This book presents new evidence about historical and contemporary
Chinese population behavior that overturns much of the received
wisdom about the differences between China and the West first
voiced by Malthus. Malthus described a China in which early and
universal marriage ensured high fertility and therefore high
mortality. He contrasted this with Western Europe, where marriage
was late and far from universal, resulting in lower fertility and
higher demographic responsiveness to economic circumstances. The
result in China was thought to be mass misery as part of the
population teetered on the brink of a Malthusian precipice, whereas
in the West conditions were less severe.
In reality, James Lee and Wang Feng argue, there has been
effective regulation of population growth in China within marriage
through a variety of practices that depressed marital fertility to
levels far below European standards and through the widespread
practices of infanticide and abortion. Moreover, in China
population control has long been primarily a consequence of
collective intervention. This collective culture underlies the four
distinctive features of the Chinese demographic pattern -- high
rates of female infanticide, low rates of male marriage, low rates
of marital fertility, and high rates of adoption -- that Lee and
Wang trace from 1700 to today. These and other distinctive features
of the Chinese demographic and social system, they argue, led to a
different demographic transition in China from the one that took
place in the West.
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