Stepping through the brilliant long sky of history, looking at the dappled streamers of light in the starlight, the wind and frost of a thousand years, how many heroes and legends have been frozen, the long line of heaven and earth that runs through ancient and modern times, connecting the initial power of life, bringing surprise to people, bringing people memories, the vast picture of history, is the spiritual heaven that never grows old!
When it comes to family planning, people generally understand it as having fewer children and having eugenic children, and even some people are paranoid that only one good child is family planning. In fact, this understanding is biased. Family planning refers to planned childbearing, and is a relevant policy formulated by the national government to encourage more or fewer births according to the country's population situation and economic development. Stabilize the population within an acceptable range for social development. Therefore, the so-called family planning may encourage fewer births, or it may also encourage more births.
Ancient China encouraged many births for most of the time
The population of ancient China was extremely small compared to today. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the combined population of the princely states was also 10 million. The population of peacetime, whether it was the powerful Han Dynasty or the Tang Dynasty, was limited to between 50 and 60 million. The Song Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty, according to scholars' estimates, only exceeded 100 million. The Qing Dynasty once reached 200 million. But compared with the 1.4 billion people of modern China, this figure is obviously a small witch.
Why was the population so small in ancient times? This matched the economic development situation at that time. China is a big agricultural country, and the output of one mu of land in ancient times was only a few tens of catties, and more than a few hundred catties. Compared with the current grain output of more than a thousand catties or even a few thousand catties, it is obviously not in a heavyweight class. Moreover, the grain crops in ancient times were not as colorful as they are now, and there were no greenhouses. If there are more people, eating is the first problem. Even though the population is so small, famine has been repeatedly recorded in history, and people have lived a life without enough to eat and wear warm clothes.
In addition to the reasons for the level of economic development, cruel wars, plagues, and natural and man-made disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and droughts often occurred in ancient times, which caused a sharp decline in population. Every time there is a change of dynasty, it is a time when the population is greatly reduced. During the Three Kingdoms period, the population of China fell to 10 million people, which was comparable to that of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. During the Wuhu Chaohua period, the Han chinese were slaughtered to the brink of extinction. The destruction of the Song Dynasty by the Yuan Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty by the Qing Dynasty were both the troughs of the Chinese. In this case, the state can only adopt a policy of encouraging fertility and allowing people to have more children in order to ensure rapid population growth. According to statistics, the average life expectancy of the Xia Dynasty people was 18 years old, the Qin Dynasty was 20 years old, the Eastern Han Dynasty was 22 years old, the Tang Dynasty was 27 years old, the Song Dynasty was 30 years old, and the Qing Dynasty was 33 years old. Of course, this life expectancy is affected by factors such as wars, plagues, natural disasters, and high infant mortality, but it can also be seen in the living conditions of ancient times. Having more children is also the need for survival of the fittest.
Therefore, we can see that from the pre-Qin dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, the country encouraged fertility for almost most of the time, relying on the rapid increase in population to restore the country's vitality. Before the Qing Dynasty, the population of China during the boom period was maintained at about 50 million. This was also the most populous country in the world at that time, and the slogan of vast land and large population was called for thousands of years.
In order to encourage fertility, various dynasties and generations have introduced corresponding policies. The sage Confucius believed that men could marry and have children at the age of 16 and women at the age of 14, that men were sixteen proficient and women were fourteen, and that they could be born (Confucius's language), which set the tone for early marriage. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the State of Yue implemented a policy of compulsory early marriage, strictly prohibiting twilight love, old and young love, so that the strong did not marry the old woman, so that the old man did not marry the strong wife, the woman seventeen did not marry, her parents were guilty, the husband did not marry thirty, the parents were guilty, the birth of a boy, the state awarded two pots of good wine, a dog; Give birth to a girl, the state rewards two pots of good wine, a piglet; Giving birth to twins, the government arranges free nannies; When giving birth to triplets, the government arranges free nurses. And the state is responsible for delivering babies, everything is free. During the reign of Emperor Hui of the Han Dynasty, the state adopted the method of economic punishment to encourage early marriage and multiple births, and women who were over fifteen to thirty years old did not marry, and the five counts were counted. During the reign of Emperor Zhang of the Han Dynasty, the state promulgated the "Fetal Maintenance Order", and now all pregnant women are given three births, and their husbands are exempted from the conscription and poll tax, which is convenient for taking care of pregnant and lactating women. In order to solve the problem that the poor could not afford to marry, the Tang Dynasty issued the "Decree on The Order of Yousi to Exhort the Marriage and Appointment of the Shu People in a Timely Manner", encouraging the rich to sponsor the poor to marry. At that time, people's ideological realm was quite high, and there were many rich people who responded to the call of the state and funded the poor to marry their wives; During the Song Dynasty, the poor were forbidden not to raise children, and those who could not breed were given money to raise them. The poor cannot afford to raise children, and the state subsidizes them; The Yuan Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty implemented the national policy of subsidizing families with multiple births, the Qing Dynasty Kangxi went further, breeding people and never adding endowments, and the Yongzheng Emperor spread out the land into acres and abolished the poll tax for thousands of years, which greatly stimulated people's desire to have children. At the peak of the Qing Dynasty' population, it was estimated to reach 200 million.
Concerns about overpopulation have long existed
On the one hand, it encourages more children, on the other hand, some people of insight are worried that the overpopulation will cause an imbalance between the level of population and economic development, causing the disaster of the large number of people, and many ancient figures who pioneered family planning have emerged.
If you look for the theoretical basis of family planning, the earliest can be traced back to Lao Tzu, the originator of Taoism, who advocated small countries and widows, opposed the large population, and believed that the disaster was greater than dissatisfaction, and the blame was greater than the desire. During the Tang Dynasty, another pioneer figure in family planning appeared in China, he was the poet Wang Fanzhi, who wrote in the poem that rich children and young men and women, poor men and women, poor hans give birth to a group, do not need to have more children, and do not have a foot. The poem became the earliest source of a couple having only one good birth.
The third pioneer of family planning was the Song Dynasty historian Ma Duanlin, and Ma Duanlin's father was Ma Tingluan, the right minister of the Southern Song Dynasty, but he was born in a not-so-good era, in the last years of the Southern Song Dynasty. After the fall of the Song Dynasty, Ma Duanlin lived in seclusion and concentrated on writing, the most famous work is the "Literature Examination", which is divided into twenty-four disciplines such as Field Endowment, Coin, Hukou, Service, Requisition, Municipal Gong, Tugong, State Use, Election, School, Official, Suburban Society, Zongmiao, Wang Li, Music, Bing, Punishment, Scripture, Imperial Lineage, Feudalism, Xiangwei, Wuyi, Youdi, and Four Ethnic Groups, in this book, Ma Duanlin believes that the number of people is not enough for the prosperity and decline of the country, and puts forward the theory of family planning of fewer births, eugenics, and emphasis on the quality of the population and the overall quality.
The fourth pioneer of family planning was the Ming Dynasty novelist Feng Menglong, who took the lead in proposing that a couple only had two good theories, if two men and two women doubled each life, and the daily increase did not decrease, why eat it? If you live a man and a woman, there will never be an increase or decrease, it can be long- Feng Menglong proposed that a couple give birth to a boy and a girl, which is highly coincidental with people's current ideological concepts. However, he was hundreds of years ahead of us.
The fifth pioneer of family planning was the Qing Dynasty scribe, writer, and geographer Hong Liangji, who calculated the law of population growth by adding five times the hukou every 30 years, believing that the population of the Qing Dynasty would grow 5 times to 20 times in a hundred years, forming an overpopulation. Hong Liangji became the pioneer of modern population theory with the theory of the harm of over-rapid population growth.
The sixth pioneer of family planning was the late Qing Dynasty scholar Wang Shiduo, whose entire family was affected by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and his two daughters died. He pioneered the concept of late marriage in the "Diary of Wang Xieweng Yibing", believing that a woman should marry twenty-five and a man should marry at thirty. In that era of early marriage and early childbearing, this concept was groundbreaking. In addition, Wang Shiduo also proposed that for women of childbearing age, the government should widely apply procreation drugs to control population growth. This theory is highly consistent with modern family planning, making people wonder whether it crossed. However, Wang Shiduo also put forward many extreme views on family planning, he hoped that the government would ban drowning women, popularize the law of drowning women, administer cold medicine for fetal breakers, and double the endowment of two women in the family, and he even suggested that non-rich people should not marry wives, not have children, and drown when they are born, that is, those who have children and are not in good shape, do not look good, and have poor eyebrows are drowned. Some people call Wang Shiduo the Malthusian of China, the first person to think deeply about the problem of Chinese, but the solution reflects the limitations of his time.
The seventh pioneer figure in family planning was the Qianlong Emperor, who, although he continued many of Kangxi and Yongzheng's policies to encourage population growth, raised deep doubts about the excessive growth of the population: In the future, with the increasing number of hukou, why should it be a profession? Qianlong asked the provinces to report the reasons for the increase in the number of people. But he did not introduce a further policy on population growth.
In addition to the above figures, Gong Zizhen, Wei Yuan, and others were also worried about China's growing teeth and increasingly narrow weather, but the way they proposed to reduce the population was to migrate, to relocate the idle population who were not scholars, farmers, workers, and merchants, and if they did not leave voluntarily, the state could forcibly relocate.
The underdevelopment of contraceptive methods was the main reason why there were no fewer births in ancient times
For the ancients, in fact, it was not that they did not want contraception. Do you think that women in ancient times were happy to have a dozen or more children, half or more of whom died? No. The underdevelopment of contraceptive methods and the backwardness of science are the main reasons why women in ancient times could not have fewer children.
We all know that in ancient times there was birth control. But this kind of birth control is a punishment for both men and women. Men are called palace punishment, the great historian Sima Qian suffered this punishment, many men who volunteered to become eunuchs also accepted this so-called surgical woman called claustrophobic, many palace women or concubines committed crimes, will accept this kind of sterilization punishment. Whether it is palace punishment or claustrophobia, it is a passive punishment and has nothing to do with family planning.
There is also a kind of birth control measures for taking medicine, ancient times also have contraceptives, this contraceptive is called green powder, is a sterilization drug that can kill people, seriously affecting people's physical and mental health, generally prostitutes in the green building use this method of contraception. However, this method of contraception is generally forced by old bustards to take by prostitutes in order to avoid their pregnancy. Many prostitutes are infertile for life or even lose their lives because they take this unsafe contraceptive pill.
Of course, in ancient times, there were also birth control methods that did not hurt the body, such as the Han Dynasty harem had a folk remedy for attaching the navel, and it was said that the plaster attached to the navel of the concubine would not cause pregnancy; The Qing Dynasty Imperial Palace also had a method of acupuncture contraception, in which the emperor would not become pregnant at one of the acupuncture points of the concubine after having sex with the concubine. However, these methods are too magical, and they are now in a state of loss. Whether it is true or not is unknown.
It is worth mentioning that the Qing Dynasty invented a safe and harmless method of reducing the population, the Qing Dynasty in order to reduce the number of Mongols, in the Mongolian region vigorously developed Tibetan Buddhism Yellow Religion, many of the Mongols became lamas, and lamas are not married, not married there is no such thing as childbearing, so the Mongolian population in the early Qing Dynasty developed to the end of the Qing Dynasty, and there was no growth for more than two hundred years. This is similar to the modern theory of reducing the number of unmarried people by increasing the number of unmarried people.
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