China's population should be small enough for the nation to
provide for its people's well-being and the well-being of its
environment.
Today's widely accepted understanding of population growth in
the world's most populous country was strongly criticized when it
was proposed by Ma Yinchu (1882-1982). His theories were shelved
for more than a decade.
On Tuesday, a commemoration meeting marked the 50th anniversary
of the New Population Theory put forward by the renowned
demographer. Participants agreed Ma's theories on slowing
population growth and maintaining an appropriate population size
remain valid.
Before the value of Ma's theory was recognized, the country had
to pay a heavy price for explosive population growth from the 1950s
into the 1970s.
By the end of the 1970s, what Ma had prophesied had come true:
Stunning population growth was exerting a heavy burden on economic
development, people's efforts to achieve a better life, natural
resources and the environment. The remaining years of the 20th
century finally saw the successful implementation of China's family
planning policy.
Today, at a point where the country is maintaining a desirably
low birth rate, Ma's appeal for population control and improving
the quality of the population should continue to be the centerpiece
of the country's population policy.
Without family planning, some 400 million new births would have
been added.
But even with a family planning policy, China's sheer population
size, about 21 percent of the world's total, still poses a serious
challenge to bettering our people's lives as well as keeping our
natural resources from being overburdened.
While maintaining the family planning policies, additional
policies should be adopted to strengthen social equity and make
family planning a voluntary choice.
At the same time, population problems remain. Efforts should be
made to check the rising imbalance of males in our society.
A contained population with a rational structure and high
quality is the foundation for our sustainable economic and social
development that should translate into personal well-being.
We cannot afford to follow the route we took more than 50 years
ago.
(China Daily July 5, 2007)