If China could take a single decision today to enhance the nation's long-term economic outlook, it would be to recognize that coercive population control has been a tragic and historic mistake--and to abandon it, immediately. Such a call might surprise the casual observer, for on its own terms, China's population program has been a superficial success. In the early 1970s, China's then-current childbearing patterns implied nearly five births per woman. At the start of the "one child policy" in 1979, China's total fertility rate was nearly three births per woman. Today, China's fertility rate is far below the "net reproduction rate"--by many estimates, just 1.7 births per woman nationwide. In some major population centers--Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin among them--the average number of births per woman today has fallen below one baby per lifetime.

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