and to demonstrate an integrated client-centered approach to reproductive health, information, and

services on a voluntary basis, and by doing so, developing a model

in these selected counties from which lessons could be learned and

could be drawn on for application at the national level.

At the beginning of the project, a so-called ‘‘pink letter’’ was sent

to all households in the 32 counties explaining the project, the

human rights implications, and the rights that the people would

have for quality family planning and to be able to make their own

choices. Although targets and quotas were lifted, they still were not

absolutely free to make their own choice because of an onerous

social compensation fee.

Before this program was initiated, there was no privacy during

counseling and no informed consent. Now there is privacy and informed consent. During the life of the project, the number of

women who know at least three forms of contraception has increased from 39 to 80 percent; sterilization has decreased; IUD use

has increased; abortion has decreased; maternal mortality has decreased; infant mortality has decreased; and delivery by skilled

birth attendants has increased.

Better medical protocols were developed for choice in contraceptives, for help during menopause and infertility, for support to prevent sexually transmitted infections, reproductive tract infections,

and AIDS prevention. Also, protocols to promote breast feeding

were improved.

So far, this model has been adopted in 800 other counties in

China, including 4 entire provinces.

Challenges ahead: The social compensation fee, the one-child policy itself, improvement of the IEC, or Information, Education, and

Special Communication; projects to change behavior, and condom

availability for the HIV problems that China is now facing. Our

major mission continues to be to prove that choice is right, it

works, and to continue to advocate for gender equality.

UNFPA, like all U.N. organizations, is guided by international

human rights standards and principles. UNFPA provides assistance in all phases of reproductive health, including family

planning, maternal health, sexually transmitted disease, and HIV

prevention, treatment for unsafe abortion, and advocacy for an

enabling environment.

What that primarily means is women’s rights and the availability of reproductive health services. We assist countries to become sustainable in development planning and self-sufficiency

through data collection, analysis, and research.

Governments need to know the size of their population, the

dynamics—the number who live in urban areas, rural areas, the internal and external migration situation, age—in order to meet

17

citizen needs and vital statistics. We have advocacy programs all

over the world focused on human rights, gender equality, women’s

education, social participation, health care, and reproductive

health.

I am proud to be associated with UNFPA. I am proud of its principles, its work, and its staff. But today, due to discrimination and

lack of quality reproductive health services, and because of a lack

of funding, ‘‘every minute’’ a woman dies from pregnancy-related

causes, 40 have unsafe abortions, 190 become pregnant who do not

want to be, 48 percent of all women deliver at home without medical help, and finally, every minute 10 people are infected with

HIV, half under the age of 25.

Specifically, in China, I believe engagement has helped to move

China to improve women’s rights and to moderate its population

policies. Much more is needed, but each day more citizens are getting involved and understanding this agenda. China is, I believe,

moving forward, but they have a long way to go.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Scruggs appears in the

appendix.]

Mr. WOLF. Thank you all very much. This is a wealth of information, and a diversity of views, which is what we try to do at these

roundtables.

I will start. We had a similar roundtable 2 weeks ago on HIV/

AIDS. One of the issues that came up was the skewed gender birth

ratio and the implications for HIV/AIDS into the future.

It obviously has many other implications. It is something that

exists not just in China, but that skewing exists in a number of

societies.

What are some of the longer term implications of this? Are there

concerns within the Chinese Government, among reformers and

non-reformers, about the implications and what one might do to

reduce it?

Mr. AIRD. There have been concerns within Chinese circles,

including even, I understand, within the State Family Planning

Commission itself, but especially in Chinese demographic circles,

about the consequences of the use of coercive measures.

In the mid-1990s, there were articles in demographic journals

which frankly admitted that the program was based on coercion

and argued that coercion was creating and exacerbating the

popular backlash.

One article said that the stronger the course of measures used,

the stronger the backlash against them. Another article pointed out

that programs of this sort represent a violation of women’s rights.

They did not have the right to choose their own form of contraceptive. The type of contraception was prescribed for them and they

had to follow that. Now, these are complaints from the 1990s.

More recently, and I think more significantly, something which

has not been mentioned here, and I do not think I mentioned it in

my written preparation—it should have been there but I did not

really have time, in just 2 days, to put it in there—is the fact that

there have recently been testimonials from top Chinese leaders

going back as far as Peng Peiyun, the previous minister in charge

of the State Family Planning Commission, and now including

18

Zhang Weiqing, who has said this several times, and even Jiang

Zemin himself, that the present low birth rates are unstable. Some

of the quotations suggest that the—— Mr. WOLF. Excuse me. I am sorry. Maybe I was not clear. My

question was, the implications of the skewed gender birth ratio.

Mr. AIRD. Skewed gender. Well, all I know about the attitudes

on that, is there has been an outcry that the danger of this sort

of thing is that, within a given period, many Chinese men will not

be able to find wives and that there will be serious problems of

social unrest as a result.

There have been current reports in China of difficulties with abduction of women under false pretenses into rural villages, reports

of women being lured away on a social service basis and then finding themselves used as common property in villages where there

are insufficient women.

The government has expressed concern about this, and of course

it is partly a result of the one-child limitation, particularly its impact on rural areas where it is important to have a male because

it is the only basis for Social Security in many villages when the

family grows old.

But the other part of it, of course, is the traditional Chinese

preference for males, which is not confined to China, but is found

elsewhere in Asia.

Mr. WOLF. Right.

Susan, I wonder, could you comment on long-term implications

and the possibility of, I do not know, reversals from policy means?

Ms. GREENHALGH. The long-term implications are really worrying. You probably know that the sex ratio at birth now is 116.9.

It is really high, and it gets worse with higher-order births. It is

hard to say what the long-term implications are.

I think we cannot be sanguine about the implications for women.

The rise in the abduction and sales of women in rural areas is directly connected to the disappearance of marriageable women. On

the other hand, the government has been deeply concerned about

this since the early 1990s especially since around 1993.

The deputy director of the State Birth Planning Commission

issued an order to stop using ultrasound for prenatal sex determination, because this is the major factor behind the increase in

the sex ratio at birth. Parents are aborting female fetuses. Those

kinds of measures have not been very effective. All you need to do

is bribe the local medical worker and you can be told the gender

of your unborn child.

Increasingly, especially since the mid-1990s, there has been a

concerted effort in many areas of government, including the State

Birth Planning Commission, to change tactics. That is, to try to improve women’s well-being on all fronts: political participation, economic status, legal status, health status, and so on. This is where

the action is now.

I have a new statement, right off the Web, in Chinese, on the interpretation of the new law, ‘‘Central Concept: People as the Core.

Major implementation strategy: Improve the status and legal rights

of women.’’ So, that is encouraging.

Mr. WOLF. Thank you.

John Foarde is the deputy staff director of the Commission.

19

Mr. FOARDE. Thank you, Ira.

Thank you all for coming and sharing your expertise with us this

afternoon.

Since the late 1980s, and particularly after the Tiananmen

massacre in 1989, a number of Chinese people have come to the

United States and asked for asylum under the Immigration and

Nationality Act. A great many of them have asked for it on the

basis of the family planning policy.

I take it, John, you, and also Ed and Susan, have done background papers over the years—a recent one in your case, I think— for the INS to consult when trying to adjudicate these claims.

Can you give us a sense of whether there has been any change

in the nature of those claims in the last 12 years, and if more recently there is the same basis on which to grant asylum on that

basis as it was, for example, in 1990, 1991, 1992?

Mr. AIRD. It is hard to detect a change because when I see the

cases, sometimes the offenses that they refer to occurred 2, 3, 4, 5

years ago. However, recently, for example, I had two cases in which

the complaint was recent—it was dated from about 2000, 2001—

of children born without a birth permit.

In one case, it was a daughter born to a couple in a hospital. The

child was obviously in good, healthy condition. It was born under

circumstances of a forced late-term abortion. The child emerged,

however, unharmed, but was taken away and apparently killed by

the hospital personnel because it did not have a birth permit.

In the second case, it was a girl, again, a forced late-term abortion. The child was born alive. It was taken home by the parents.

One week later, the Family Planning people came to the home and

said the child needed an inoculation.

The parents suspected nothing. The inoculation was given. Shortly after they left, the child began to experience difficulty in breathing. They rushed it to the hospital, where it was declared dead on

arrival.

There, a family planning official—or one of the doctors, I do not

remember which—said to the couple, do not think you can escape

the long reach of the family planning policy. That alerted them to

the idea that the inoculation was probably a lethal dosage intended

to kill the child born without a permit.

I cannot trace that these things are getting any more moderate

over time, but I think these are rather deviant samples. I do not

think there would be much basis for generalizing from them. All

they say is, such incidents continue. They continue because local

cadres are still under pressure to make sure that they do not exceed their birth quotas.

Mr. FOARDE. Thank you. Susan.

Ms. GREENHALGH. I will take that one. I agree that it is impossible to detect a change in the nature of the stories, because many

of the claims are for events that happened even 10, 20 years ago.

My firm view is that these kinds of stories that these claimants tell

are not at all a reliable basis for our knowing what is going on in

China.

I have discussed this matter with a number of INS agents,

people who are on the front line listening to these stories, trying

to decide whether they are credible. The INS agents have a very

20

difficult time. For one thing, the INS does not require any kind of

documentation, so people can just tell whatever story they think is

going to give them political asylum in this country.

And while the abuses that have taken place in the program are

really pretty terrible, there are also networks of story shapers out

there that help to shape the stories that people tell. So, I do not

think that these kinds of stories are going to be a good basis for

shaping American policy having to do with China’s birth planning

program.

Mr. AIRD. May I voice a note of dissent?

Mr. FOARDE. Please.

Mr. AIRD. Many of the stories that I see, Susan, are highly detailed. They have a ring of verisimilitude. I do not get a chance to

question the applicants themselves. I never have that opportunity.

But, where I think the applicants’ comments are not very credible, I do not accept the case. That has happened in a few cases.

In fact, once I testified on the other side, on behalf of the Service

and against an applicant whose story I found not believable.

Often, too many times, however, the story is simply too vivid, too

particular to be dismissed as a fabricated story. But, again, you are

absolutely right. As I said earlier, it is hard to generalize from

these stories about things. What they say, is it is still going on in

some places.

Mr. WOLF. Susan Weld is the general counsel of the Commission.

Ms. WELD. As you all know, this is a rule of law Commission. We

are supposed to be focusing on the rule of law in China. So I am

interested in what ways does the expression of this policy in the

form of a national law make a difference?

Does it mean that women will have causes of action to try to

apply some of those penalties against the administrators who do

the abuse? How will this be enforced? Is there additional legislation

necessary before that step can be taken by women who are the victims of abuse? I guess, Ed, could you respond to this?

Mr. WINCKLER. Well, that does go to some of the implementation

questions. I think a set of legal premises—the language about lawful implementation and legal rights of people—is the crux. Then

there are supplementary implementing regulations, such as the

Technical Services Regulations, that begin to spell out what that

is supposed to mean. And now there is also this work conference

where they are putting together their package of implementation

measures. This is the Chinese talking to themselves—not the Chinese talking to foreigners—which is always the best kind of evidence you can get. This is the model that they are going to prop

up to be what the whole country should do.

If I could just take a slight sidebar. There is the misapprehension that the 2001 law calls for targets and quotas, but that is simply a mistranslation. The whole system has begun the process of

dropping targets and quotas, partly under UNFPA urging, and this

city in Heilongjiang, which is going to be the national model, has

gone quite far in that direction.

The real crucial test is that not only is the formulation of policy

implementation measures shifting from making up target numbers

that cadres are supposed to meet, toward making up programs for

raising the quality of reproductive health service, but also they are

21

doing the same thing in the ‘‘responsibility systems,’’ the personnel

evaluation systems. This is supposed to go to your question of, how

do we know that the law is going to make a difference? Well, we

know it is going to make a difference because they are using this

tool, the personnel evaluation system—it is astounding—to do exactly the opposite of what they used the same tool to do in 1991

when they used that tool to enforce a very coercive enforcement of

the program.

Now, in Mudanjiang, in Heilongjiang, the new model, they are

not going to have any item in the personnel evaluation system for

population quota or for birth rate. They are dropping the demographic indicators and they are switching all the indicators over to

quality of care, which of course includes women’s rights not to be

abused and so forth. But the emphasis now, because they really

feel that they have gotten a handle on the abusive administration

problem, is quality of care and it is ‘‘democratic participation.’’

Now, I utter that in quotation marks because this village selfgovernment business where the government is trying to get the

community itself to enforce the program does not mean an absence

of coercion. The program is still mandatory. But in terms of guaranteeing that there will not be abusive implementation, that everything is fair, that it is transparent, and so forth, that is exactly

what the government is trying to do, by putting as much of the administration of the program in the hands of village committees as

possible. That is the emphasis in this new implementation model

that is being put out.

Ms. WELD. I was thinking of something quite specific, which is

when the women’s rights and interest law was passed it was criticized because it says women shall have all these good things, and

certain ways of treating women shall be considered abusive and illegal. But there was inside that law no cause of action, so you often

had to depend on somebody else, like the Women’s Federation or

somebody, to come up and sue on your behalf.

So I am looking for a way that the people harmed, the women

in particular, can be subjects rather than objects. The government

is trying to reform the abuse from the top and the United States

is trying to reform it from the outside, but the women are the ones

harmed. How can they enforce the law for themselves?

Mr. WINCKLER. Well, the quick answer is that national laws in

China are always vague. There is a tissue of laws, other related

laws—administrative redress and administrative litigation and so

forth—that if you want to take a legal approach is what you would

rely on. The procedures are there. But actually this village selfgovernment thing is much more to the point, because if you are a

woman in a village and abused, you do not have to go through

some complicated court process. You just bring it up within the village and the village leadership should complain to higher

authorities.

Ms. WELD. Thank you very much.

Mr. WOLF. Anne Tsai, who is our specialist on ethnic minorities.

Ms. TSAI. I was just wondering if any of you have a sense of the

Chinese public’s reaction to the law, particularly women in various

parts of China. Let us start with Bonnie.

22

Ms. GLICK. When we were there, the law had not yet been implemented. So when we would address the idea that there was a new

law coming, it was hard to elicit any responses on that except in

discussions with government officials.

When we met with people from the government who were generally at the deputy Governor level, is the easiest way to describe

it, of each of the five counties that we went to, they toed the line.

Going to Susan’s question about the legal process through which

people could address their claims, we would specifically ask in each

case, have you had examples of families or women coming through

the courts to say we have this child, we do not want to pay social

compensation fees, we cannot pay social compensation fees, whatever it was. And the constant response was, rather than going

through the courts, we handle these things off-line.

The sense is certainly that there are formal measures of redress

in place, but they are probably not used. When we asked if we

could cite cases that had been brought to court, no, we have not

had any cases in this county.

In terms of women, it was actually so interesting to see

generational spreads on that. When talking with older women who

were government officials, they were pretty hard-core, is the best

way to describe their impressions.

One woman said to us, well, there is no discussion here. We are

on a boat. We are 50 people on a boat and there are limited resources on board this boat. If somebody brings an extra person on

board, what are we supposed to do? We cannot have 51 people on

this boat.

The younger women we met with, also government officials, were

at least, in tone, more flexible in terms of their perceptions of

where China was going, what the new law would bring, but nobody

was willing at the time to comment on specifics of the law.

Ms. GREENHALGH. I can address that, but kind of obliquely. It is

way too early to know people’s reactions to the new law. But in answer to your question, and also Susan Weld’s, how women can become subjects, not objects, of these legal and policy developments,

I had an interesting set of interviews in Beijing in late 1999, mostly with women’s rights scholar-activists. They described to me how

the women’s activists are really constantly monitoring what is

going on in the state, new legal and policy developments. They

gave me an example of a way they can use these developments subversively to advance women’s own interests.

For example, they pointed out that new developments in the

State birth planning program at that time had focused mostly on

‘‘quality of care’’ and the concept of ‘‘taking people as the core.’’

They were not really sure. That seemed like a top-down process of

reform and they were interested in bottom-up, individual-initiated

reform. So they pointed out that they could take that concept, quality of care, which had a rather restrictive definition in terms of the

State use of it, and broaden the meaning. Everybody knows that,

after Cairo, concepts like that have a multiplicity of meanings. So,

they could take that because the State introduced it in formal legislation and policy developments. They could say, aha! Take that,

grab it, broaden the meaning. Use it to gain more support for it.

23

In this way, they could broaden the types of changes that are going

on in China. I was really excited about that.

Mr. WINCKLER. Just one word. There is considerable literature

about the uses that ordinary Chinese citizens make of some of

these administrative litigation procedures. Kevin O’Brien has a

wonderful article about this, called, ‘‘Rightful Resistance.’’ So there

is every reason to think that, as a result of the August campaign

educating everybody about these rights—even though this which

probably is not a complete process—as people learn of these rights

they will use them. They have used similar rights in other policy

areas, so there is no reason to think they will not do it here.

Mr. AIRD. I would just add a quick comment. One ironical result

of the law already was, men claimed that under it, since it guarantees the right to have a child, that they should have the right of

veto over a woman voluntarily seeking abortion. That caused a

little excitement in China.

Mr. WOLF. Thanks.

Matt Tuchow works for one of our Commissioners, Congressman

Sander Levin.

Mr. TUCHOW. My question is for Professor Greenhalgh and Ms.

Glick. Is there any evidence that the UNFPA funds are being used

to directly fund forced abortions or sterilizations? Then I have a follow-up question for Mr. Scruggs, which is, what mechanisms are in

place at the UNFPA to prevent such direct use of funds?

Ms. GLICK. I went to 5 of 32 UNFPA counties. In those five counties, I saw no evidence that UNFPA directly funds a program of

coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.

I cannot say that I saw everything. The question that you ask

of direct funding of forced abortion, what does direct mean? As I

learned on return, this is something that lawyers figure out after

the fact. I would have to say that, based on the 5 of 32 counties

that we went to, we saw no such evidence.

Ms. GREENHALGH. I certainly have no evidence that UNFPA directly supports such practices. But I do have evidence based on 20

years of going back and forth to China and working mostly in the

scholarly domain, and observing what UNFPA does from the outside, of UNFPA’s working to support the reformers within China.

Obviously, UNFPA cannot control everything that goes on within

its bailiwick, but my impression is that their work overall has been

moving things in the right direction.

Mr. SCRUGGS. We monitor, as much as we can, all of our programs there. We monitor and require exact information on procurement and program activities. With this particular program, it

seems like half the countries in the world have helped UNFPA

monitor including the United States which monitors frequently.

But to speak to what we have always tried to do, it is to engage

the Chinese in dialog. For example, the sterilization of the mentally retarded. We tried to find a solution to that, and I believe,

did.

When you were talking about sex ratios earlier, we supported the

research that began to bring that information out that came from

some of the scholars we trained. We supported the Ph.Ds who became the people who went to the government and told the governVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:03 Nov 20, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 82487.TXT China1 PsN: China1
24

ment what their policies were doing, and how they were harming

the social fabric in China.

What we do, is we try to be a voice for change, a voice for human

rights, a voice for reason, and we monitor everything that we do

to the best of our ability, both financially and programmatically.

Everything that we do is plotted in a work plan that is fairly rigidly adhered to.

Mr. TUCHOW. A follow-up for Professor Greenhalgh. You mentioned in your testimony something to the effect that the emphasis

on coercion was restricting constructive engagement.

I was wondering if you can elaborate on that. What sort of

constructive engagement? Has it been the UNFPA or others that

you think were helpful? You mentioned briefly the NGO contact,

but I am interested particularly with regard to international

organizations.

Ms. GREENHALGH. I think it would be very helpful, if instead of

the United States constantly scolding China for being coercive—

and everybody knows, people in this room, people around the

world, people in China know that coercive abuses continue to occur

in the program. But the question is, is that what we should be noticing, or should we be noticing the broad changes, systemic

changes and very particular changes that are leading to a reduction in the incidence of those terrible abuses? I think it would be

wonderful if, instead of just criticizing China, we would acknowledge that China is not this massive totalitarian State any more.

China is quite politically divided inside. There are all sorts of factions, just as there are in this country. There are a lot of reformers

within China.

By the way, we should notice that the Chinese Government is increasingly filled with people with at least bachelors degrees, being

filled with engineers. These people are not the old Communist cadres that many of us still think about when we think about China.

I think it would be really helpful if we could identify reform factions within China and support the work of those organizations,

both within the state and NGOs who are operating outside the

state. We can work through international organizations to support

the people and China if that is what works better.

Mr. WOLF. That is actually an interesting issue that our own

bosses are struggling with as members of the Commission. How do

you balance the issue of identifying problems of human rights

abuses and putting a spotlight on them while, at the same time,

recognizing that in various areas there are changes going on, and

the China of today is not the China of 25 years ago.

Mr. AIRD. I keep asking to add a footnote. May I do one more?

Mr. WOLF. Sure. Go ahead.

Mr. AIRD. There are several sources that I have seen over the

years in China which indicate that foreign criticisms of human

rights violations in China have had two effects. One, is to weaken

the use of coercion at the grassroots level, because apparently the

word gets down and it undermines the confidence of cadres in

applying coercive measures.

The other, is that it tends to strengthen the hand of people in

China who are already objecting to coercion and who feel that the

moral sentiment of the world may be, to some extent, on their side.

25

So I think that it is not entirely a negative impact. It can have

a constructive impact on the diminution of coercion and on

re-thinking coercive measures in China.

Ms. GREENHALGH. Can I add a quick footnote to that?

Mr. WOLF. Sure.

Ms. GREENHALGH. I have done extensive field research at the

local level and at the village level in China, and also read the

reports of other anthropologists who have done similar work. I

sincerely doubt that foreign criticism has undermined the use of coercive practices at the local level. I mean, people do not have any

idea what is going on outside China in the remote areas of rural

China. So, just a footnote to that point.

Mr. WOLF. No more footnotes.

Where are the reformers? Are there focal points within the ministries, within the Party, within other areas?

Mr. WINCKLER. Basically, I should say that we do not know the

politics of all of this very well. Certainly, some of the reformers are

the people that, as Stirling Scruggs explained, UNFPA helped train

as demographers so that they can give some professional input to

the policy process.

The only reason I grabbed the microphone is that I had the good

fortune to be involved in an effort of constructive engagement to

help reform the birth program at the request of the State Birth

Planning Commission. One hundred of their people came over to

the United States, and many of them are the reformers, people

who, at that point, were deputy directors of their departments, and

so forth. These are now the top 100 people in China who run the

program, running all the departments in the central government,

and running the provinces locally. Most of these people are a joy

to talk to, they are extraordinarily open-minded.

Incidentally, apropos of the 2001 law, one of the reasons why I

think I know what the law is trying to do, is that a member of the

last delegation that I met with in March of this year helped draft

the law and was the human rights specialist in the process of drafting the law. He sure as heck is a reformer, to continue on that line.

You sit there with him and go through the law, and he is pointing

out all the things that are not there, coercive provisions, and he is

telling you that he is going to go and meet with the provinces and

get them to remove those kinds of provisions from their local

legislation. I mean, there is a reformer for you, and the other new

people running the State Birth Planning Commission.

Mr. WOLF. Any other thoughts, institutionally, where those loci

are?

Ms. GREENHALGH. Yes, definitely. In the State Birth Planning

Commission, in the CPIRC, China’s Population Information and

Research Center, in the universities. I happen to know the demographers, the academic wing, better. Most of these people, the

younger people in particular, were trained abroad. These people

have learned a lot in this country.

They all want China to be a respected member of the international community. They still work in politically difficult

circumstances. They have to be careful how they say what they

say. These are people who are actively interested in reforming the

program.

26

Even within the State Birth Planning Commission, it is amazing.

In 1999, I interviewed the man, a very high-level official at the

Birth Planning Commission, who was personally responsible for

getting those targets achieved in the early 1990s. That achievement entailed horrendously coercive measures. This man totally

turned around. He was influenced by a Chinese sociologist, trained

in this country, who kept saying in his ear, ‘‘behind the numbers

are tens of thousands of families. Remember the families.’’ This

man totally turned around. Of course, he achieved his targets, and

then he had a complete revelation. He personally feels very terrible

about what happened. So, it is amazing where you can find the

reformers. This is a tough-minded, engineering-type person.

Also, these NGOs that are springing up. All those are very interested in promoting change, and there are a lot of them. One can

gain access to them. Even on the web, it is out there.

Mr. WOLF. Bonnie.

Ms. GLICK. I think, too, that we saw a stark difference in two different government agencies. One, was the State Birth Planning

Commission, where I truly agree that you have really enlightened

people who have been trained in the United States and in the

United Kingdom in demography, and they also have souls.

These were people who genuinely want the situation to change

in a way that is focused on reproductive health and maternal care.

I am going to put them in stark contrast with the folks who are

with the Ministry of Health. I do not know why the distinction exists, but in the Ministry of Health the focus is on making numbers,

it is on staying the same, not changing.

What came to light very graphically for us, was in one of our first

stops we went to a State Birth Planning Commission health substation. It was clean, the people were friendly, the displays were

easy to understand. Right next door, was the hospital and it was

the most horrifying scene that I have seen.

I have lived in some extraordinarily poor countries, and this was

worse than anything I had ever seen. The entryway to the hospital

was full of coal and there was a motorcycle parked there, and there

were puddles everywhere filled with syringes of medical waste that

children were playing with in the streets.

It was just such a horrible juxtaposition of what really struck me

as focused on women’s health care, and then the Ministry of Health

and the gross distinction between the two.

Mr. WOLF. John, you want to add a footnote, please?

[Laughter.]

Mr. AIRD. No footnote this time.

Mr. WOLF. A comment on reformers?

Mr. AIRD. Well, I think I mentioned earlier that I have seen

signs of it, of course, in the demographic journals which have condemned coercion and said that it does not work, that it provokes

popular resistance. So, it is quite clear.

I also have heard of people attending demographic conferences in

China in which there were violent shout-downs over the issue of

the implementation of the family planning program between people

who defended it and people who felt that it was inhumane. This

does not get into print, but apparently it is going on.

Mr. WOLF. Sure. Go ahead.

27

Mr. SCRUGGS. Ira, I have a footnote. It is a story that I believe

speaks to what Bonnie and Susan both spoke about. As I said

earlier, we conducted an interpersonal counseling and informed

consent training program for many people in the State Family

Planning Commission when I was in China.

About 6 months later after the training was completed, I went

to one of the areas at the edge of the Gobi desert and met with

some of those people. I said, how is it going? How do the people

like it? They said, well, we tried it for a while and it was a wonderful thing to do, because the people responded and we felt more humane. But our supervisor stopped us.

But I can tell you, just as these Ph.D candidates and others, like

those people that were trained and understand the impact that it

has on their interpersonal relationships with clients and that it has

on health care. They will make changes when they can. They are

moving China.

Mr. WOLF. Thanks.

John Foarde.

Mr. FOARDE. Bonnie, during your statement you concluded that

the Chinese do not meet international norms for family planning.

Can you give us a summary, for the record, of what those norms

are and where they come from?

Ms. GLICK. I think probably everyone here is better qualified

than I to State chapter and verse, but coming from the ICPD and

the focus of UNFPA on informed choice, John pointed out, informed

choice should mean the choice not to have to use contraception.

That is not the case in China.

In America, we have a lot of freedoms. China is a police state.

The idea that women and their personal lives, while nothing like

they were in the 1970s where women’s menstrual cycles were

tracked and everyone knew if you were pregnant, that has changed

in China. But these fees that the Chinese Government refuses to

lift are not in conformance, as far as I can see, with any sort of

international norms.

When we would meet with these Chinese Government officials

and say to them, you know, your program is going great in this

county and you have been selected, you have self-selected to

participate in the UNFPA study, what if you lifted the social

compensation fees?

And across the board, the response was always the same, oh, we

could not possibly do that. It all comes from the center. We are told

what to do from the center.

I think that the Chinese still have not reached the point where

Chinese Government officials trust the population. If it means that

300 million women of child-bearing age in China were suddenly

given the freedom to have two children, that would be an additional population the size of our country. That is something that

China is really having to struggle with.

Mr. WOLF. Susan Weld.

Ms. WELD. Thanks. I wanted to ask Mr. Scruggs about the

UNFPA and different ways of improving the birth planning system.

Does it result in improved health care for women throughout their

lifetime, or is it focused only on their reproductive health care? Is

28

this something which is going to be an effort in those kinds of

programs?

Mr. SCRUGGS. We focus on reproductive health care from cradle

to grave for all people. That means that it starts with prenatal

care, medical care that women get, and nutrition that they get

during their pregnancy. And, of course, family planning, which

saves more lives than any other intervention because it helps prevent high risk births that women have who are very young, who

are old, and who have had multiple births.

So I think that we have a dramatic impact on health, women’s

reproductive health, and, of course, training birth attendants so

that all women can have assisted childbirth and deliveries. That

has been a focus of the work. I think that when you improve the

quality of care—for example, one of the things these 32 counties do,

which is routine in the United States, is that people understand

how each method of contraception works and then they choose

what is best for them. This choice leads to better results, fewer

abortions, and fewer complications. Anyone—and certainly a

woman—knows that certain things work for them and certain

things do not. Of course, there are contraindications, such as smoking and blood pressure, with various methods of family planning:

That is why one needs counselling and consent.

We have seen in these counties that maternal mortality and infant mortality are improving. The abortion rate is going down,

which is what will happen when people use contraceptives of their

choice. But this is a long discussion and has many facets.

Ms. WELD. Let me move the question on to some of the other

people. What I am trying to get at, is whether the idea of Cairo,

which is that if women are given other ways of getting power and

status in society, they will not focus so much on requiring many

children to support them in their old age, or to support their family

in their old age. So I am wondering, are those principles actually

being adopted in any part of the Chinese policymaking community?

Mr. WINCKLER. Well, I can make one brief comment on it. I think

the Chinese have totally bought into Cairo. That is not true with

regard to freedom not to contracept—though, now they are about

to start dropping the spacing requirement. In some specific ways

which one might wish to consider extremely important, they are

not in compliance with international norms. But as far as the

broad vision of Cairo and shifting the emphasis to empowering

women and giving them economic opportunities and raising their

status, the Chinese totally have signed onto that. In fact, they

started trying to do it before Cairo.

One of the reforms that they started making in the early 1990s

was an idea that was sort of analogous to ‘‘you cannot raise a child

without the whole village.’’ You cannot change people’s reproductive behavior without making many changes throughout the whole

society. So, they are trying women’s empowerment programs, and

poverty alleviation programs, and programs targeted precisely at

poor women, and programs targeted at the poorest areas of the

country, and western China, and so forth.

Now, many of those programs are under the auspices of other administrative systems than the birth planning system, because

clearly it cannot have a competence in all of those areas. But the

29

man who supervises birth planning these days on behalf of the

State Council is Wang Zhongyu, who is the Secretary General of

the State Council. By the way, he attended the work conference I

am talking about and, on behalf of the cabinet, which is clearly intimately involved in shaping this new policy, endorsed the whole

thing. Anyway, if you look back over the last 5 years or so, Wang

Zhongyu has chaired endless inter-agency coordination committees

trying to implement this more comprehensive approach that I

mentioned. So, I think that the Chinese are doing everything that

they have the resources to do, and everything they know to do, and

everything that the Cairo conference ever thought of.

Ms. WELD. Bonnie, do you have one little sentence to add? If you

do not, that is fine.

Ms. GLICK. No. No, I do not.

Ms. GREENHALGH. Can I go back quickly and address that reproductive health question? I think it is important not to think of reproductive health as something having only to do with reproduction

and a woman during her childbearing years, because the Cairo

concept includes women’s health throughout their lives.

In China, it is particularly important because some of the reproductive health problems you can get during your childbearing

years, like upper reproductive tract infections, can impair your

health and well-being throughout your life. By addressing those

early, it is improving women’s health throughout their lives.

I have to tell you, I have been an outspoken critic of China on

this birth planning program, especially because of the implications

of the program for women. I have just been really amazed at the

changes. For example, they did a reproductive health survey, one

in 1997 and a recent one in 2001. About 40,000 people were surveyed. The improvements in reproductive health care between

those two periods are really dramatic.

I will not read you the statistics, but things like proportion of

women taking iron when pregnant doubled, taking calcium while

pregnant went from 7 percent to 40 percent, prenatal check-ups,

from 57 percent to 82 percent. I mean, dramatic changes are taking

place. I actually have turned around on this issue.

Mr. WOLF. Anne.

Ms. TSAI. This question is for Ed. I was just wondering if you

could elaborate further on the implementation of the new law and

findings of the conference that you discussed.

Mr. WINCKLER. Well, let me see. I think I already got the main

point across, which is that they are shifting all the administrative

emphasis from the old target-driven approach toward the new

client-centered approach.

Could I just step back slightly and address the question of the

nature of the change process, which will then come back to implementation? The analogy I use is of Nixon and Kissinger deciding

to withdraw from Vietnam. There are 300,000 to 400,000 workers

in this birth planning system. If you are going to turn an organization around that has that many people in it, you have to proceed

cautiously and bring them on board before you hit them with new

measures, and so forth. Nixon and Kissinger could not just say,

well, this is all a terrible mistake, the troops get out instantly. You

have to retreat in a systematic way, particularly since, as Susan

30

has documented for the 1980s, the minute you give the population

the idea that the program is breaking down or softening its policies, then people start doing things that are outside of the parameters of what the program can accept.

So think of it as a strategic retreat, and under fire, if you like,

from conservative legislators like Li Peng. Mr. Aird pointed out

that there are lots of contradictions in the statements that are coming out. Those are partly the result of the fact that this is a highly

political process. Parts of the 2001 law itself are a sop, if you like,

to the old style of planning everything from the top down: it spells

out the formal framework of planning. As I say in my article, all

of the language is there for either a state-centric approach or a

client-centric approach, and that is why I consider this recent work

conference so important, because it shows that they are moving

ahead with actually implementing the client-centered provisions

that are a part of the 2001 law.

As far as the specifics of the conference are concerned, I have got

the conference summary right here. How can I summarize it briefly? Let me put it this way: practical details. One of the recommendations of Bonnie’s group was that we need to monitor this

program more, and the Congress needs to appropriate some money

so that the State Department has some money with which to follow

these developments. What needs to be monitored is no longer what

the policy is, because that is fairly clear, but rather this implementation process. It comes down to very nuts-and-bolts issues.

Health care funding in China is a little bit like in the United

States, at least in New York State where I live. It is wonderful to

have these women’s rights to this and that service, but it is actually possible only if the locality can afford it. So, you get into very

nitty-gritty questions like, can the country afford these 300,000 to

400,000 birth planning workers? Bonnie has described the fine facilities that they have in some places, but those are expensive and

largely have to be paid for by the local community.

So, both from our point of view and from their point of view,

what is on the table at this point is a lot of nuts-and-bolts issues.

One of the things that you see as you go through these work conference documents, is that they are very candid about all of this.

For example, down at the level of specific measures here is Wang

Zhongyu, the Secretary General of the cabinet, summing up the

concrete things that have to be done: Use the responsibility system

to enforce these new objectives; create measures for implementing

them; get the local governments to guarantee financing at levels

that will actually support these new objectives; make sure that the

local governments maintain the personnel slots, because the local

governments, in a sense, effectively hire and pay for these birth

planning workers. So, those are the crucial issues.

There is also something that came out last year called the Technical Services Regulations, which sounds like it must be the most

boring thing you could ever imagine. But that is where all the

nitty-gritty stuff is. In particular, there is the question, if you are

going to deliver better reproductive health care to rural areas, what

is the division of labor between the birth planning system and the

Ministry of Health? What the Technical Services Regulations say

is that the two of those institutions together should create a local

31

service network, but Bonnie has already alerted you to the kinds

of problems that will emerge.

Bonnie’s observations, I think, were extremely astute and very

on point. This is precisely the kind of thing, oddly enough, that we

need to understand: Not that there is some incident of coercion in

some place, but how, as a system, is this Technical Services Network being put into place, and what does it look like? I am sure

in different localities there will be a different division of labor between the Ministry of Health and the Birth Planning Commission.

So, it is going to be a real mess, but that is the kind of institutional

monitoring question that we need to follow.

Mr. AIRD. I think it is necessary to bear in mind, however, that

coercion is not something that exists in scattered places at a lower

level. Coercion is still essentially the attitude of Li Peng, who still

has strong influence in the government.

It has been reiterated by Jiang Zemin and by Zhang Weiqing,

both of whom have taken a hard line, both of whom still insist that

the birth rates will rise again if the pressure is not maintained.

The policy document of March 2, 2000, still reaffirmed the importance of the target management responsibility system, and the veto

with one vote system, and still called for firm hold on family planning.

There are a lot of hard-liners in very important positions who do

not share the more optimistic view of some of the people in the

State Family Planning Commission and elsewhere.

Mr. WINCKLER. Can I have a 1-second footnote?

Mr. WOLF. Let me just move on.

Matt.

Mr. TUCHOW. Well, I have a follow-up question for Mr. Winckler,

also. When you were giving your remarks, you asked for a question

or some more time to speak about the law as it applies to restraining local State power, and also the provision of benefits or the creation of new rights in the law. So, I was wondering if you could

elaborate on that, briefly.

Mr. WINCKLER. Well, fortunately the local state power thing

feeds right into what we were just discussing. I do not know exactly what speeches are being referred to, but, it is true that the

policy is that the enforcement must remain firm. Our government

leaders do not normally give speeches in which they address issues

of what you might call regulatory theory, what kind of mechanism

is needed to implement a particular kind of policy, but in China

they do.

The 2000 Decision says that maintaining a low birthrate requires

a variety of measures—legal, educational, economic. It does include

administrative measures, which now are mostly stiffer penalties for

government employees. It also placed them last, which is exactly

where they are in Chinese enforcement priorities.

However, if you want to talk about what Jiang Zemin’s own main

personal contribution to this situation is, look at this work conference that I keep talking about. It starts right off, as a postCommunist system would do, from the national leader’s ideology,

in this case, Jiang’s doctrine of the ‘‘Three Represents,’’ which we

do not have time to go into. Basically Jiang is trying to, just like

the 2001 law is trying to, legitimize the possibility of all sorts of

32

progressive development. What is most relevant here is that Jiang

Zemin’s Three Represents is trying to shift policy toward stuff that

will give the public satisfaction. It is like running for office. They

want majority support in the country. What is really salient about

Jiang Zemin’s statements on these things, is that he has endorsed

the slogan that has come out of the State Birth Planning Commission, that the basic criteria for their work should be public satisfaction.

Actually, that, oddly enough, does go to your question about restraining the local State because the whole point is to deliver truly

concrete, positive benefits to the citizens—that is, reproductive

health care, and so forth. Thus another thing that Jiang Zemin has

said, is that they must, in the future, conduct the birth planning

program in such a way that it really can do that. And to do that,

they have to do two things vis-a-vis the local state.

If I could just have another little sidebar, you realize that since

most of this is paid for by local governments and the provinces, the

central government has a great deal of difficulty bringing leverage

to bear. They can make recommendations for services and create

models for implementation, but they cannot tell the local governments, you must do this. It is like an unfunded mandate. They

have to persuade the local governments to make the resources

available.

So on the general theme of the relationship between the central

government and the local state, they want to do two things. They

want to rein in local abuses. They are in the process of reforming

the local financial system, not just with regard to the birth planning system, but in order to prevent the local governments from

over-taxing farmers, in general.

In that context, another concrete thing that is on the table at the

recent work conference is that the birth planning program is now

going to have to be funded more out of the state budget and less

out of miscellaneous local revenues, because these miscellaneous

local revenues are being rolled into the more formal tax system to

prevent those miscellaneous exactions.

If I could just toss in one more thing about financing, some

things should be remembered, with regard to the social compensation fee, however obnoxious we may consider it to be. In the first

place, from the Chinese point of view, at this point to demand that

they drop this fee is preposterous because they just spent the last

20 years responding to the idea that they should use market-based

incentives instead of Maoist coercion and Red Guards. This is their

adaptation of incentives and disincentives to a ‘‘socialist market

economy,’’ as they call it. They have just been able to work this out.

I mean, they have spent a long time working this out and it is not

going to go away very soon.

But it is a system not only of disincentives but also of incentives.

One of the things that the social compensation fee does is to make

resources available to the government to pay for things that this

extra child will cost the society. In addition, a great deal of that

money turns around and goes into the hands of the people who

have restricted their fertility and had only one child, as a matter

of fairness, because they gave up having another child that would

33

have been an economic and other benefit to them and out of fairness they deserve some compensation.

So you have flows of funds that have to be arranged properly,

both for the practical reason to maintain the funding for the reproductive health services we are all talking about, but also out of

equity considerations to maintain the public acceptance of the program that Bonnie was talking about. I may not have covered all

your questions.

Ms. GLICK. Can I footnote? The social compensation fee does not

sound bad to us when we hear it in English. I am not a Chinese

speaker, but another term is the ‘‘Society is Bringing Up Child

Fee.’’

That said, the social compensation fees that are levied on Chinese families who have out-of-plan births can be 1 to 2 years’ combined salary of the husband and wife. It is not just a little fine,

it is really a very strong financial disincentive. So I appreciate the

concept of market forces, but it is really a tremendous disincentive.

Ms. GREENHALGH. May I add a quick footnote to something that

Mr. Aird said a few minutes ago?

Mr. WOLF. Well, I do not want to start another debate because

we have been here for about 2 hours. I think we are pretty much

at the end of this. I did want to ask, John, if you had any final

comment on this last discussion.

Mr. AIRD. On the social compensation fee. I think that in most

countries, the idea that the State invests in the education and welfare of children is seen not as a way of assuming a burden, but

rather as an investment in the future. Ultimately, the child grows

up. If his health is good and he acquires skills, he repays the state

by being productive.

It is not seen as something to the disadvantage of the State for

which parents ought to pay. I do not see any trace of that concept

behind any mention that I have seen of the social compensation

fee. I think its real purpose is as a coercive measure.

Ms. GREENHALGH. Can I please respond to that?

A quick footnote to that.

Mr. WOLF. All right.

Ms. GREENHALGH. I think it is really inappropriate to read statements by somebody like Jiang Zemin or Li Peng, to the effect that

we must keep the birth rate down as evidence that they are supporting coercion in the sense of forceful measures. Population

control in China, birth planning, has always been about keeping

the population growth rate down. They will always say that until

population control is eliminated from China.

The fact of the matter is, the birth rate is way, way, way down,

and that is because social change has been so massive. What is

going on now is walking on two legs, keeping that rate stable and

improving women’s health.

Thank you.

34

Mr. WOLF. Actually, if we were going to spend more time here,

the issue I would want to discuss is the concept of coercion as a

tool for attitudinal change, and its impact.

What is the impact of 10 to 20 years of coercion on people’s own

thought and behavioral processes, and how much coercion is needed after that. That will be for another future roundtable.

I want to thank all five of you. This has been a very useful, very

professional, very learned set of presentations. It is a good way for

us to start off the next year.

[Whereupon, at 4:27 p.m. the roundtable was concluded.]

(35)

A P P E N D I X

36

PREPARED STATEMENTS

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOHN S. AIRD

SEPTEMBER 23, 2002

What is the purpose of China’s new family planning law? Why was it adopted at

this time? What effect is it likely to have on family planning in China? Misleading

claims about the law are being put forward by Chinese family planning officials and

by apologists for the Chinese program, but its true purpose has been made clear

in Chinese domestic sources from the start. It is intended to increase the government’s control over childbearing in order to reduce the numbers of births and hold

down the rate of population growth. This is quite clear from the explanations given

in Chinese sources during earlier attempts to draft a national law.

PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS

These efforts have been under way in China intermittently for the past 23 years.

In July 1979, as China was tightening the then newly announced and highly coercive one-child policy, the leading Chinese family planning official at that time, VicePremier Chen Muhua, disclosed that a national family planning law would soon be

adopted ‘‘to check population growth.’’ She explained:

To quickly and further reduce the population growth rate, the central government is working out a planned parenthood law based on experiences obtained

in various localities. A policy of encouragement and punishment for maternity,

with encouragement as the main feature, will be implemented. Parents having

one child will be encouraged, and strict measures will be enforced to control the

birth of two or more babies. Everything should be done to insure that the

natural population growth rate in China falls to zero by 2000. (Beijing radio,

Domestic Service, July 7, 1979)

However, the law ran into opposition from some Chinese academicians, who argued that popular resistance to the one-child policy was too strong for the law to

have a positive outcome. As one put it,

If we adopt under these circumstances administrative measures of a forcible

command type, such as not registering more than one child in the census

records, not issuing food grain allocations for such children, and not allowing

their parents to participate in work, the outcome would be contrary to our wishes, have bad aftereffects, and in fact not be admissible in a socialist state. (Gui

Shixun, ‘‘Population Control and Economic Policies,’’ Shanghai Teachers’ University Journal, April 25, 1980)

A Beijing newspaper noted that

Some people believe that family planning should be carried out with encouragement and education, not with coercion. They therefore disapprove the formulation of a family planning law.

The article continued:

Laws have the nature of enforcement, but enforcement is not the same as

coercion. It is exactly for eliminating coercion which has arisen in some areas

when they carry out concrete work that a family planning law must be promulgated to for all people, young and old alike, to abide by. (Guangming Daily,

August 29, 1981)

The writer was clearly suggesting that adoption of a family planning law would

legitimize coercion by reclassifying it as law enforcement.

In 1983 another writer in a journal for foreign readers argued that

Since different people have different levels of understanding, education alone

. . . cannot fully solve this very urgent problem. Therefore, China plans to draft

a family planning law. For the time being, the local governments in various

places have introduced economic and administrative measures. (An

Zhiguo,’’Family Planning,’’ Beijing Review, August 29, 1983)

The ‘‘administrative measures’’ referred to included the massive campaign of compulsory birth control surgeries carried out in 1983, which reportedly produced 18

million IUD insertions, 21 million sterilizations, and 14 million abortions. This campaign was directed by the then Minister-in-Charge of China’s State Family Planning

Commission (SFPC), Qian Xinzhong, who later that year was given one of the

United Nation’s first two family planning awards for his achievement. However the

37

authorization had come from Deng Xiaoping, then the supreme leader of China, who

called upon family planning personnel to ‘‘rely first on political mobilization, second

on law, and third on technical measures’’ (the last phrase a euphemism for the three

birth control surgeries).

After 1983, 5 years passed without any mention of a national family planning law

in the Chinese media. The year 1984 had seen a sudden change in policy away from

coercive measures, caused by a strong popular backlash against the 1983 surgery

drive, which allegedly had resulted in ‘‘the alienation of the masses from the Party.’’

Coercion had to be put on hold. It was no time to pass a law to augment compulsion

in family planning. Qian was removed from his post as head of the SFPC in December 1983, and replaced by a new head, Wang Wei, who immediately announced a

change in policy. Early in the next year the Party Central Committee issued a new

‘‘Decision’’ which called for a ‘‘more realistic’’ family planning policy which is ‘‘reasonable, is supported by the masses, and is easy for the cadres to carry out.’’

This requires that family planning workers do a great deal of difficult, indepth, and meticulous work, improve their work method and work style, refrain

from coercion, strictly forbid any illegal or disorderly action, and carry out their

work consistent with actual conditions and reasonably. (People’s Daily, March

8, 1984)

The call to refrain from coercion was made official in a national ‘‘circular’’ known

as Party Central Committee Document No. 7, which was issued on April 12, 1984,

widely circulated, often quoted in the Chinese media, but never published. But the

effect was immediate. A general relaxation of family planning enforcement spread

throughout the country.

Within 2 years, the central authorities began to be concerned about evidence of

rising birth rates. By the end of 1985, Document No. 7 was reinterpreted as a call

take ‘‘effective measures,’’ ‘‘grasp family planning work firmly,’’ be ‘‘resolute in curbing ‘‘unplanned’’ births, and fulfill the population control targets. In May 1986 a

new Party circular, Document No. 13, also unpublished but widely distributed, apparently reversed the softer components Document No. 7 and reaffirmed the need

to regain control of population growth.

The task proved difficult. Central wavering on the coercion issue seemed to have

weakened control at the grassroots level, and it was not easy to regain. In 1988 talk

of adopting a national family planning law resumed. An article in a demographic

journal noted that local family planning efforts had become confused and inconsistent, birth reports were being falsified, and family planning rules were being violated. The writer proposed that the government

. . . Formulate and promulgate a family planning law as soon as possible to

change the situation of no laws to abide by. Births outside of plans can only

be controlled with persuasion and education on the one hand and with the adoption of the necessary administrative and legal measures on the other hand. (Qu

Yibin, ‘‘An Enquiry into the Causes of the Marked Rise of China’s Population

Birth Rate and Measures to Deal with It,’’ Population Research, March 29,

1988)

In January 1989, a family planning journal article said that a new law was

‘‘imperative’’ to strengthen the resolve of family planning workers. The provincial

family planning regulations were inadequate for this purpose:

. . . Without having formal laws, the rural cadres at the grass-roots level are

always worried. They are fearful that things will change. This greatly [inhibits]

their activism. . . (Wang Shengduo and Wu Yiren, ‘‘The Dilemma of the Village

Cadres in Rural Family Planning Work and Measures to Deal With It,’’ China

Population, January 20, 1989)

In August a writer with provincial Party connections, though he objected to some

compulsory measures, such as smashing down houses, confiscating farm implements, and refusing household registration to unauthorized newborns, insisted that

compulsory abortion was both humane and legal, since it was an expression of the

Chinese Constitution’s provision that ‘‘both husband and wife have a duty to practice family planning.’’ A national family planning law, he said,

. . . should use the forceful intimidation of punishment to reduce the opposition to compulsory abortion. . . . The state has grounds to adopt legal measures

for compulsory enforcement against those who are unwilling to carry out their

duty of practicing family planning. (Kuang Ke, ‘‘Some Suggestions on Passing

Laws on Childbirth,’’ Social Science, August 15, 1989)

Though few published commentaries echoed this writer’s idea of legalizing coercion, most, including prominent demographers and other influential spokespersons,

38

seemed to think the law would strengthen family planning enforcement and urged

its adoption ‘‘as soon as possible.’’ Madame Peng Peiyun, who had replaced Wang Wei in January 1988, was quoted

by XINHUA in February 1989 as saying that the situation in family planning work

had become ‘‘crucial’’ and that a national law was being drafted which would go before the State Council ‘‘as soon as possible.’’ (XINHUA-English, February 23, 1989)

In April, however, another XINHUA article questioned the wisdom of this step:

Now, more and more experts are asking the state to accelerate the introduction of [a] family planning law. But many family planning officials are not optimistic about the results of such action. An official of the State Family Planning

Commission says, ‘‘As long as such a great number of people ignore the law,

what can the law do to them? (XINHUA-English, Beijing April 13, 1989)

Nevertheless, in October 1989 Madame Peng told reporters that the draft law on

family planning ‘‘will be enacted in October next year.’’ (ZHONGGUO TONGXUN

SHE, Beijing, October 17, 1989)

It wasn’t. In November 1990 the China Daily reported that family planners were

still calling for a family planning law ‘‘as soon as possible’’ to make family planning

policies ‘‘more authoritative and forceful.’’ (‘‘Planners Urge Firmer Control of Population,’’ November 14, 1990, p. 4) In May 1992 a demographic journal commented

For one reason or another, our country still has no family planning law. According to public opinion in our society, most people are sympathetic with those

having extra children. They are not inclined to support the basic national policy.

Under such circumstances, family planning in some localities has become a task

that almost no one wants to attend to and take care of. (Li Shaoxian, ‘‘Farmers’ Desire for More Children and Measures to Solve This Problem,’’ Population Research, May 29, 1992)

A number of articles candidly discussing the issue of coercion in family planning

appeared in Chinese professional journals during the middle 1990’s, some of them

opposing coercion and others approving coercive measures. One of the latter appeared in April 1993 in a national law journal. Its authors deplored the fact that

because of the lack of an explicit national law legalizing forcible means, ‘‘some forcible measures which could have become legal have become illegal. . . . Meanwhile,

it is impossible to totally avoid using forcible measures in practice.’’ The article

adds:

In addition to ordinary economic and administrative sanctions, it is also necessary to have legal rules providing for relevant forcible, restrictive measures

to deal with the situation of being pregnant and preparing to give birth after

having had two births, such as rules which explicitly provide for forcible termination of pregnancy, forcible induced abortion, or induced abortion. It is necessary to forcibly sterilize those couples who have failed to be sterilized or use

contraceptive measures after having each had two births. Forcible and restrictive measures constitute an issue which critically affects whether family planning work can be effectively carried out. If there are no relevant legal rules,

then it would be difficult to eliminate the stubborn problems in family planning

work. Therefore there should be no hesitancy on this issue. . . .

To get family planning work out of the predicaments, both cadres and ordinary people urgently hope there will be a uniform family planning law so as

to use the state’s policy on birth; and such a law can then be used to regulate

and adjust the activity of reproduction of human beings. . . . (Yang Quanming

and Yuan Jiliang, ‘‘Thoughts on Family Planning Legislation,’’ Politics and Law

Tribune, No. 50, April 1993, pp. 89–93.)

One of the things that concerned these authors was that foreign and domestic

criticism that the Chinese government had ‘‘violated human rights’’ in family planning had caused people in China to ‘‘worry that restricting citizens’ reproductive

rights is incompatible with the constitution-stipulated protection for human rights,’’

and these worries ‘‘have all along been creating difficulties for conducting thinking

on family planning legislation.’’ ...

When the SFPC’s ‘‘Outline’’ of family planning work was published in February

1995, the task still lay in the future. In fact, it sounded more remote than ever:

We must conscientiously do a good job of making preliminary preparations for

the drafting of the ‘‘PRC Family Planning Law,’’ make proposals on population

and family planning legislation, and provide legal guarantees for the implementation of family planning. (People’s Daily, February 25, 1995, p. 11)

Still, nothing happened. Four years later a Hong Kong newspaper speculated that

‘‘a draft law specifying a citizen’s rights to have children now looks unlikely to be

ever passed by the National People’s Congress (NPC).’’ The writer seemed to think

39

passing such a law would undermine the pretense of the Chinese leadership that

their family planning program was voluntary. (Jasper Becker, South China Morning

Post, April 19, 1999, p. 17)

THE LAW’S ADOPTION

That surmise was also mistaken. In September 1999 a vice-minister of the SFPC

predicted that the long-awaited law would be enacted within the next three years

and that it would ‘‘tighten the rule of law in carrying out family planning and

strengthen mass supervision over law enforcement in the next decade.’’ By 2015, he

predicted, the rule of law in China would be greatly improved and ‘‘by then, people

of reproductive age would follow the state family planning policy voluntarily,’’ an

implicit admission that their compliance now was not entirely voluntary! (China

Daily, internet version, September 13, 1999) In December 2000 XINHUA quoted

Zhang Weiqing, who had replaced Peng Peiyun in March 1998 as head of the SFPC,

to the effect that the long-promised national law would be drafted in 2001:

China will draft up a law on population and family planning . . . next year

to ensure the status of the national policy of family planning and the realization

of birth control targets, said an official. At a conference on family planning,

Zhang Weiqing . . . said that lawmaking in the field of population and family

planning in China is still backward and the force of existent laws and regulations is limited. (XINHUA, Beijing, December 24, 2000)

Zhang’s prediction did come true. In April 2001 the People’s Daily revealed that

the draft law had been tabled before the Standing Committee of the NPC. In introducing the measure to the Committee, Zhang explained that the law was ‘‘indispensable’’ for ‘‘upholding existing birth control policies’’ because the issue is ‘‘very

sensitive’’ and ‘‘the traditional concept of having more children remains influential.’’

(People’s Daily internet version, April 24, 2001)

Throughout the 23 years of its gestation, the essential rationale for the national

family planning law was unmistakable and remained unchanged. It was to strengthen enforcement of the existing family planning policies and reinforce government

control over childbearing in order to overcome stubborn popular resistance. The law

was seen as an additional means of compulsion. Not until 2002 did anyone try to

represent it as an effort to curb coercion, and that representation was largely

confined to statements for foreign audiences.

However, when the new law was made public at the end of December, the official

propaganda line explaining its purpose had already begun to change. On December

30, 2001, the day after its adoption by the NPC Standing Committee, Zhang

Weiqing said that ‘‘the law neither relaxes nor tightens population policy.’’

(XINHUA-English, Beijing, December 30 2001) In January 2002 another SFPC

spokesperson quoted by a Hong Kong newspaper said that the new law ‘‘solidly sets

forth China’s current family planning policy, and there will be no tightening up nor

liberalization.’’ (Ta Kung Pao, Hong Kong, January 21, 2002) But these statements

made no sense. Why would the Chinese government have struggled for 23 years to

pass a law that made no difference in how the program was implemented? The only

plausible purpose for the law was to tighten controls. In denying that this was

intended, the Chinese authorities were being disingenuous.

They may have been reacting to widespread reports of spectacular instances of coercion in the program since the late 1990’s, some of them involving the death of

family planning violators under torture and, in two cases, attempts by local family

planning officials to kill live-born infants who had been conceived without birth permits. One of these involved the deliberate drowning of a newborn baby boy in a

paddy field. In the other case, several attempts by a hospital director to kill a newborn baby girl failed, and the child survived. More recently the efforts to ‘‘sanitize’’

the law retroactively may have been stimulated by the disclosure in October 2001

that a private investigative team sent to China by a Washington organization with

anti-abortion connections had found coercive measures still in force in one of the

UNFPA’s project counties, where such measures were supposed to have been abolished. This report embarrassed both the Chinese government and the UNFPA, and

the UNFPA hastily put together an ‘‘independent’’ team with close U.N. connections

to go to the same county obviously with the intent of finding no coercion, which,

hosted and escorted by both the government and the UNFPA, it naturally did not

find. After the report of the U. S. State Department investigative team’s visit to

China in May 2002, released in July, confirmed the persistence of coercive measures

in China, it was obvious that China’s new law needed to be given a softer image.

Hence the subsequent official statements from Chinese sources disavowing the only

reasonable raison d’etre for such a law!

40

Giving the law a ‘‘kinder, gentler’’ image was not easy to accomplish, mainly because the text of the law, which conveys a rather hard-fisted impression, as will be

pointed out in detail below, was already finalized and was published in December

2001. Some foreign observers immediately rejected the official assurances that the

law would not affect the intensity of family planning implementation. In January

2002 a Hong Kong newspaper said flatly that:

The legislation basically incorporates current policy and practice. . . . Analysts say China is unlikely to see a major departure [from] or relaxation of the

coercive one-child policy. . . . The legislation has failed to prescribe detailed

prohibitions against the well-documented abuses that have been perpetrated in

the name of the policy, analysts said. (Clara Li, South China Morning Post,

January 5, 2002)

Two months later, perhaps partly in response to such skepticism, the Chinese

authorities seem to have decided to try to represent the law as a human rights document. In an English language dispatch, clearly targeted at a foreign audience,

XINHUA asserted that NPC delegates were saying that

The law emphasizes the principle of human care and prohibits coercion, abuse

of powers, and infringement on people’s legitimate rights and interests. . . .

‘‘The law requires that officials in charge of family planning change their work

style,’’ said [a Sichuan family planning commission director]. (XINHUA-English,

Beijing, March 13, 2002)

The law itself gives little encouragement for any such notions. Moreover, only 5

days after that, former Premier Li Peng, always a hard-liner on birth control, presented the annual work report of the NPC Standing Committee in which he said

nothing about avoiding coercion. Referring to the new law, he said:

. . . The NPC Standing Committee enacted the Law on Population and

Family Planning, thereby upgrading this basic national policy into a law. This

is set to have a profound and far-reaching impact on effectively controlling the

size of the population and improving the quality of births. (XINHUA, Domestic

Service, Beijing, March 18, 2002)

The propaganda effort continued , however. In April, Wang Zhongyu, secretary

general of the State Council, warned that family planning personnel must

. . . improve their working style and method, and ensure that laws are understood, observed, and followed in regulating administrative actions in family

planning. (XINHUA, Nanchang, April 8, 2002)

Wang also called for the amendment of local family planning regulations to bring

them into conformity with the national law and to ‘‘ensure the continuity and stability of family planning policy.’’ This news item was NOT directed at a foreign audience. The Chinese authorities now seemed to be speaking with two voices even to

domestic audiences, a sign of confusion in official circles.

More mixed signals emerged as the new law was about to go into effect on September 1. 2002. The day before, a XINHUA-English dispatch quoted a Beijing professor saying the law would represent a milestone in China’s transformation from

‘‘the administrative-guided period into a new era that puts public satisfaction as top

priority.’’ (XINHUA-English, Beijing, August 31, 2002) But the XINHUA domestic

dispatch on the same subject said nothing of the sort! Instead, it quoted Zhang

Weiqing in a statement that the new law must be publicized so that everyone would

. . . understand the importance of stabilizing the childbearing policy currently in force, gain a better understanding of citizens’ rights and obligations

to practice family planning, understand the legal provisions concerned, and enhance their consciousness in practicing family planning. (XINHUA, Domestic

Service, Beijing, August 31, 2002)

The next day, a XINHUA-English dispatch quoted Zhang as saying that the new

law ‘‘focuses on the all-around development of human beings.’’ The article went on

to say that ‘‘it also strictly prohibits the abuse of authority, illegal administration,

coercive imperatives, and other practices infringing on the interests of citizens during family planning.’’ (XINHUA-English, Beijing, September 1, 2002)

The Hong Kong English language newspaper South China Morning Post quoted

Zhang Weiqing as having said that the new law would ‘‘help end abuses such as

late abortions and arbitrary fines,’’ but statements attributed to Zhang in domestic

sources said nothing about curbing abuses. (‘‘New family planning law might end

abuses,’’ South China Morning Post, September 2, 2002) In fact, late-term abortions

have long been not only approved but required for unauthorized pregnancies that

had not been detected earlier in the pregnancy. In domestic regulations such abortions are not called ‘‘abuses’’—instead, they are called ‘‘remedial measures.’’

41

A September 1 XINHUA domestic dispatch quoted the Deputy Director of Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council as saying:

. . . It is a misconception to think that China will relax its family planning

policy, a change that would permits its citizens to have as many children as

they would like as long as they are able to pay the fine imposed for an extrapolicy birth.

The article continued:

Zhao Bingli, Vice-Minister in Charge of the SFPC, said the law was made to

ensure the control of the country’s population and thus to guarantee the harmonious co-development of population, economy, society, and environment.

‘‘The mentality of ’money for children’ goes against the core principle of the

family planning legislation,’’ Zhao said. ‘‘From the date that the law took effect,

those who have an extra-policy birth must face the music.’’ (XINHUA, General

News Service, Beijing, September 1, 2002)

From these strange contradictions, one might have supposed the references were

to two different laws! Actually discrepancies between Chinese pronouncements in

domestic channels and those addressed to foreigners are often highly revealing.

China scholars have long been aware that English language publications can

present a very different picture of a controversial issue from that found in the

Chinese version. Usually, the Chinese language version is the more reliable and the

more informative. What that version omits is misleading propaganda devised for foreign consumption that could not possibly deceive a domestic audience.

All that aside, why did the Chinese authorities decide to adopt a national family

planning law at this time despite all their former misgivings? One possibility is that

they felt that their grip on family planning enforcement was slipping and they needed all the legal force they could muster. In fact, there are signs that at least since

the late 1990s, the Chinese political system has been gradually losing its effectiveness in all spheres of domestic administration, not just in family planning. This is

apparent in the leaders’ increasingly paranoid reaction to any spontaneous citizen

action, especially any collective action, that takes place without official prompting

or control. That reaction may explain the Chinese government’s violent persecution

of the Falun Gong cult and other religious groups not under state supervision and

control. The leaders seem to fear any form of dissidence or civil disobedience, and

they are ruthless in their attempts to crush all such manifestations.

They have also expressed concern recently that losing control of population growth

could lead to social ‘‘instability.’’ Exactly how is not spelled out, but Chinese demographers, SFPC leaders, Peng Peiyun, Zhang Zemin, and Jiang Zemin himself have

been saying since at least 1994 that the birth control policy was in conflict with the

childbearing desires of the Chinese people, especially those in rural areas, hence the

current low birth rates in China are ‘‘unstable.’’ On March 11, 2001, Jiang Zemin

himself affirmed that population control was a ‘‘major affair for strengthening the

country, enriching the people, and maintaining tranquility.’’ Jiang called for ‘‘really

effective measures’’ and demanded that the country ‘‘grasp ever more tightly and

do still better this major item of economic and social work, without the slightest

slackness or relaxation.’’ (XINHUA, Domestic Service, Beijing, March 11, 2001) Presumably the new population law was seen as helping the government tighten its

‘‘grasp.’’ The language of the law in many places, even where it sounds intentionally

vague, seems to point in that direction.

SPECIFIC PROVISIONS

When the text of the law was made public, it immediately began to receive close

scrutiny both in China and abroad. Some of its provisions apparently caused problems for the UNFPA. In February 2002 the UNFPA Executive-Director, Thoraya

Obaid, sent a letter to Zhang Weiqing expressing ‘‘reservations’’ about provisions in

three articles that she alleged were inconsistent with ‘‘ICPD principles and recommendations.’’ She said the UNFPA would seek ‘‘further clarifications,’’ surely a

very mild remonstrance! The three articles are: Article 18, which proposes to ‘‘stabilize the current childbirth policies,’’ speaks of ‘‘upholding a single-child policy for

married couples,’’ and reaffirms that couples must have government permission before they can have a second child; Article 41, which provides for the imposition of

a ‘‘premium’’ on unauthorized childbirths; and Article 42, which says that in addition to the ‘‘premium’’ a state functionary ‘‘may also be punished administratively.’’

Curiously, the UNFPA raised no objections to a number of other articles which

seem to contain hints of coercion or at least seem to be contrary to the principles

of reproductive freedom. For example:

42

• Article 2 says ‘‘The state shall employ a series of varied measures to place

the population growth under control,’’ but it does not set any limits on the kinds

of measure alluded to, an ominously vague and wide-open provision;

• Article 10 authorizes the formulation of population plans at various levels

and calls for supervision over the ‘‘implementation’’ of these plans, but population plans in China have always been the foundation of population quotas and

targets and an essential part of the coercion mechanism;

• Article 17 couples a citizen’s right to give birth to a child with the idea that

citizens are also ‘‘duty-bound to undergo family planning, as provided for in the

law,’’ thus implying that citizens have a right to have only as many children

as the government family planning policy permits them to have;

• Article 20 says that ‘‘husbands and wives of childbearing age shall consciously employ family planning, contraceptive, or birth control measures, accepting family planning technical services and teachings, in order to prevent an

unintentional pregnancy or reduce its chances,’’ which precludes the option of

NOT practicing family planning hence constitutes a direct infringement on

reproductive freedom (‘‘unintentional’’ by whose standards?); • Article 12 says that village and neighborhood committees ‘‘shall press ahead

with family planning, with unreserved efforts, and in accordance with the law,’’ which has a somewhat relentless sound that is undoubtedly intentional;

• Article 34 talks about ‘‘urging husbands and wives who already have a child

or children to adopt permanent birth control measures, a reference to IUDs and

sterilization. Moreover, in the past ‘‘urging,’’ ‘‘advocating,’’ ‘‘promoting,’’ and

‘‘persuading’’ have often culminated in brute force when noncompliance

continued;

• Article 11 says ‘‘Specific population and family planning measures shall

provide for detailed population control quotas. . .’’ Here the language

undisguised and quite unambiguous. One might have supposed this provision

would have caught the UNFPA’s attention, inasmuch as the agency has been

saying that it is encouraging an abandonment of targets and quotas not only

in the 32 counties where it has current projects but all across the country.

One wonders why the UNFPA expressed no concern about these articles? Why

don’t they also need ‘‘clarification’’?

The lack of specificity of many of the law’s provisions is in itself a reason for suspicion. Some articles, in contrast, are highly explicit, notably those which condemn

actions that disrupt or weaken program implementation. For example:

• Article 36 is quite specific about penalties for those who gain ‘‘illegal’’ income

by helping people evade family planning rules, including performing ‘‘illegal’’

birth control surgical operations, using ultrasound to detect and abort female

fetuses, and performing phony birth control operations, conducting false pregnancy checks, or issuing false birth control certificates;

• Article 37 specifies penalties for those who falsify birth control certificates

or issue them ‘‘illegally,’’ presumably to people who do not qualify for them—

not much ambiguity there;

• Article 39 provides for the punishment of state functionaries who engage in

several kinds of activities, including ‘‘doing wrong to serve friends or relatives,’’

‘‘seeking or accepting a bribe,’’ diverting family planning funds for other purposes, and falsifying population and family planning statistical reports—nothing

very vague there either;

• Article 40 which provides for administrative punishment of the leadership of

local units which ‘‘refuse . . . to assist in a family planning process as required

. . .,’’ apparently a reference to the long-term policy of holding local leaders responsible for the success of family planning in their units. This is not fully explicit but it does not need to be. Local leaders in China would have no trouble

knowing what it means;

• Article 43 which provides for the punishment of those who oppose or obstruct

an administrative department. This is not specific, but given its purpose it

needs to be broadly construed, since popular opposition to birth control takes

so many different forms.

• Article 22 should also be cited as one of the more specific. It prohibits

‘‘discrimination against and maltreatment of women’’ who give birth to girls,

which the government has long recognized as a form of opposition to the family

planning rules.

The seven articles of Chapter Four of the law (Articles 23 through 29) which

provide for rewards and incentives for those who comply with family planning requirements are also in most cases relatively specific, and they resound with serious

intent.

43

On the other hand, the articles which purport to offer some sort of protection for

the rights of citizens are particularly vague. For example:

• Article 4 says that family planning is to be conducted ‘‘in strict accordance

with the law, in a civilized manner, and without infringing upon citizens’ legitimate rights and interests,’’ but does not indicate what constitutes an ‘‘uncivilized’’ manner or what rights of citizens are ‘‘legitimate;’’ • Article 21 says that couples of childbearing age ‘‘shall enjoy free of charge

basic family planning technical services,’’ which of course include the three

basic birth control surgeries that have not always been so enjoyable for recipients in the past because these were mandatory. To present the surgeries as a

service to be enjoyed is more than a little bit cynical;

• There is also one provision under Article 39 that condemns ‘‘infringing upon

a citizen’s personal rights, property rights, or other legitimate rights and interests.’’ This may be an attempt to discourage certain kinds of coercion, such as

knocking down houses and confiscating farm implements, which have in the

past been recognized by the central authorities as counter-productive because

they arouse the collective anger of citizens and lead to setbacks in family planning work. But this provision could have been made more explicit, unless perhaps its vagueness was meant to allow wiggle room in case the government

later decided that it did not wish to come down too hard on cadres who used

such tactics.

• Finally, Article 44 provides that citizens and organizations may ‘‘apply for

reconsideration of an administrative decision or file a lawsuit against an administrative decision, after considering that an administrative organ [has] infringed

upon their legitimate rights and interests during a family planning process.’’ Again, the meaning of this provision depends upon a precise definition of the

‘‘rights and interests’’ of citizens, which the law does not provide. Even with

such a definition, a plaintiff appealing under this provision may get nowhere

if the local courts, on prompting of administrators at some higher level, simply

refuse to hear him, as has often happened in the past. A more explicit law

might have made it harder for them to dismiss such appeals, but the vagueness

here allows them considerable latitude in ruling specific citizen complaints out

of order.

If the new law was meant to curb coercion in family planning, it could have done

so almost instantly without the necessity of any judicial process, simply by explicitly

demanding coercive tactics widely used in the past that must cease at once and imposing penalties on those who continue to use them. The law does not do that.

• It does not prohibit forced IUD insertions, forced subcutaneous implants,

forced abortions, or forced sterilizations.

• It does not prescribe penalties for cadres or officials who authorize, condone,

or carry out such measures.

• It does not prohibit exorbitant fines for family planning violators.

• It does not condemn the use of administrative harassment of violators which

is often applied to them in addition to other penalties.

• It does not prohibit the widespread practice of detaining pregnant women,

their spouses, or their other relatives to force them to submit to abortion, sterilization, or other unwanted procedures.

• It does not prohibit the killing of unauthorized infants by medical personnel

at the time of delivery or within the next few days, a practice that has been

reported in the international media several times in the past 3 years.

• It does not prohibit the use of torture to extract confessions or information

from family planning violators, which has sometimes resulted in their death

while in detention, as has also been documented in foreign press reports.

• It does not repeat or even allude to the particularly offensive coercive tactics

discouraged by the so-called ‘‘Seven Prohibitions’’ circular issued by the SFPC

in July 1995, which ruled out punitive measures that provoked popular unrest

and damaged family planning work.

• It does not even mention the word ‘‘coercion’’ or advise cadres to ‘‘improve

their work style,’’ expressions which in appeared in the brief anti-coercion campaigns of 1978, 1980, and 1984, and which, as noted above, again reappeared

briefly in several domestic news items in March and April of this year.

Nor does the law affirm any of the basic principles of reproductive freedom supposedly endorsed by China along with other nations at the 1994 Cairo World Population Conference, although this would be the place for such an affirmation if the

Chinese government were serious about implementing them. It does not acknowledge ‘‘the rights of citizens to determine the number and spacing of their children’’

or their right to choose their own form of contraception, presumably because these

44

rights go beyond what the Chinese authorities wish to recognize as ‘‘legitimate.’’ To

have included such language in the law would have caught the imagination of the

people throughout the country and led to a virtual rebellion against the family

planning program as presently implemented. Reproductive freedom might have suddenly become a reality for most Chinese couples of childbearing age. The Chinese

government clearly has no intention of taking that risk, and the UNFPA and other

apologists for the program seem disinclined to make an issue of the matter.

How the new law will play out in the next few years remains to be seen. It is

possible that a show of suppressing the more flagrant forms of coercion will take

place in the near term, at least until world attention becomes preoccupied elsewhere. But then the emphasis will probably shift back to requiring citizen compliance with family size limits, targets, quotas, and plans, and the argument will be

advanced that family planning is now not just a policy but a law which citizens

must obey. Whether the law’s domestic advocates, who expect this will make for

more compliance, or its domestic critics who think it will inspire more defiance, will

be proven correct may not be clear for some time. For the moment, however, the

advocates have prevailed.

Taking all the evidence so far into account, one conclusion is inescapable. The

basic purpose of the new law is to reinforce population control in China. Ultimately

that control will probably be lost despite government efforts to hold onto it, but the

new law is clearly meant to delay the attainment of true reproductive freedom in

China as long as possible.

PREPARED STATEMENT OF BONNIE GLICK

SEPTEMBER 23, 2002

Commission members, esteemed colleagues:

At the beginning of May, I traveled to China as a member of a three-person team

selected by the White House to conduct an assessment of whether the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) has supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization in the People’s Republic of

China. These concerns were codified in 1985 in U.S. legislation known as the Kemp

Kasten Amendment. Since 1998, the Chinese State Birth Planning Commission has

conducted a special program with UNFPA participation in 32 of the PRC’s approximately 2800 counties under an agreement signed by the State Birth Planning

Commission and the UNFPA on September 11, 1998.

Given the controversy which has existed in the Congress on the issues of coercive

abortion and involuntary sterilization, great emphasis was placed on making this

a mission of objective fact-finding and assessment.

Prior to our departure for China, we met in the State Department with a variety

of U.S. Government officials. We also met with the Executive Director of the

UNFPA, U.N. Undersecretary General Madame Thoraya Ahmed Obaid and with

Mr. Scruggs as well as with Steven Mosher, President of the Population Research

Institute and with Mr. Aird. Finally, we met with several Members of Congress and/

or their staff members.

On May 12, we departed for Beijing for a 2-week assessment visit. In Beijing, we

paid a courtesy call on U.S. Ambassador Randt then had extensive discussions with

Minister Zhang Weiqing, Chairman of the State Birth Planning Commission as well

as with Ms. Siri Tellier, the Director of the UNFPA Country Office in Beijing. We

met with Chinese academics specializing in population and demographics as well as

with students and NGO representatives involved in Chinese population matters.

Following this overview of the population situation in China, we began our travels

through 5 of the 32 UNFPA counties. The five counties were selected by the U.S.

Embassy, and they represented a cross-section of urban and rural, poor and middle

income. During the next 10 days, we traveled approximately 6000 miles, by air and

road, through urban and rural China. The five counties visited were Rongchang

County (100 km outside Chongqing Municipality), Pingba County (2.5 hours from

Guiyang in Guizhou Province), Xuanzhou County (in Anhui Province), Guichi County (in Anhui Province), and Sihui City (in central Guangdong Province). We were

accompanied on our travels by a fluent Chinese-speaking member of the U.S. Embassy, by an interpreter, Ms. Ying Yu, a naturalized American citizen of Chinese

origin, and by Mr. Hongtao Hu, a member of the State Birth Planning Commission.

Mr. Hu received no more than 24 hours advance notice of our daily travel plans.

Our visits were often unannounced and with no notice. We stopped in at three factories, two schools, 11 village Birth Planning substations, five municipal Birth PlanVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:03 Nov 20, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 82487.TXT China1 PsN: China1
45

ning centers and three hospitals. I held discussions with women in the streets and

agricultural fields who were going about their daily lives.

I went to China with open eyes, with an objective point of view, and with a narrow mandate. We went to as many counties and as many villages as possible. We

also made a variety of unscheduled stops. Although our sample size was small (5

out of 32 possibilities), I believe the results are representative in that we varied our

methodology through random visits, and with little to no notice given to Chinese

government authorities, thereby decreasing biases in the observed data.

I would like to address the conversations I had with women throughout our travels. In my years as a Foreign Service Officer, I often found that women around the

world, particularly women in societies that tend to be dominated by men, are willing

to open up to foreign women to discuss personal issues. There is a commonality of

interests and experiences. This was as true for me in rural Ethiopia and Nicaragua

as it was in rural and urban China.

Thus, in speaking with Chinese women, I was able to elicit direct and thoughtful

responses to probing questions. Culture played an enormous role in these conversations. Often I found myself asking indirect questions in order to obtain genuine responses such as, ‘‘How many children do you plan or hope to have?’’ ‘‘How do you

feel about the policy of the Chinese government that ostensibly limits your ability

to have more than one child?’’ ‘‘Do you know any women who have been coerced to

have abortions or forced, involuntarily, to become sterilized?’’ ‘‘Do you know anyone

who has to pay Social Compensation Fees because she had more than one child?’’ If I sensed that a woman, particularly a professional woman in one of the health

clinics, was suspicious of my line of questioning, I would change the way in which

I asked my questions. I might ask her, ‘‘Perhaps not in this county, but have you

heard of women in other counties who might have been coerced to have abortions

or sterilizations?’’ In one pharmaceutical manufacturing and packaging factory, I had the opportunity to talk to a group of 15 or so women all working on an assembly line. We

talked as they packaged pharmaceuticals. The conditions in which they were working were good, clean, and comfortable. They considered themselves lucky to have

these stable jobs. When I asked them questions about their family planning practices, nearly all said that they had just one child. One woman had two children,

several had none. All commented that it is expensive to raise children.

I met with two women in a health clinic in Rongchang County who had just had

abortions due to pregnancies arising, they said, from failed contraception. I asked

each of them why they chose to abort. The first woman said that she already had

twins and neither wanted nor could afford a third child. She and her husband, she

said, were happy with their two children and they had not planned on a third. The

other woman, a 22 year old, said that she and her husband were not yet ready to

have children. They themselves were children, she said, and she wanted to wait

until she was ready for a ‘‘perfect’’ birth.

The Chinese government, it seems to me, through public service announcements

in all forms of media, has convinced women of the merits of marrying late, delaying

births, and focusing on a ‘‘perfect’’ birth. What is a ‘‘perfect’’ birth? This is a potentially dangerous question to ask. Since abortions are legal in China, women take

great care to ensure that the fetuses they carry are perfect. If they fear that a fetus

is in any way less than perfect, the inclination among Chinese women is to abort.

While the practitioners with whom we met said that they do not promote abortion

as a form of birth control, they were well aware that many women abort rather than

‘‘waste’’ their one opportunity to give birth on a less than perfect child.

As many of us are aware, this has, no doubt, led to the skewed gender ratios in

Chinese births. With 116 male children born for every 100 female children, the

numbers speak for themselves. This skewed birth ratio, when considered among a

population of 1.3 billion people, demonstrates that the demographic challenges

facing China today and into the future are staggering.

I was initially surprised by the near uniformity of responses I received to the

questions I asked Chinese women. However, after several days, I realized that the

similarity of responses was due to the tremendous public service campaign the Chinese government has undertaken to promote its one-child policy. Generally speaking, women in China genuinely and faithfully adhere to the one-child policy (now

codified with the new population law as of September 1, 2002). While it is hard for

Americans to accept that women elsewhere in the world might not want a house

full of children, we must all think for a moment about the particulars of the situation in China. In a country with a population of at least 1.3 billion people, and

where the current generation of women of childbearing age was raised with the philosophy of one-child only, it easy to see women in China accepting the limitation

on births as part of their civic and patriotic duty. The public service campaign, if

46

you will, to discourage multiple births, has been so prevalent and so ‘‘effective’’ that

few women I met seemed willing to rock the boat. Indeed, all the women I met

talked about how expensive it is to raise children, the underlying implication could

be that it is even more expensive to raise multiple children given the coercive Social

Compensation Fees levied on families daring enough to have multiple children.

Clearly, China is sitting on a demographic time bomb. If the population continues

to grow at its current rate, it will run into problems of resource allocation. I went

to China to look into the resources of the U.N. Population Fund—all $3.5 million

of its annual budget. When comparing the budget of the UNFPA with the overall

budget of the Chinese State Birth Planning Commission—$3.6 billion—it quickly becomes apparent that China is not interested in UNFPA for its money. Rather, the

PRC is interested in the fig leaf UNFPA provides in its attempt to show the world

that it conforms to international norms and conventions for family planning. By

having a UNFPA presence in China, the PRC can hold this up to the world as ‘‘evidence’’ that it follows generally accepted norms vis-a-vis family planning. In fact,

it does not, and the limited presence of UNFPA in China may actually hurt efforts

to bring the country’s policies more in line with international norms. This leaves

UNFPA with only two options, as I see it: expand into more counties in China— unlikely given its tremendous resource constraints; or scale back and demand real

reforms of the Chinese government before agreeing to share international expertise

and before granting international acceptance of Chinese practices. Given the codification on September 1 of China’s one-child policy, UNFPA should act forcefully to

demand changes to this law, to the coercive fines and so-called Social Compensation

Fees.

Before our departure for China, we were cautioned by certain Members of Congress that it would be impossible to get Chinese citizens to speak openly to our

group. China is, after all, a police state. With all due respect, I believe that many

of the women I met were able to speak openly and honestly. While the answers they

gave were not the ones that some in the U.S. would choose to believe, I would like

to think I was able to sift through the half-truths and obfuscation to come out with

a relatively clear picture of the birth planning decisions made by dozens of women

in rural and urban China.

The opportunity I had to travel relatively freely throughout China is one that is

afforded to very few people. The Chinese government was accommodating in that

we were allowed to travel anywhere we chose in the country. Were we fully free?

That is doubtful. Everywhere we went, we were accompanied by an official of the

State Birth Planning Commission. At the initiation of our trip, I did not think it

would be possible to operate as freely as I would have liked. In truth, the representative of the State Birth Planning Commission was more of a token than anything

else. He facilitated our encounters in health centers and in factories, nothing more.

In closing, I would like to express my thanks to those who facilitated the visit

while assiduously avoiding any effort to color our team’s impressions or influence

our opinions. These include individuals in the State Department, the American Embassy in Beijing and the American Consulates General in Shanghai and Guangzhou.

I urge the Administration to continue to monitor closely this aspect of Chinese life.

As I mentioned, China’s continued population explosion is the elephant in the room

that no one wants to discuss and all would rather ignore. It will place ever-increasing strains on natural resources, public services, and employment. These strains will

be felt up and down the political spectrum, and they must be factored into our decisionmaking as we deal with China in this new century.

Thank You.

PREPARED STATEMENT OF EDWIN A. WINCKLER

SEPTEMBER 23, 2002

POSITIVE RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN CHINESE REPRODUCTIVE POLICY

INTRODUCTION

As part of China’s gradual transition from communism, Chinese social policy is

gradually shifting, from limiting population through planning of births by the state,

toward delivering a broader range of reproductive health services needed by citizens.

A December 2001 Law has legalized both the birth limitation program and many

reforms in it; associated regulations have helped curb abuses and expand citizens’

rights. Due to the complexity of this subject and the shortness of time, I will package my remarks in the kind of numerical slogan in which Chinese public administration often packages complex policy matters—here ‘‘one theme, two purposes and

47

three threes.’’ (For a longer briefing with references, please see my September 2002

paper in Population and Development Review, appended to this testimony and posted on the Commission website. My translation of the 2001 Law also appears in both

places. As regards numerical slogans, in the late 1990s the birth planning program’s

summary of its key policies was ‘‘33321,’’ referring to the ‘‘three unchangeables,’’ the

‘‘three basics,’’ the ‘‘three links,’’ the ‘‘two transitions’’ and the ‘‘one purpose,’’

explained below.)

By way of introduction, the one theme over-arching my remarks is that this subject involves tradeoffs between competing rights and objectives, both for Chinese social policy and for American foreign policy. On both sides, public policymakers are

making difficult practical and ethical choices. Each side has legitimate criticisms of

the other, but these criticisms are most persuasive when they recognize that both

sides have reasons for doing what they are doing that many on both sides consider

legitimate. Each side should understand the values that are being privileged by the

other and the values that are being sacrificed by its own choices. The PRC is deliberately limiting the reproductive freedom of current generations in order to preserve

the sustainability of development and the quality of life of future generations. In

the name of reproductive freedom, the United States is protesting this restriction,

but at the cost of the UNFPA’s capacity to deliver reproductive health services desperately needed by millions of women in countries less developed than China.

‘‘Limiting reproductive freedom’’ may sound horrendous to some, but no freedom is

absolute, including ‘‘reproductive freedom,’’ even in the United States, and even according to international conventions. Besides, any society may limit some freedoms

during emergencies. For several decades the PRC leadership has regarded China’s

burgeoning population as a national crisis. Evidently by now much of China’s

populace largely agrees. Ongoing program reforms are deliberately intended to restore as much reproductive freedom as possible, consistent with continuing to limit

population growth.

Overall, my remarks have two purposes. One is to provide reliable information

about recent policy developments in China, which I believe are mostly good news.

My statement is called ‘‘positive recent developments’’ not only because some

positive developments have occurred, but also because, in order to promote positive

developments, it is essential to be able to recognize them when they occur. Such recognition becomes unnecessarily difficult when today’s PRC is viewed through yesterday’s ideology: as a timelessly totalitarian monstrosity mindlessly inflicting pointless

suffering on its population. My other purpose is to identify forms of effective intervention from outside, which I believe should include not only criticizing the bad but

also supporting the good. At the very least, as recommended by the State Department’s May 2002 Independent Assessment Team, the Congress should give the

State Department and other executive agencies the resources necessary to monitor

developments in Chinese reproductive policy. Moreover, the executive branch should

give some priority to doing so.

In the body of my remarks, the first set of points emphasizes the extent of change

in China over the past decade. These include demographic change to low fertility,

political change toward a smaller State and weaker national leadership and, consequently, program change from state-centric birth limits toward client-centered

health services. The second set concerns principles of law. The 2001 Law institutionalized the duty of citizens to comply with birth limits. However, it also institutionalized restraints on how those limits can be administered and it authorized a

transition toward provision of more benefits. The third set of points notes the difficulties of practice that China will face in attempting to implement these principles

over the next decade. Both politics and prudence dictate the need for some stability

of policy. The central government’s leverage over local practice is limited by decentralization of authority and resources. What any particular locality can achieve is

relative to its level of economic development.

EXTENT OF CHANGE

The main point of this section is that China is changing rapidly and greatly and

that PRC reproductive policy is changing along with everything else. Birth policy

change has been mostly for the better, particularly since around 1993. A 2000 Decision and 2001 Law codified reforms over the past decade and prescribed additional

reforms over the next decade. These reforms in the Chinese birth program have not

been superficial or cosmetic, but rather have been grounded in fundamental changes

in population and politics.

Demographic change. Around 1970 when the PRC began seriously trying to limit

its population growth, the average woman bore a lifetime total of just under six children. Around 1980 when the PRC declared a ‘‘one child’’ goal, China faced a new

48

generation-long baby boom. To China’s leaders these facts constituted a crisis that

required party-state intervention and justified some temporary sacrifice of citizens’ rights. It took several years for national political and program leaders to arrive at

a policy that seemed reasonable enough to the populace that implementation was

feasible. In particular, the ‘‘one child’’ goal had to be modified to allow much of the

rural population to have two children. Nevertheless, by around 2000, through some

combination of program effort and socioeconomic change, total fertility had fallen to

around two. Most couples no longer want many more children than that, though

many still want at least one son. To China’s leaders the crisis was not entirely over,

because substantial population growth continues and the pressure on environmental

resources continues to intensify. Therefore, they concluded, it is necessary to retain

the program for limiting fertility, particularly in less developed areas where natural

fertility remains high. Nevertheless, the fact that average national fertility is now

below replacement has broadened policy options, to maintaining low fertility while

expanding services. Therefore, China’s national political and program leaders concluded, it is necessary to actively reform the program in many respects, particularly

in more developed areas where citizens’ childbearing aspirations barely exceed what

the government recommends.

Political change. Changes in reproductive policy reflect broader political changes.

The most basic changes have been systemic. Since around 1980 PRC leaders have

been deliberately shrinking the State and substituting indirect State regulation for

direct State operation of economy, society and culture. PRC leaders have been systematically ‘‘legalizing’’ the State by passing laws that both authorize and constrain

administration of each area of public policy. PRC leaders have been further decentralizing the State by transferring many economic and social matters to provincial

and local governments for funding and administration. There have also been significant changes in the leadership itself. The first and second generation of revolutionary founders such as Mao and Deng were confident of their control over Chinese

society and imagined that they could plan reproduction in society just as they

planned production in the economy. The third and fourth generations of revolutionary successors such as Jiang and Hu have become increasingly preoccupied with

avoiding political collapse. They prefer policies that do not antagonize the public by

making undue demands on citizens or by permitting maladministration by cadres.

China’s national political leaders are attempting to make policies more truly ‘‘public’’ in the sense that policies are adopted through representative bodies that then

help monitor implementation, to prevent incompetence and corruption and to ensure

transparency and fairness. Where bureaucratic ‘‘red tape’’ creates unnecessary costs

of administration or opportunities for corruption, the PRC has begun to ‘‘deregulate’’—including in the birth limitation program.

Program change. Around 1970 China’s national political leaders launched an ambitious attempt to control the quantity and improve the quality of China’s population. Three decades of experience have provided China’s birth program with many

local examples of ‘‘best practice’’ in attempting to reach these twin goals, examples

that the program has propagated nationwide. For example, a major early lesson was

to stress propaganda-and-education over administrative or economic incentives, to

stress pre-pregnancy contraception over post-pregnancy birth control, and to stress

routine work over crash programs (the ‘‘three basics’’). Accordingly, by the 1990s a

major program objective was to replace crash campaigns by amateur cadres with

continuous work by trained professionals. At the beginning of the 1990s, conservative national political and program leaders announced that some things about the

birth program would not change: the basic policy of limiting births, overall national

targets for controlling population, and the personal responsibility of local party and

government leaders for meeting these objectives (the ‘‘three unchangeables’’). On

this basis, since around 1993 the program has unleashed a series of progressively

more fundamental reforms.

Reforms in the early 1990s addressed flaws in China’s state-centric approach

itself (the ‘‘two transitions’’). First, birth limitation was linked to other government

programs such as alleviating poverty and advancing women. Second, the program

began adapting to China’s new ‘‘socialist market economy’’ by supplementing administrative and social ‘‘constraints’’ with financial ‘‘guidance’’ through incentives and

disincentives. Throughout the 1990s a major preoccupation was correcting abuses

within the administration of the program itself. Clumsy coercion was attacked by

the 1995 ‘‘seven don’ts;’’ local financial corruption was addressed first through anticorruption campaigns and later through local financial reform. Reforms in the later

1990s initiated movement toward a more client-centered approach. With international assistance, China’s more advanced localities began improving ‘‘quality of

care:’’ some choice between methods of contraception in particular and better maternal-and-child health care in general. By around 2000, the emphasis was shifting

49

from limiting the quantity of the population toward improving its quality—‘‘quality’’

both in the narrow sense of better maternal-and-child health care and in the broad

sense of better lifelong health and education. The program also began reducing unnecessary regulation, for example allowing newlyweds to have their first child whenever they choose instead of waiting for local government permission.

At the turn of the millennium, two major policy documents both further institutionalized and further reformed Chinese reproductive policy: a once-in-a-decade joint

party-and-government Decision in March 2000 and a long delayed national Law, finally passed in December 2001. As regards institutionalization, the Decision and

Law reaffirmed the PRC’s intention to continue trying to control national population

growth and to limit individual couples’ fertility. As regard reform, the Decision and

Law formalized 1990s reforms and authorized further progressive reforms. As I say

in my current article in Population and development review: ‘‘Clearly the program

is no longer just administratively enforced birth limitation, but equally clearly it is

not yet entirely client-centered reproductive health care. Language is now in place

authorizing much of both. How much of which prevails will depend on the power

of rival policymakers and the vagaries of local implementation.’’ Fortunately, since

I wrote that, an important program conference has given further concrete indication

that the program will continue moving in a progressive direction.

Thus in early September 2002—just as the 2001 Law came into effect—the program convened a national work conference to summarize 2 years of experiments in

how to proceed with the additional reforms that the new Law now permits. The conference site, the city of Mudanjiang in the province of Heilongjiang, will serve as

a national model for many features of the next round of reforms. One of the most

important of these involves the PRC’s rigorous system for evaluating the performance of local political leaders and administrative personnel (a form of western ‘‘management by objectives’’ that the Chinese call a ‘‘responsibility system’’). This system

is one of the national leadership’s most important tools for controlling local politics

and steering local policy. In the early 1990s the national leadership used this system to ensure draconian enforcement of birth limits. Now, in the early 2000s, the

national political leadership is using this same system to ensure reform of the

program toward less State regulation and more service delivery. In evaluating

personnel performance, Mudanjiang is dropping indicators for population growth

and birth quotas and replacing them with indicators for quality care and citizen satisfaction. This is the most direct evidence one can have of the likely future direction

of the program: further reform in a progressive direction is now institutionalized not

only as national law but also as the criteria by which local performance will be

evaluated.

PRINCIPLES OF LAW

The main point of this section is that current PRC reproductive policy is principled not unprincipled. The 2001 Law embodies definite constitutional principles

concerning citizen rights and duties, definite public policy principles of optimality

and justice, and definite implementational principles of reasonableness and fairness.

What so long delayed the adoption of a national law governing reproductive policy

were difficulties in squaring the ideal requirements for what a law should contain

under the PRC State constitution and the actual practice of birth limitation in

China. It was only after the program was already substantially reformed that the

2001 Law could be passed authorizing further reforms. Westerners may justifiably

disagree with some of the principles involved or with how some of them are applied.

Nevertheless, the underlying principles are analogous to principles upheld by the

West—in fact many of them derive from the West or from current international

conventions. Preoccupations common to the PRC and the West include defining an

appropriate relationship between the rights and duties of citizens, establishing restraints on what the State can do to citizens, and achieving a feasible relationship

between citizen entitlements and local resources.

Duties of citizens. The 2001 Law reaffirms the duty of Chinese couples to practice

contraception and to limit their childbearing. The PRC regards this duty as comparable to military service or tax payment. Ideally citizens should comply with such

duties voluntarily. Noncompliance is not criminal and should not be punished by

criminal penalties. Nevertheless, such duties are mandatory and therefore should be

enforced by some sanctions. Accordingly, noncompliers must pay a steep ‘‘social compensation fee’’ (several times annual income), so called because the PRC regards it

as a way to reimburse society for the extra costs imposed by extra children. This

fee also provides local revenues from which to reward couples who do restrict themselves to only one child. Of course, such a fee also serves as a coercive deterrent,

but in the form of a financial disincentive that the PRC considers appropriate to

50

a ‘‘socialist market economy.’’ Sanctions become more severe only for citizens who

do not pay this fee (either immediately or by yearly installments). Citizens who

actively refuse to pay, or who otherwise actively obstruct birth planning, can be

referred to the courts for trial and punishment.

Thus, as a policy, PRC birth limitation is ‘‘coercive’’ in the sense that it is a mandatory restriction on absolute reproductive freedom. Nevertheless, by now—as a result of thirty years of propaganda and enforcement on the one hand and of economic

and social change on the other—compliance is largely voluntary. Evidently by now,

in principle, most Chinese citizens agree with their government that population

should be limited and that citizens have a duty to limit their childbearing. Most citizens are willing to do so, provided that policy is reasonable and consistent and that

enforcement is firm and fair—just as most Americans are willing to pay their taxes

voluntarily, but only so long as everyone does so. In practice, of course, some couples

attempt to break the rules, particularly couples who have a daughter or two but still

do not have the son they desire. But then enforcement is definitely not supposed

to be ‘‘coercive’’ in the sense of community-level implementors taking physical action

against the noncompliers.

Restraints on the state. Thus the 2001 Law also reaffirms the right of Chinese

citizens not to suffer from abuses of maladministration or from over-harsh implementation measures. This is part of an ongoing effort by national political leaders

to rein in sometimes predatory local governments, in order to protect the regime’s

legitimacy in the eyes of the public. As noted above, during the 1990s the national

political and program leadership made strenuous efforts to combat abuses in the

birth program such as clumsy enforcement (physical coercion of persons, physical

damage to property) and financial corruption (local governments levying undue fines

to increase their revenues). These efforts included removing egregiously coercive or

extractive provisions from local regulations. The 2001 Law institutionalizes these efforts by stipulating severe penalties for such abuses. Thus most of the punishments

specified in the 2001 Law are not on citizens for non-compliance but on local officials for maladministration. Associated regulations will turn all money from fees

over to county finance bureaus, reducing opportunities for financial corruption.

The 2001 law also omits many harsh measures that still remain in existing provincial regulations, which will require removing them from provincial regulations as

well. These include such unpopular requirements as that, after a couple has had its

permitted number of children, one partner in the couple should accept sterilization.

The 2001 Law also continues efforts to combat demographic distortions that birth

policy has aggravated, such as skewed sex ratios at birth. Thus the 2001 Law confirms that it is illegal to use ultrasound machines to determine the sex of a fetus

as a prelude to sex-selective abortion. (This is intended as a restraint on both State

and private medical providers, and on private citizens. Unfortunately the popular

demand for sex-selection is so great that this attempt at restraint has little effect.)

Provision of benefits. At the same time that the PRC is limiting some rights (mostly civil-political) it is extending others (in the case of reproductive health, rights to

social services that go beyond those guaranteed by the Chinese State constitution).

The 2001 Law affirms the right of citizens to a variety of benefits related to reproduction. Couples who forego extra children deserve direct rewards to compensate for

the economic benefits the children would have provided. Poor households who

practice birth planning deserve extra help in developing their livelihoods through

priority access to poverty-relief resources and programs. Women deserve access to

basic reproductive health services and to more opportunities for education and employment. An adequate social security system would lessen the need of parents for

children who can care for them in old age. Of these benefits, the main specific one

currently being actively expanded is reproductive health care. A main goal here is

to raise the ‘‘quality’’ of the children actually born, through premarital and prenatal

screening, checkups and nutrition during pregnancy, and better care during childbirth and early infancy. In 2001, concurrent with the process of passing the Law,

the State Birth Planning Commission issued Technical Services Regulations to

govern the provision of these benefits. Among other things, these regulations

instructed the SBPC and Ministry of health to cooperate in establishing a ‘‘local

service provision network.’’

DIFFICULTIES OF PRACTICE

The main point of this section is that the principles endorsed by the 2001 Law

face difficulties of implementation in practice. In the long run progressive reformists

at the center probably will largely prevail. However the process will be gradual,

piecemeal, and incomplete.

51

Need for stability. Program change will be gradual because national political and

program leaders regard some stability as a precondition for much reform. As in any

country, policy change is easier to achieve if it can be represented as a continuation

of existing policies. In the March 2000 Decision ‘‘stability’’ is a mantra: the goal is

to ‘‘stabilize’’ a low fertility rate that the leadership regards as potentially ‘‘unstable,’’ because in some areas economic and cultural development is not yet sufficiently advanced to reduce fertility on its own. According to the Decision, the key

to maintaining low fertility is to ‘‘stabilize’’ and ‘‘strengthen’’ existing policies. This

does mean maintaining strict limits on the number of children that couples are permitted, particularly in less developed areas where fertility remains high. However

it does not mean ‘‘strengthening’’ enforcement against citizens—instead, what is to

be ‘‘strengthened’’ is program capacity to deliver services—competently, honestly

and efficiently.

In practice, the process of reforming China’s birth program will involve a great

deal of stability. First, to placate conservative elites, large parts of central policy

itself will not change. Perhaps as a concession to conservatives, the 2001 Law

contains much language authorizing features of the old ‘‘state planning’’ approach.

Second, to avoid erratic mass behavior, policy change must proceed in an orderly

fashion. At each stage it must remain clear what rules cadres must enforce and citizens must obey. Program leaders believe that experience has taught them that for

the program to remain stable—neither grass-roots implementors nor the mass public either rebelling or defecting—the program must steer a centrist course between

too great severity and too great leniency. That is why, when the 2001 Law was

passed, national program leaders immediately underlined that it represented ‘‘neither a tightening nor a loosening’’ of policy. Third, existing policies have been arrived at through a long process of trial-and-error. The reform strategy is to ‘‘fade

in’’ new methods and to make sure they work before a ‘‘fade out’’ of old methods.

Obviously change in China’s birth program is a politically sensitive and technically

complex process that requires careful attention to understand correctly.

Limits from decentralization. Program change will be not only gradual but also

piecemeal because the central government’s leverage over provincial and local governments has some limits, for both constitutional and practical reasons. According

to the Chinese State Constitution, provinces have some latitude for adapting national policies to provincial circumstances. In social policy, central ministries do not

exert direct authority over their provincial branches, which report instead to the

provincial government and its party leadership. The same is true of the relationship

between provincial and local governments (county and city), and between local governments and community governments (township and village). As a practical matter, lower levels provide much of the funding and staffing for social programs and

therefore inevitably have some latitude for influencing what occurs within their

jurisdictions. For very high priority objectives, higher levels can use personnel policy

and party discipline to overcome these obstacles. This has worked well for

combating maladministration of birth limitation but is less likely to work well for

delivering reproductive health services.

Level of development. Program change will be not only gradual and piecemeal but

also incomplete, because it will be relative to development. As Marxists, national

leaders view many matters as relative to the overall level of national economic development, including what constitutional rights it is feasible to implement at each

stage. In practice it will be harder to rein in abuses in less developed localities,

where fertility is still high, compliance is less voluntary, and the quality of personnel is lower. In these poorer localities, positive benefits will be harder to fund

and many benefits may never be feasible at all.

CONCLUSION: POLICY IMPLICATIONS

By way of conclusion I return first to my two purposes (providing reliable information about recent policy developments and identifying effective forms of outside

intervention) and then finally return to my one main theme (the inevitability of

tradeoffs between different rights). All of these are complicated by the multiplicity

of discourses in both China and the West. China includes both many modern discourses (e.g. variants of both communist and non-communist modernity) and many

traditional discourses (e.g. variants of Confucianism and other philosophies). Each

of these discourses has its own interpretation of, or adds its own nuance to, Chinese

understanding of Western rights concepts. These Western concepts are themselves

contested within the United States, within the international community, and between the two. In particular, the dominant discourse through which Americans have

perceived PRC birth limitation is what Professor Susan Greenhalgh calls ‘‘the

coercion narrative,’’ whose relevance to the program has been steadily decreasing

52

(please see her testimony). Accordingly, dialog between China and the West over the

PRC’s implementation of specific rights might best proceed by looking for common

ground, particularly between the Chinese and Western discourses that are closest

to each other. These are Western social democracy and its Eastern offshoot, postMao Chinese market socialism. However, philosophical agreement is no longer the

main problem: China has already adopted most of the aspirations compiled in international agreements.

The first of my two purposes has been to provide reliable information about recent

policy developments in China, in particular to underline that there is much that is

positive in recent developments, the 2001 Law in particular. Evidently that positiveness is difficult to detect through the lens of the coercion narrative, as Dr. John

Aird’s statement to this Roundtable illustrates, making that statement distinctly

unreliable as a source of information. Dr. Aird’s main conclusion is correct: Chinese

couples still do not have complete reproductive freedom and the 2001 Law is intended to further institutionalize public policies limiting the number of children that

PRC citizens are permitted to have. Nevertheless, his conclusion presents a number

of problems. A first is that, contrary to the impression he conveys, few informed persons maintain otherwise, least of all the PRC government or the 2001 Law, which

he correctly cites as plainly requiring that Chinese citizens limit their fertility. A

second problem is that much of the rest of his strategy for substantiating his conclusion is irrelevant or misleading. It is irrelevant to report that enforcement of the

policy has been clumsily coercive in the distant past. It is misleading not to report

that, precisely for that reason, the PRC is doing its best to prevent enforcement

from being clumsily coercive in the present and future.

A third problem is that some of the rest of Dr. Aird’s strategy for proving his conclusion is misinformed or misguided. As for misinformation, it is simply not the case

that, for example, the 2001 Law calls for population targets or birth quotas (that

was a FBIS mistranslation). It is not true that the Law does not proscribe abusive

coercion as a method of implementation (that is the meaning of the Law’s demand

for ‘‘lawful implementation’’ and for respecting citizens’ ‘‘legal rights and interests’’).

It is not correct that the government makes no domestic mention of its opposition

to abusively coercive implementation (in the late 1990s it advertised the ‘‘seven don’ts’’ and in the early 2000s it is trying to inform citizens of the 2001 Law’s ame- liorative provisions). As for misguidedness, Dr. Aird asks why the PRC would pass

such a law at this time if it were not for the sinister purpose of increasing ‘‘coer- cion,’’ when the answer plainly is that the PRC is belatedly bringing birth planning

into a longstanding process of reconstructing the foundations of the regime on the

basis of ‘‘socialist legality.’’ In doing so the PRC has reaffirmed that birth limitation

is mandatory, but it has also chosen the least coercive method for enforcing such

limits that it could devise. Equally misguided as a form of argument, Dr. Aird finds

‘‘contradictions’’ between various Chinese policy statements, which again to him

proves a sinister intent to ‘‘coverup’’ increased coercion, but which really just demonstrates that he simply does not understand the complex process of reform that

is occurring.

As regards effective intervention, over the past decade Chinese reproductive policy

has been remarkably responsive to outside influences. Negative criticism of questionable practices has contributed. However, constructive assistance and persuasive

ideals have contributed more. For example, the United Nations Population Fund

(UNFPA) made the largest single contribution to reducing abortions in China, by

improving contraceptive technology to avoid unauthorized pregnancies. International standards for reproductive health and women’s rights (Cairo 1994 and Beijing 1995) quickly and strongly influenced Chinese reproductive policy. The Ford

Foundation, Population Council and other international organizations helped launch

the 1990s reforms in China’s birth limitation program. The problem now is not so

much persuading the PRC to adopt Western ideals as it is the PRC’s ability to implement jointly held ideals. According to the ‘‘developmental’’ approach to rights

taken by China’s leaders, the main question is one of feasibility. Demographic feasibility dictates that implementation measures not allow a rebounding of fertility.

Economic feasibility requires that local resources be available to fund better administration and more benefits. Political feasibility demands that particular measures

win credit for individual leaders within the elite and win legitimacy for the regime

within society. Effective intervention would analyze and help alleviate these feasibility constraints, through both bilateral and multilateral assistance to the Chinese

birth program in such matters as employing voluntary methods, raising technical

standards, and combating HIV/AIDS.

Finally, I return to my one main theme of tradeoffs. Most contemporary ethical

theories concede that rights are never absolute. In particular some tradeoff is likely

between libertarian rights of freedom from State interference and social-democratic

53

rights to social services that require some State intervention. In China’s reproductive policy the main tradeoff has been between the right of the current generation

to bear more children and the right of future generations to resources and environment. In relevant American policy there has been some tradeoff between security

and economic relations with China and the ethical values of some Americans related

to reproduction. There has also been some tradeoff between the right of Americans

to promote such values and the right of Third World women to receive international

assistance for reproductive health. No doubt such tradeoffs will continue, but positive recent developments in Chinese reproductive policy should make them less

acute.

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUSAN GREENHALGH

SEPTEMBER 23, 2002

WOMEN’S RIGHTS AND BIRTH PLANNING IN CHINA: NEW SPACES OF POLITICAL

ACTION, NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR AMERICAN ENGAGEMENT

INTRODUCTION

Since China launched its controversial one-child-per-couple policy in 1980, influential American politicians and the media have advanced a powerful critique of the

state-sponsored coercion used in the name of limiting population growth. While the

focus on coercion has been helpful in drawing attention to the human rights abuses

in the Chinese program, it has outlived its usefulness. That exclusive focus on coercion has limited both our understandings of, and our responses to, new developments in Chinese population affairs. Three of those limitations bear note.

First, the coercion critique has paid scant attention to the violations of women’s interests and rights, when it is women and girls who have borne the heaviest costs

of China’s birth planning program. Second, the coercion story divides the world into

two opposed systems—capitalist/socialist, free/coercive, good/bad—and defines the

presence of coercion as the only thing worth noticing about the Chinese program.

Evoking an older, bipolar cold-war world, the coercion perspective ignores forces of

globalization that are profoundly transforming Chinese society, fostering not only

change in the State program but also the emergence of new and progressive quasistate and non-state sites of political activity. Finally, the coercion critique has

encouraged punitive responses from the American government, rather than constructive engagements with Chinese reformers. The official American response has

been less helpful than it could have been. China is changing. While continuing to

draw attention to the human rights violations in the Chinese program, it is time

to move beyond the single-minded focus on coercion to see the remarkable transformations that are taking place in the global and local Chinese politics of population and the opportunities they present for constructive American response.

This brief presentation draws on nearly 20 years of active scholarly research on

China’s population dynamics, policy, and birth planning program. That research has

involved numerous trips to China, where I have conducted extensive interviews with

both the makers of China’s policy and the peasants who are its main objects. In

those 20 years, I have heard many heartbreaking stories and seen many appalling

things. In my scholarly work, much of it focused on the human costs of the Chinese

policy, I have sought not to criticize China, but to understand how those troubling

practices came about. That has seemed a more productive approach. This presentation draws heavily on interviews with leading Chinese women’s rights scholars

and activists.

I want to make three points. First, despite the heavy costs China’s restrictive population policy has imposed and continues to impose on women and girls, important

pro-woman changes are occurring not only within the Chinese population establishment, but also outside the state—that is, beyond the scope of formal law, which

often follows as much as leads social change in China. Given the growing role of

non-state forces in Chinese politics, it is important to attend to and support these

developments. Second, the promising changes that have occurred in China have

stemmed not from foreign criticism, but from a combination of internal critique and

constructive engagements with international organizations. This history contains

important lessons for the formation of American policy toward China in the future.

Third, the prospects for further reforms to advance women’s rights and interests

will be shaped by a variety of cultural, political, and demographic factors, which

present both challenges and opportunities. In this as in other domains, however,

China will continue to follow a Chinese path to reform that will bear the marks of

that nation’s distinctive culture and politics. We must not expect Americanization.

54

I. DYNAMICS OF REFORM

Since the early 1990s, two streams of women-focused critique and reform of the

birth planning program have developed within China. One has been located within

the State Birth Planning Commission, while the other has been emerging from a

loose grouping of women’s advocates located outside the population establishment.

Before we can assess the prospects for future change, we need to understand the

dynamics behind the reform movements that are already developing.

Reforms in the State Birth Planning Commission

Since its creation in 1981, the State Birth Planning Commission’s central mandate has been the fulfillment of stringent population control targets. In early 1990s,

facing rising birth rates, the Commission oversaw the use of harsh administrative

measures to reach targets. By early 1993, those in charge realized that fertility had

fallen to a level far below what they had imagined possible. With the pressure to

produce results off, in 1993–94 Commission leaders began to grow concerned about

the social, physical, and political price that had been paid for pushing the numbers

down so fast. Larger reform-era changes in Chinese society—in particular, the

spread of an increasingly globalized market economy, the development of ‘‘socialist

legality,’’ and limited political reform in the form of local elections—also stimulated

growing concern at the Commission with the human costs of population control.

These concerns, which grew out of China’s own experience of population control,

were supported by China’s growing involvement with the international movement

for women’s reproductive health associated with the 1994 International Conference

on Population and Development held in Cairo. The Cairo process gave supporters

of change a vocabulary of reform that dovetailed with concerns that were developing

domestically. In the wake of the conference, collaborations with foreign organizations advancing reproductive health agendas multiplied. From international

organizations, reformers in the Commission received crucial financial resources and

organizational and technical know-how to pursue more woman-centered, healthoriented approaches to the State planning of births. As documented elsewhere, since

the mid-1990s the State has introduced a package of programmatic, policy, and legal

reforms—culminating in the new Population and Birth Planning Law—designed to

improve the delivery of services while retaining control over population growth.

New voices from outside the State

Meantime, another dynamic of change has been developing outside the population

establishment. Since the mid-1990s, a loosely defined group of women scholar-activists has begun to speak out about the harmful as well as helpful effects of birth

planning on women’s health and well-being. Crucial to the emergence of these wom- en’s rights activists have been the multiplying connections to transnational agencies

and feminist and reproductive health networks, forged in particular at the Fourth

World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995. The international women’s conference gave the women’s movement in China, which had been moribund during

the 1960s and 1970s, fresh energy and life. Since the conference, a number of women’s rights activists have begun to work to raise consciousness about the effects of

State birth planning on women and girls, and to promote policy and program

changes to alleviate them. These individuals come from a variety of backgrounds— from population studies to bioethics, women’s studies, women’s activism, and even

journalism. They are located in such diverse institutions as universities, the social

science academies, the All-China Women’s Federation, and a variety of newly

emerging NGOs. Women’s advocates must exercise great caution in criticizing what

remains a ‘‘basic State policy’’ of the party and government. In this restrictive political climate, transnational links have been critical, for they have given these women

(and some men) new concepts, political support, and external resources to pursue

their agendas.

II. A GENDER CRITIQUE FROM OUTSIDE THE STATE

Although they remain few in number, unorganized, and dependent on a fragile

tolerance by the state, these women’s rights advocates represent a new voice on

population, with the potential to question the policies that have guided population

work for the last 20 years. What have they been saying about the impact of birth

planning on women’s lives?

Contradictory effects on adult women

The women’s advocates I talked to all maintained that the birth control program

has had huge and largely unexamined effects on women’s lives. They also agreed

that those effects have been not exclusively good, as the state has claimed, but contradictory, with harmful consequences mixed in with the good. On the positive side,

55

birth planning has facilitated women’s personal development, enabling them to acquire skills and education and to devote themselves to work and income acquisition

as never before. While such benefits might be enjoyed by the majority of urban Chinese women, for rural women, they emphasized, the harm has outweighed the benefits. In the birth planning program, they felt, rural women have been treated less

as subjects than as objects to be managed and used in the achievement of State

plans and goals. The effects of this objectification extend from women’s health to

their psychological well-being and socioeconomic security.

Threats to infant girls

A strict one- or two-child policy enforced in a culture with a strong son preference

has also proved dangerous for rural infant girls. Statistics show that the sex ratio

at birth has been rising steadily, reaching about 117 today. That means that for

every 100 girls born, 117 boys are born, much higher than the biologically normal

level of 106. In the past infant girls were sent away, hidden, abandoned, or even

killed; today female fetuses are increasingly being aborted. Death rates among female infants have also been rising, producing what demographers call an ‘‘excess

female mortality’’—higher than biologically expected level—that is high and rising

in some places. Despite the political risks of criticizing the state program, some of

my interviewees acknowledged that the birth program was a contributor to these

problems faced by the infant girls.

The emergence of this women’s health and rights critique is highly significant, for

it suggests the evolution of a discourse on population that departs from the official

line. Although the commentators I spoke with followed rather than led the State in

interrogating the benefits of birth planning to women, they have moved much further than the State has in dismantling the official view that birth planning has been

an unmitigated good for women. These activists also have visions of new paths to

political change that might allow women themselves to begin articulating their own

reproductive needs and interests.

III. NGO PROJECTS ON BEHALF OF WOMEN AND GIRLS

While this gender critique is developing at the level of discourse, other promising

developments are occurring at the level of practice.

NGO activities to promote women’s interests

Recent work has highlighted the significant innovations in the state program, but

initiatives emerging from NGOs are significant as well. Let me give just a few illustrations of the many activities that are developing. One major project has supported

rural income-generation activities that have worked to boost women’s income and

thus power in the family. Another important project is a magazine for rural women

that carries special sections on reproductive health. Yet another is a telephone

hotline set up for women to call in and get advice on a wide range of problems, including sexual and reproductive health and rights. Many of these projects have been

developed on local initiative and been supported in part by resources from foreign

organizations.

Peasant initiative in solving the problem of abandoned baby girls

So far I have talked only about projects initiated by urban elite actors. But China’s rural people are also taking matters into their own hands and working to alleviate some of the costs strict birth control has imposed on rural women and girls.

One of the most important arenas of such peasant initiative is that of the adoption

of infant girls. As is well known, strict limits on births have led many couples to

abandon infant daughters. Even as the State has tried to regulate the adoption of

these abandoned girls, in the countryside, research in a few localities suggests that

a whole informal culture of adoption has developed that flourishes largely outside

the official apparatus of the state. In the localities studied, this research indicates,

the babies are adopted not from State orphanages, but directly from their birth parents or through intermediaries. Few of these adoptions involve local cadres, and

when cadres are involved, they do not try to prevent the adoptions, but only to collect fines for unregistered adoptions. These studies also suggest that it is women

who are taking the initiative in finding daughters to adopt, especially when they

had only sons. In the rural areas, at least, adoption seems to be an arena in which

women are gaining informal power to shape family size and composition and to give

abandoned girls good homes. The legal development of women’s rights is important,

but so too are informal practices that bolster women’s status and rights on the

ground.

56

IV. CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES AHEAD

These efforts to promote women’s reproductive rights and health are being nurtured into existence in a larger political, cultural, and demographic environment

that presents both challenges and opportunities.

Political economy

First, the challenge of political economy. Although it failed to fulfill its promises

to women, Maoism at least championed the goal of gender equality. In the post-Mao

era, the advance of global capitalism coupled with the retreat of the State from direct intervention in many areas of life have left women vulnerable to many forms

of discrimination. Although the economic and political reforms have had contradictory effects on the lives of urban women, it is the losses—of job security, formal

political position, and much more—that have received the most attention. A new

consumer culture has commodified the bodies, sexualities, and identities of women

and promoted the image of the ‘‘virtuous wife and good mother’’ who has left the

public sphere of production and politics to men. Moreover, the reforms have supported a biological notion of gender that sees women as by nature physically and

psychologically different from men. This notion that women are essentially different

from men can be expected to shape the women’s rights that will develop in Chinese

legal thought and practice.

Traditional culture

Second, the challenge of traditional culture. The notion of women’s independent

rights has few precedents in traditional Chinese culture, a culture in which women’s

social and legal place was within the male-defined family. In the countryside, where

the majority of the population lives, the basic social and gender organization of the

family has been quite resistant to change. These cultural constructs will color the

way legal notions of women’s rights develop.

A stable but unpredictable demography

Third, the challenge of an unknowable demographic future. Despite the important

reorientation that has occurred in the birth program, over the last 20 years the

state’s fundamental rationale for the drastic limitation of births has been the notion

that China faces a real or potential population crisis—a crisis of people proliferating

out of control, sabotaging the nation’s economic growth and global ascent. Keeping

the numbers down has been the number-one concern. Today’s relaxation has been

contingent on the achievement and maintenance of low birth rates over the last 10

years. Should the birth rate somehow rise again, or turn out to be higher than the

current estimates suggest, the reforms may well slow.

Falling desires for children

Fourth, the opportunity presented by social change. Twenty years of reform and

economic advance have dramatically lowered childbearing preferences, even in the

rural areas. In many parts of the country couples want at most two children, and

in some of the more developed rural areas they want only one. These changes in

Chinese society have made, and will continue to make, high-pressure tactics in the

birth planning program increasingly unnecessary.

A new gender consciousness among State officials

Fifth, the opportunity offered by a new gender consciousness in the state. Since

the mid-1990s, the Chinese State has made women’s economic, political, and

educational development a newly important part of its ongoing reforms. While implementation faces obstacles, this new commitment to women is a promising

development.

CONCLUSION

These challenges are real and will continue to shape the way the issue of women’s

rights is handled in China’s birth planning program. Yet China is changing—and

fast. Globalization is producing fundamental transformations in China’s society and

polity whose implications for women and birth planning no one can predict. The

history of the 1990s and early 2000s reveals the critical role of international organizations in supporting both the positive reforms in the state, and the emergence of

new, quasi- and non-state spaces of political critique and action. These promising

developments open up opportunities for new forms of constructive engagement by

Americans that support the reform tendencies already in place.

57

PREPARED STATEMENT OF STIRLING SCRUGGS

SEPTEMBER 23, 2002

UNFPA has worked in China since 1980. During our first 10 years, we focused

on building self-sufficiency. In particular, we supported:

• China’s first modern census, which was executed by the U.S. Census Bureau. • Contraceptive research, which was executed by WHO. • Academic training for Ph.D candidates from 23 universities, which was executed by the U.N. Population Division. Their studies took place in U.S., U.K.

and Australian universities.

• Contraceptive production, which eventually helped China become self-sufficient in the production of high-quality, international standard contraceptives,

including birth control pills, condoms, IUDs, injectables and foam. This activity

was executed by PATH, a Seattle-based NGO.

Beginning in 1990, when I was the UNFPA Representative in China, UNFPA assisted with:

• Another census. • Working with the returning Ph.Ds, whom we had sent away for training. We

assisted the 23 universities that sponsored their studies to establish Population

Science curricula, which included Sociology, Demographics and Statistics.

• Continued contraceptive research. • The establishment of a high-quality Maternal and Child Health Programme

in 310 counties. The programme focused on safe deliveries, ARI, diarrhea,

breastfeeding, and the use of high-quality contraceptives manufactured in Chinese factories. Our partner agency in this endeavour was UNICEF.

• The establishment of a special interpersonal counseling and informed consent project, which was executed by PATH.

• The creation of China’s first women’s empowerment projects in 36 counties.

These were the most gratifying field projects I have ever been associated with.

And I will be glad to discuss them later with anyone who is interested. They

were executed by FAO and ILO.

Beginning in 1997, UNFPA initiated its current programme, which includes the

now well-known 32 counties quality reproductive health care project. And we continued women empowerment projects.

UNFPA ADVOCACY IN CHINA

UNFPA has always engaged in a serious dialog with the Chinese Government on

human rights, including reproductive and women’s rights. In:

1980: UNFPA advised against the one-child policy.

1983: UNFPA strongly condemned the first reports of massive coercion in China’s population programme. The Executive Director sent the Deputy Executive Director

the day after it was reported in the Washington Post. That coercion was occurring

on a large scale. We have been in constant dialog since then.

1990: My first field trip after assuming my post in China was to visit remote villages in northwestern China to investigate China’s new campaign to sterilize the

mentally retarded. While this sterilization campaign was initiated for humanitarian

reasons, that is, because authorities had become aware that mentally deficient parents had in many cases neglected their children even to the point of death, the Chinese approached this situation without scientific evidence or consideration for

human rights. I consulted with WHO and brought a team of experts to China,

including a scientist from Columbia University and another from CDC in Atlanta.

After a month, they developed a micro-nutrient programme that effectively decreased the incidence of mental retardation in these remote areas. The primary reason for the large numbers of mentally deficient citizens in these remote areas was

a lack of iodine in their diets. The micro-nutrient programme was financed and executed by UNDP and UNICEF.

1992: UNFPA, working with the Alan Guttmacher Institute, WHO, and Beijing

University conducted a large-scale IUD study. This study was prompted by the large

number of contraceptive failures of the Chinese steel ring IUD. The study resulted

in a policy change in China. Two weeks after the study was released, China made

it mandatory that all IUDs being used in its programme should be copper-T IUDs,

which were being manufactured in China in the factories that UNFPA was

assisting.

Over a 10-year period, it is estimated that the use of the copper-T IUD prevented:

• 41 million pregnancies

• 26 million abortions

58

• 14 million births

• 1 million spontaneous abortions/miscarriages

• 360,000 child deaths

• 84,000 maternal deaths

1993: I tried to initiate the first model county programme, which was, in fact, the

precursor to the 32 counties programme that began in 1997. When the day came

for the Governor of the Province to suspend targets and quotas in the county in

question, he was told that he could not suspend targets and quotas. Thus I canceled

this programme.

1994: The Cairo International Population and Development Conference specifically addressed coercion and advocated a needs-based, human rights-based approach

to all population programming. This gave UNFPA the international standard and

leverage to be insistent in mandating this approach.

1995: Negotiations began on the current 32 county programme. These negotiations

took 2 years and during those 2 years UNFPA did not have a programme in China.

1997: The current 32 county programme was approved by UNFPA’s 36-member

Executive Board, of which the United States was a member. This programme ends

this year.

OBJECTIVES

• The objectives of the 1997 programme were improved access of women and

men to quality, integrated client-centered RH/FP information and services on a voluntary basis, and developing a model in selected counties from which lessons could

be drawn for application at the national level.

• These efforts were reinforced and complemented by programmmatic activities

aimed at creating an enabling environment in terms of women’s empowerment and

advocacy.

ACHIEVEMENTS

The 32 counties were chosen according to geographic criteria and their stated willingness to drop targets and quotas, and whether they were willing to invest counterpart matching funds (3–9 times of the UNFPA budget).

At the beginning of the project, a so-called ‘‘pink letter’’ was sent to all households

in the 32 counties explaining the project (ICPD, client rights, etc.).

Before: No privacy during counseling, no informal counsel.

Now: Privacy and informed consent.

• Women who knew about at least three methods of contraception has increased from 39 to 80 percent

• Sterilization decreased: 44 to 30 percent

• IUD’s increased: 51 to 61 percent

• Other methods increased: 5 to 9 percent (mainly condoms to prevent AIDS)

• Abortion decreased: From 18/100 to 11

• Maternal mortality: 66/100,000 to 62

• Infant mortality: 27.7 percent to 21 percent

• Delivery by skilled attendant: 90 to 96 percent

• Better medical protocols to include choice in contraceptives, help during

menopause, infertility, STI/RTI, HIV/AIDS, breastfeeding promoted.

• So far this model has been adopted in 800 other counties in China including

four entire provinces.

CHALLENGES AHEAD

• Stop social compensation fee.

• Improve IEC and condom availability for AIDS.

• Continue to prove that choice is right and it works.

• Continue to advocate for Gender Equality.

UNFPA ROLE AND STRUCTURE

• UNFPA’s role is to advocate and support governments in their efforts to implement ICPD principles and its Programme of Action.

• UNFPA reports to an Executive Board composed of 36 U.N. member countries. The Board meets 3 times yearly.

• UNFPA works in those countries which request assistance, and which, according to the Executive Board, fall within the criteria for assistance, both for

the country and the type of assistance requested. The four UNFPA country programmes for China have each been adopted by UNFPA’s Executive Board.

59

• UNFPA’s core budget is funded entirely by voluntary contributions from 126

U.N. member countries.

• UNFPA assists 142 developing and transition countries.

• UNFPA is a development fund. It relies on standards and data from other

U.N. entities (e.g. WHO, U.N. Population Division, etc.). UNFPA generally

works through U.N. agencies and international NGO’s and governments for

project execution.

CONCLUSION

• UNFPA, like all U.N. organizations, is guided by international human rights

standards and principles.

• UNFPA provides assistance in all phases of reproductive health: FP, MH,

STD/HIV prevention, treatment for unsafe abortion, and advocacy for an enabling environment.

• UNFPA assists countries to become sustainable in development planning

and self-sufficiency through:

—Data collection, analysis and research.

—Governments must know population numbers, dynamics (urban, migration, age etc.), in order to meet population needs.

—Advocacy for human rights, gender equality, women’s education, social

participation, health care and RH care.

I am very proud of UNFPA, its principles, its work and its staff.

The malicious lies and misinformation of the past few years have hurt UNFPA,

most importantly they have hurt women, youth and men around the world. Today,

due to discrimination and a lack of quality reproductive health services:

• One woman dies every minute.

• 40 have unsafe abortions.

• 190 become pregnant who do not want to be.

• 48 percent deliver at home without medical help.

• 10 people are infected with AIDS: half are under 25, our future.

They could be our mother, wife, sister, daughter—but they aren’t. But they are

a mother, wife, sister, or daughter to someone. They deserve our assistance.

Thank you.

Æ