중국 농촌의 경제개혁과 인구문제 - 계획생육의 경제사회학

Abstract

The issue of family planning in post-Mao rural China has profound implications beyond the domain of demographic control. The pragmatist position of pursuing full-scale family planning and family-reliant rural development simultaneously has left Chinese peasants in an awkward situation where their desire for more children, in particular more sons, in familial production and welfare provision is directly betrayed by the draconian measures of coercive birth control. The state intervention in peasants" fertility had gone far, and peasant resentment against compulsory abortion and sterilization in record numbers came to pose a serious political threat. Thus the Chinese government has attempted to change the cost-benefit balance of peasant procreation by offsetting the economic disadvantages of small peasant families with political rewards for compliance to family planning. Nevertheless, peasants" attempt to circumvent unwanted family planning is almost desperate. Given a current or prospective shortage of family labor, some of them will join relatives and neighbors to achieve economies of scale in various production activities, and others will rather uproot themselves from village terrains to seek individual labor-selling opportunities in towns and cities. Still, others will not mind committing female infanticides, hiding newly born girls, or withdrawing children from schools to help out on their parents" farms.