Production versus reproduction: A threat to China's development strategy

The goals of the post-Mao leadership to turn China into a powerful and modern socialist society are jeopardized by the sum total of China's population and projected population growth rates. National development plans are thus based on policies to rapidly promote production and drastically reduce population growth, which at the local level make quite contradictory demands on peasant households. The question underlying China's future development is: can current production plans based on the responsibility system and expanding domestic sidelines which demand that peasant households have access to considerable labour resources be reconciled with State reproduction plants which demand that peasant households have only one child?