China's One-Child Policy
In September 1979, China’s Fifth National People’s Congress passed a policy that encouraged one-child families. Following this decision from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), campaigns were initiated to implement the One-Child Policy nationwide. This initiative constituted the most massive governmental attempt to control human fertility and reproduction in human history. These campaigns prioritized reproductive technologies for contraception [6], abortion [7], and sterilization [8] in gynecological and obstetric medicine, while downplaying technologies related to fertility treatment. In the late 1980s, one of the consequences was the reorientation of the rationality of governmental funding for research on human in vitro [9] fertilization [10] (IVF) and embryo transfer [11].
Birth Control Methods and Organisation in China
The release of the preliminary results of the 1982 census and of a national ‘One in one thousand’ fertility survey have confirmed that a fertility decline of major proportions took place in China in the 1970s. As recently as 1968, when the fertility level reached its second highest peak since 1950, the total fertility rate was 7.025 children per woman of reproductive age. In 1971, when the government embarked on the third birth-control campaign, the total fertility rate was still a high 5.442. A decade later in 1981 it had dropped to 2.238. In other words, China had reduced its fertility level by almost 60 per cent in a decade. Such a dramatic fertility transition in a large country and in so short a time is unprecedented. This achievement is all the more impressive because China’s population comprises one fifth of humankind and the transition has taken place without a profound socio-economic modernisation or a major improvement in living standards taking place prior to or during the transition period.
Satellites and Education in Australia--Learning from International Experience
Australia's domestic satellite service, AUSSAT, began operating in August 1985 and will be fully operational with the launch of the third satellite in late 1986. An examination of international educational satellite systems relevant to primary and secondary education in Australia is presented. Information collected and analysed is intended to inform decision-making.