th approximately 80 million members. Their members keep in close touch with the broad masses of the couples of child-bearing age. A family planning work situation with self-education and self-management as the mainstay is being formed step by step.
China makes full use of newspapers, radio, television, publication, theatre, music, local performances and schools to educate people about family planning. In addition, it has also set up a family planning publicity and education network reaching all parts of the country. In the late 1980s, all provinces, autonomous regions and centrally administered municipalities and the cities with economic planning directly supervised by the State Council (except Tibet Autonomous Region) set up regional family planning publicity and education centres one after another, which produced more than 1,600 television programmes and video tapes, and numerous publicity materials of various kinds. By 1994, two administrative officials' colleges, eight secondary professional schools and 26 provincial training centres had been founded as part of the national family planning system. Each city, county and township has a family planning service station focused on publicity and education; and all residents' and villagers' committees have a member responsible for propagating birth control education. Educational institutions of higher learning and research institutes in China also take an active part in training and research in population and birth control. The China Population Society, the China Population Culture Promotion Society and other organizations have also played an active role in organizing demographers, literary and art workers and people from all walks of life to participate in family planning work.
Publicity and education, which has resulted in the common understanding and conscientious participation of hundreds of millions of people, is the fundamental guarantee of the successful implementation of family planning in China.
While advocating family planning, China has mainly focused on contraception. Providing family planning information, consultation and services is an important measure in promoting family planning. The Chinese government attaches great importance to meeting the various and multi-level needs of people of child-bearing age by relying on progress in science and technology, and the study and development of the methods of family planning and contraception. In addition, the government has also established family planning and maternity and child care service networks throughout the country to provide people of child-bearing age with safe, effective and convenient services of family planning and reproductive health care, thus ensuring the smooth expansion of family planning.
Back in the 1960s, China embarked on scientific research on contraception, and soon made a large number of achievements, which were popularized all over the country. In the 1980s, China formulated the programme for the scientific and technological development of family planning, and has formed an initial, geographically rationally distributed system for family planning scientific research and the production of contraceptives. China has produced contraceptive and birth control technological services providing a great variety of methods for people to select as they wish. China leads the world in the research on male contraception techniques, some of which have been listed as the ones to be promoted by the World Association of Voluntary Surgical Contraception (AVSC). China has also made quite a number of important achievements in research of female contraception techniques, some of which have been extensively used in China and abroad. China has been included among those advanced countries in the development of contraceptives. While improving the quality of existing contraceptives, China is sparing no effort to develop safer, more effective, more convenient and cheaper contraceptives. To meet the demands of people of child-bearing age for contraceptives, the state has organized more than 40 factories and invested nea