ibilities and duties to the state and community, and the health and happiness of the family and all its members. On the basis of effective information, advice and services and in accordance with the age, health, work and family economic conditions, couples and individuals can arrange for pregnancy and child bearing in a responsible and planned way, and select proper contraceptive methods so as to have healthy children and happy, progressive families.
A family planning policy that conforms to the state's actual conditions and embodies classified guidance is an important component part of exercising state guidance. The main contents of the current family planning policy in China are: Advocating delayed marriage and delayed child bearing, fewer and healthier births; and advocating one child for one couple. Some rural couples with actual difficulties are allowed to give birth to a second child a few years after the birth of the first child. The national minorities are also required to practise family planning, and concrete demands and approaches to the policy are decided by each autonomous region or the province in which the national minorities live. There are practical differences in the family planning policy between urban and rural areas, and between the Han and the ethnic minorities, i.e., the policy for rural areas is more flexible than for urban areas; for national minorities more flexible than for the Han people. Each province (autonomous region or municipality) will formulate the corresponding policy and regulations in accordance with the state's policy and the actual local conditions and form its local legislation through legal procedures.
One child for one couple is a necessary choice made under China's special historical conditions to alleviate the grim population situation. One child for one couple does not mean to "have one child" under all circumstances, but rather, while encouraging couples to have only one child, to plan arrangements for couples who have real difficulties and need to have a second child to do so. In China's cities and towns where family planning was introduced earlier and the economic, cultural, educational, public health and social security conditions are better, the overwhelming majority of couples of child-bearing age who are pleased with a small family have responded to the government's call and volunteered to have only one child. In 1990, of the non-agricultural population in China's urban localities, the total fertility rate of women dropped to 1.26, or 1.05 lower than the nation's average figure. In the countryside, the total fertility birth rate of women was 2.8.
China is a multi-ethnic country, the population of the national minorities making up about 8 percent of the country's total. To raise the economic and educational levels of the national minority areas and improve the life quality of the population, since the early 1980s the Chinese government has also advocated family planning in the areas inhabited by national minorities, except for Tibet and sparsely populated minority areas. The concrete policies are worked out by the national minority autonomous areas and the relevant provinces and autonomous regions according to specific local conditions. In general, a couple in agricultural and pastoral areas is allowed to have two children; and a more flexible policy is adopted to farmers and herdsmen with actual difficulties. Since the founding of New China, the population growth rate of the national minorities has been not only higher than that before Liberation, but also higher than that of the Han people in the corresponding period. The total population of the national minorities increased from 35 million in 1953 to 91.32 million in 1990. Between 1982 and 1990 after the practice of family planning in the areas inhabited by minority people, the population of the national minorities increased by 35.81 percent, or 3.27 times the growth of the Han population in the same period.
The state has imposed no specific requirements on Tibet in family planning. In 1985, the People's Government 