It's more that past priority correctly focused on suppressing population growth at all cost. I've pointed out in other comments in this thread but roughly 40% o

It's more that past priority correctly focused on suppressing population growth at all cost. I've pointed out in other comments in this thread but roughly 40% of PRC is still in informal economy making 2000 USD per year, contributing to 5% of GDP. They are, to be blunt excess people who will be trapped in lower middle income because they couldn't be integrated into modern economy due to various factors. Estimates for PRC family planning averted ~300M births. Imagine another 120-200M poor, with agri resources already near limits. A PRC with 1.4B and 600M useless people and demographic crisis is still preferrable to PRC with 1.7B and 720-800M useless people that would need to be reigned in anyway.