of the Tibet Autonomous Region, in view of the actual population growth there, began to advocate family planning among Tibetan cadres, workers and staff, encouraging each couple to voluntarily space two births at reasonable intervals. Among the broad masses of farmers and herdsmen, the government has mainly educated them in child-bearing knowledge, advocated healthier birth and child-rearing practices, improved health care for women and children, and provided contraceptives and birth control technical services to those who volunteer to practise birth control. No policy restrictions have ever been imposed on the number of births in the agricultural and pastoral areas. The fourth national population census in 1990 revealed that Tibetan people in the Tibet Autonomous Region numbered 2.0967 million, making up 95.48 percent of the total population in Tibet.
China encourages fertile married couples to select contraceptive methods of their own accord under the guidance of the state; and offers various preferential treatments in daily life, work and many other aspects to families who volunteer to have only one child, helps them to solve difficulties in their lives and work and creates conditions for them to become better off as soon as possible. Assessments are imposed on multi-birth families to enable society to bring up their children. This represents both a restriction on having too many childbirths and an obligation of those responsible to pay a certain compensation to society. Assessments for this purpose are made according to local legislation, but the amounts thus collected must in no way affect the family's basic livelihood and their needs in keeping up production and management. All funds so collected will be used to further family planning.
Practice has proved that China's current policy on family planning conforms to the fundamental interests of the people throughout the country; meanwhile it also takes into account part of the people's wishes and attitudes. Hence the policy has won understanding and support from the people of the whole country and has guaranteed the success of the family planning work.
The traditional child-bearing viewpoints formed in long years of Chinese history still profoundly affect people's attitudes to child-bearing; in particular a certain distance still exists between the viewpoints and will of a number of rural people and the state's demands for controlling population growth. Without the people's awareness, family planning can hardly be practised. Therefore, the Chinese government attaches great importance to educating the people to practise family planning of their own free will and strives to create the economic and cultural conditions for people to change their child-bearing viewpoints.
The publicity and education of family planning conducted in China according to its actual conditions and the population situation have made the whole society see that to control the rapid population growth is its responsibility and its urgent task. From the 1980s, all regions of China began one after another the activity of "doing accounts and making contrasts," during which people were organized to do accounts and make contrasts of the national and local changes after the founding of New China in terms of the population growth, per-capita cultivated land, grain supply and income, education, employment, housing and transportation, the differences in living standards between the families with more children and those with fewer children, and the benefits of family planning to the state and people. The activity has played an active role in helping people see clearly the nation's actual situation and practise family planning of their own accord.
Since 1987, China has put into practice the plan on popularizing the basic knowledge of population and family planning, with the rural areas as the key points. At present, a number of villages and neighbourhoods have set up population or marriage education schools. The people at different childbearing ages and those in different situations may obtain scientific knowl