When did China’s one-child policy officially begin?

September 25, 1980, is widely cited as the official start date of China’s one-child policy. On that day, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party published a public letter to its membership calling for universal adherence to the policy, which sought to standardize nationwide a limit that had been applied unevenly across provinces earlier that year.1

While the government began promoting family planning efforts following the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, these initiatives were largely sporadic and voluntary until the late 1970s. A less restrictive, voluntary program encouraging families to have no more than two children was introduced in 1978, but the transition to the stricter one-child mandate occurred as the government sought to curb rapid population growth.12