Why did family planning in China last so long?

For decades, China's family planning propaganda has been everywhere. In the early years, various slogans were spread all over urban and rural areas, and even the textbooks of ideology, morality, geography, history and biology in junior high schools all contained words to promote the necessity of family planning. As a result of this strong propaganda, contemporary China has formed the most paranoid population concept in human history, both vertically and horizontally: in China, too many people have become the knowledge of the whole people, and it is an axiom to control the population to benefit the country and the people. Most people don't realize how far this one-sided thinking is from the normal population concept needed to maintain national reproduction. For example, at present, most people will think that it is enough to let go of the second child, while completely letting go or even encouraging childbearing is considered a very radical suggestion. But in fact, encouraging fertility is something that almost every country with a fertility rate below replacement level is doing, even though the fertility rate in many of them is much higher than that in China. For example, France's fertility rate is lower than the replacement level, but much higher than China's, while France has long encouraged fertility. Up to now, it has won gold medals and national family medals for giving birth to eight children, and there are countless actual policies to encourage fertility. In contrast, in China, even if fertility is strongly encouraged, the fertility rate can hardly be maintained above the replacement level. Therefore, encouraging fertility is not a radical suggestion, but something that must be done to maintain national reproduction. The reason why this proposal makes many people feel radical is precisely because China society has deviated too far from the normal concept of population. Population is the foundation of the nation and the most precious resource of the country. Of course, population is a burden, but it is also a contributor. People are consumers of material wealth before adulthood, creators of wealth after work, and consumers after old age. Generally speaking, people's contribution is greater than consumption, otherwise human society cannot progress. In the first few decades, the sustained low fertility rate will reduce the burden of raising children, which will also bring very limited benefits to economic development, but in the long run, it will lead to the extreme aging and rapid shrinkage of the population, thus bringing more serious disasters to the economy, society and culture. The most surprising thing about the debate about China's population problem is that it is not so much a paranoid concept that only looks at the population from a negative perspective, but rather that the evidence and reasons that support these concepts can't stand scrutiny. Many people are ignorant of some basic facts concerning China's population problem, and their judgments are based on unfounded assumptions. In sharp contrast, they are so convinced of population control. In 1971, China began to implement relatively flexible family planning, and then the fertility rate dropped rapidly, reaching the replacement level by the end of 197s. Although the early family planning policy may be reasonable, the harsh family planning policy since 198 is unnecessary. Most of the extreme population concepts prevailing in China today are related to the latter. Why is it that the biggest nation in the world, which is very clever and has a long history, has been so wrong on the fundamental strategic issue of population for so long? There are at least the following reasons behind this. First of all, although the reasons for supporting birth restriction are untenable in the long run and macro, they are intuitive in the short run and micro. In the reform and opening up, China found itself far behind the developed countries in all aspects, especially in the per capita sense. A large number of educated youth returned to the city and caused short-term employment difficulties, so it is easy to partly blame these problems on the large population. Moreover, after the energy crisis in the 197s, the trend of overpopulation was once popular all over the world, and organizations such as the United Nations Population Fund induced and encouraged developing countries to carry out population control in various ways. This ideological trend, combined with the successful experience of family planning before, will naturally make the idea of strict population control find soil in China. This idea not only affects the decision-making level, but also affects intellectuals in different fields. In particular, some scholars with science and engineering backgrounds, with dreams of strengthening the country, enthusiastically devoted themselves to the research related to population policy.