Communication techniques in China's planned birth campaigns

Abstract

This study endeavours to explore the range of communicative options that have been used in the process of the family planning in China in the past four decades. The study has several purposes: first, to reconstruct the evolution of birth control policy in China since 1949 when the Communist Party took over power. Second, to explain this evolution through an analysis of how those communication techniques are interwoven and interacted with each other. Third, to review various communication techniques, and to assess the extent to which those techniques used in planned birth campaigns have affected China's fertility rate; and finally, to suggest to policy-makers in other developing countries a basis for assessing which, if any, of the Chinese experience could be selected for adoption and modification for family planning programs, especially in rural populations.