Former State Councilor of the Chinese Communist Party and former Vice Chairman of the National People’s Congress, Peng Peiyun, passed away in Beijing yesterday (21st). She had been in charge of the Communist Party’s family planning department for 10 years.
According to Xinhua News Agency, Peng Peiyun, former State Councilor of the Chinese Communist Party, former Vice Chairman of the National People’s Congress, former Chairperson and Honorary Chairperson of the All-China Women’s Federation, passed away in Beijing at 6:26 am on Sunday, December 21, at the age of 96.
Public records show that Peng Peiyun was born in December 1929 in Hunan Province. She worked at a Beijing university in her early years and in 1964, she became the Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee of Peking University. During the Cultural Revolution, Peng Peiyun suffered persecution. She returned to Peking University after 1975 and held various positions such as head of a department at the National Science Commission, director of the Policy Research Office of the Ministry of Education, Deputy Minister of Education, and Vice Chairman of the State Education Commission.
In 1988, Peng Peiyun became the director of the National Family Planning Commission; in 1993, she was appointed State Councilor and continued to serve as the director of the National Family Planning Commission. In March 1998, she became the Vice Chairman of the National People’s Congress and in September of the same year, she was appointed Chairperson of the All-China Women’s Federation. After retiring in March 2003, she continued to hold positions such as Honorary Chairperson of the All-China Women’s Federation and President of the Chinese Red Cross Society.
The National Court of Spain issued arrest warrants for Peng Peiyun and former CCP leader Jiang Zemin, among five other former high-ranking officials, on November 19, 2013, accusing them of committing crimes of genocide against Tibet.
It is worth noting that Peng Peiyun played a crucial role in the history of China’s family planning. She served as the director of the National Family Planning Commission of the Chinese Communist Party from 1988 to 1998, spanning a decade.
Since the 1970s, the Chinese Communist Party has implemented a strict one-child policy as part of its family planning policy, resulting in forced abortions, forced sterilizations, fines for exceeding the birth quota, bringing deep catastrophe to hundreds of millions of Chinese people, especially women. According to official estimates by the Chinese Communist Party, the family planning policy has led to 400 million fewer births in mainland China over the past 40 years.
With the exacerbation of aging in China, the Chinese Communist Party was forced to implement the “universal two-child” policy in 2016. Following a significant decline in population due to factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities relaxed the policy to allow for up to three children in 2021 and removed the need for approval to have children in Guangdong starting from May 2022. However, the birth rate in China continues to decline, leading the Chinese Communist Party to employ various measures to encourage childbirth, sparking public backlash.