The Provincial Context: Shaanxi in National Perspective

Throughout the post-1949 period fertility in Shaanxi has for the most part closely tracked the national average, making it an attractive site for research on reproduction.^[15] As elsewhere, birth rates fell rapidly during the era of the later-longer-fewer (wanxishao ) policy (1971-78), when strict controls on childbearing were first applied countrywide. From 5.5 births per woman in 1970, the provincial total fertility rate dropped to 2.7 in 1978.^[16] During the period of the one-child policy, total fertility has vacillated, declining between 1979 and 1980, rising from 1980 to 1982, dropping again from 1982 to 1983, then moving upward yet again, reaching 3.0 in 1987.^[17] After falling below the national average in the early years of the one-child era, provincial fertility rates climbed above the average in 1983-87. Although problems of underreporting argue for caution in interpreting the figures, available data suggest that since about 1983 Shaanxi has been among the laggards in enforcing the one-child policy.

The agricultural reforms introduced in the late 1970s and early 1980s have boosted provincial incomes, but not enough to pull Shaanxi out of the class of poor, least developed provinces.^[18] Between 1980 and 1987, for example, the per capita income of agricultural households grew 2.3 times, rising from 142 to 329 yuan. However, Shaanxi peasants actually lost ground relative to the average Chinese peasant, whose income grew 2.4 times, from

[15] Only during the Great Leap Forward did fertility levels in Shaanxi deviate significantly from the national average. Famine conditions in the province were less severe than elsewhere, producing a fertility trend that was smoother than that recorded countrywide.

[16] Data from Ansley J. Coale and Shengli Chen, Basic Data on Fertility in the Provinces of China, 1940-82 (Honolulu: Papers of the East-West Population Institute, no. 104, 1987), 168-69.

[17] 1979-82 data from Coale and Chen, Basic Data . Later years from China Population Newsletter 6, no. 2 (April 1989): 7. Figures from the latter source are based on State Family Planning Commission surveys and are likely to be understated.

[18] On Shaanxi's position as an economic underachiever, see Kenneth R. Walker, "Forty Years On: Provincial Contrasts in China's Rural Economic Development," China Quarterly , no. 119 (September 1989): 448-80.

191 to 463 yuan.^[19] Acquisition of consumer durables also lagged. In 1986, for example, only six out of a hundred peasant households in the province owned televisions; countrywide, seventeen of every one hundred peasant families owned a TV set.^[20]