200 Poverty and Hunger
ning programmes adopted in the mid-1970s and the echo effect of the smaller
numbers born during the famine reaching reproductive age. If China can sustain
its one-child-family programme when the people born between 1975 and 1986
reach childbearing age, its population size could stabilize sooner rather than later,
and far short of the projected 1.66 billion.^35
In 1993, the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) pointed out that China had
succeeded in lowering its fertility below replacement level – that is, the total
number of children per woman was 2 or fewer. This was achieved within two dec-
ades of launching family planning programmes.^36
Carl Haub, senior demographer at PRB, noted that the birth rate was 21.1 per
1000 population in 1990 and that it dropped to 19.7 in 1991 and to 18.2 in 1992.
Since then the decline has continued, reaching 17.7 in 1994. This reduced China’s
population growth rate to 1.1 per cent, roughly the same as that of the US. The
drop in China’s population growth rate from 2.7 per cent in 1970 to 1.1 per cent
in 1994 has played a key role in lowering the global population growth rate during
that time from 2.1 per cent to 1.6 per cent.^37
Recognizing the urgency of stabilizing population size, China’s President and
Communist Party chief, Jiang Zemin, renewed the call for one couple/one child in
March 1995. Concern with the environmental, economic and social effects of
continuing population growth in China runs deep. President Jiang pointed out
that ‘the rapid increase in a big population base has a direct bearing on the prob-
lems of food, of jobs, of education, of resource destruction, of environmental pro-
tection and an imbalanced ecology.’ Increasingly, Chinese leaders are becoming
aware of the environmental consequences of the combined effect of population
growth and rising affluence that their country is experiencing.^38
Source: See endnote 35.
Figure 8.7 Age pyramid of China’s population, 1990