1. Aird, John S., Slaughter of the Innocents: Coercive Birth Control in China (Washington, DC: Publisher for the American Enterprise Institute, 1990);Judith, Banister, China's Changing Population (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987);Wen, Xingyan, Current and Desired Fertility: Reflections on Fertility Decline in China (Australian National University: PhD dissertation, Division of Demography and Sociology, 1993); and Wolf, Arthur P., “The pre-eminent role of government intervention in China's family revolution,” Population and Development Review, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1986), pp. 101–116.
2. Aird, Slaughter of the Innocents, and Mosher, Steven W., A Mother's Ordeal: One Women's Fight Against China's One-Child Policy, the Story of Chi An (London: Warner, 1995).
3. Hou, Wenruo, “Zhongguo renkou zhengce pinggu” (“Evaluation of Chinese population policy”), Renkou yanjiu (Population Studies), No. 6 (1988), pp. 32–37;Wu, Cangping, “Zhongguo shengyulü xiajiang de lilun jieshi” (“Theoretical explanation of Chinese fertility decline”), Renkou yanjiu (Populations Studies), No. 1 (1986);Wu, Naitao, “How China handles population and family planning,” Beijing Review, 1–8 August 1994, pp. 8–12; State Council Information Office, Human Rights in China 1991, on-line edition: available at http://www.cityu.edu.hk/HumanRights/index.htm; State Council Information Office, “Chinese government white paper on family planning,” Population and Development Review, Vol. 22, No. 2 (1996), pp. 385–390.
4. Hong, Lawrence-K. and Mandle, Joan D., “Potential effects of the one-child policy on gender equality in the People's Republic of China,” Gender and Society, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1987), pp. 317–326; and Sun, Yuesheng and Wei, Zhangling, “The one-child policy in China today,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2 (1987), pp. 309–325.
5. Susan, Greenhalgh, “The peasantization of population policy in Shaanxi,” in Deborah, Davis and Stevan, Harrell (eds.), Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 219–250;Susan, Greenhalgh, “Controlling births and bodies in village China,” American Ethnologist, Vol. 21, No. 1 (1994), pp. 1–30;Potter, Sulamith H. and Potter, Jack M., China's Peasants: The Anthropology of a Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and Huang, Shu-min, The Spiral Road: Change in a Chinese Village Through the Eyes of a Communist Party Leader (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989).
6. This village study – combining anthropology and demography – was conducted in 1993 and covered 471 households and 2,104 people. The village was chosen based on an investigation of background information of its county, which ensured that it was not exceptional and that findings could also be useful in understanding other parts of rural China. For detailed information on the methodology of the study and the county and the village setting, see Zhang, Weiguo, Economic Reforms and Fertility Behaviour: A Study in a Northern Chinese Village (The Hague: Institute of Social Studies, 1998).
7. Mosher, (A Mother's Ordeal and Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese (London: Robert Hale, 1983)) and Aird (Slaughter of the Innocents), however, present an image of family planning cadres as coercive, merciless figures who are manipulated by the state and all behave in the same way. For a criticism of articles that have appeared in Western periodicals presenting Chinese family planning issues in a simplistic and distorted fashion, see Jeffrey, Wasserstrom, “Resistance to the one-child family,” Modern China, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1984), pp. 345–374.
8. Greenhalgh, “The peasantization of population policy in Shaanxi.”
9. Greenhalgh, “Controlling births and bodies in village China.”
10. There should be three cadres because the village has more than 1,000 members (personal communication with the county, township and village cadres).
11. From my interviews, several leaders of the residential groups confirmed that they quit after “too difficult work and too little payment.”
12. Wasserstrom, “Resistance to the one-child family.”
13. Condoms are available in the village shops; however, it seems that they are sold as toys for children rather than as contraceptives for adults.
14. Some residents who live in the village but hold non-agricultural household registrations usually get their contraceptives from their work units. For those couples with husbands working outside the village and holding urban household registrations and wives in the village with the village's rural household registrations, it is assumed that responsibility for the couple's family planning lies with the husbands' work units, and not with the village family planning commission. However, work units find it difficult to monitor family planning of those families, and village cadres simply do not interfere.
15. Taken from fieldwork notes, 1993.
16. This was a county-wide activity. In other townships, the Party secretary, governor of the county and other county-level cadres together with township cadres held the same type of village meeting.
17. It would be impossible to present a comprehensive account of each family planning campaign here. I will present only my own observations from the fieldwork.
18. Village cadres told me (and this was confirmed later by township cadres) that a neighbouring village collected 400 yuan in fines for illegal or early marriage – 100 yuan more than the village. Although the neighbouring village was smaller, and was thus considered “easier” in terms of carrying out family planning work, village cadres need not match their performance, but can make their own policy according to their own situations. Concrete measures in the implementation of state policy can vary from village to village.
19. This refers specifically to the promises village cadres made that couples accepting sterilization would not be fined for previous extra births.
20. Through the loudspeaker system, village cadres informed households with family planning problems that they should remain in the village during the family visits, or cadres would break in and take household property away as collateral.
21. Taken from fieldwork notes, 1993.
22. This was 300 yuan, but was not specified in the decision made by village and township cadres.
23. According to township regulations, the village had to pay its expenses by requesting the township family planning implementation team to assist the family planning campaigns.
