With regard to family planning in China, the "one-child policy" is well-known. However, the promotion of birth planning in China actually began in the late 1950s. It was reinforced intermittently and led to the "one-child policy" in 1979. In my presentation, I want to analyze the process of popularizing birth planning in rural China, based on the field-work in two regions conducted by my research group.

The first, Q Village in Liaoning Province, Northeastern China, can be called a “model village” from the viewpoint of birth control advocates. In this village, contraception by IUDs was introduced in the 1960s, while sterilization came to be universally recommended to woman of reproductive age in the 1970s. In the 1970s, the number of births indeed decreased so much so that many women gave birth to only two children. Birth planning was based on the primary health care provided by the village cooperative medical system and on the administrative system of the People’s Commune. Q Village received good care from a female “barefoot doctor”, while the women head of the production brigade enthusiastically supported birth planning. Women’s leadership ensured gender sensitive mobilization, which resulted in the “successful” birth planning in Q Village.

In the other village, B Village in Hunan Province, Middle China, birth rates did not decrease as in Q Village, as many women gave birth to three or four children even in the 1970s. In B Village, the village leader was not enthusiastic with birth planning, and the modernization of childbirth was not going well.

In both villages, sterilization was monopolistically provided by the administrative and medical system of People’s Commune. Thus, birth planning—that is, state intervention in reproduction— became a part of the administrative and medical system. This system actually made birth control technologies available for rural women who had previously had no access. Taking into account of their poverty, some villagers welcomed birth control. However, mobilization of birth planning gradually became stricter in the 1970s, and some women tried to resist it. The government attempted to coerce birth control on women, but this was based on the unequal power relationships within the villages. But, my presentation shows that village women were not simply passive clients but active agents accepting or resisting the government policy, and changed their fertility patterns as a result.