This chapter starts with the central puzzle of this book: Why do governments choose blunt force regulation to control pollution when more reasonable, sustainable solutions are possible? It proposes that governments choose this suboptimal approach because they seek, first and foremost, to overcome principal–agent problems within the state apparatus. Drawing on case research and interviews with government officials around China, this chapter illustrates how blunt force regulation creates shortcuts that allow political leaders to increase the credible threat of punishment towards noncompliant bureaucrats. These measures temporarily scare local authorities into enforcing policies as ordered, even after prolonged periods of noncompliance. Finally, this chapter offers some observable implications for this theory, which will be tested in ensuing chapters.

The epilogue addresses the question of what can be ascertained from studying sex and reproduction in the longue durée. As demonstrated by the enduring reliance on abortion as birth control, family planning remains deeply gendered with women shouldering much of this burden. The persistence of eugenic ideas and the state’s intrusive but uneven policing of sexuality have been features of Chinese history since the early twentieth century. Despite ongoing changes in fertility policies, attitudes toward contraception and perceptions of what constitutes the ideal family remain diverse.

This chapter broadens the scope of the analysis to assess whether blunt force regulation is unique to China. It reveals that blunt force regulation is a widespread political phenomenon found in both advanced industrial environments (like the UK) and weak institutional environments (like India and the Philippines). When political leaders confront urgent or overwhelming enforcement problems, they sometimes resort to unreasonable, one-size-fits-all measures to ensure that enforcement actions are effective. Through analyzing these cases, this chapter concludes that blunt force regulation is one of a set of potential responses to the inevitable principal–agent problems of regulation. However, the character of blunt force regulation – including how forceful or indiscriminate it is – is shaped by institutional features such as a state’s resource capabilities and coercive capacity.

In the wake of the Great Leap Forward, the State Council ordered the establishment of community family planning programs. Taking up the call for “birth planning,” officials sought to weave birth control into the local cultural fabric through plays, exhibitions, and focus groups while countering the traditional preference for large families. Yet, resource shortages, contradictory messages from the state about the efficacy of traditional medicine, and individual distrust or dislike of birth control continually undermined efforts to more systematically monitor and control reproduction. In this context, contraceptive practices involved ongoing negotiation among diverse actors: provincial and local birth planning authorities, as well as individuals and their families.

This chapter tests the theory proposed in Chapter 3: that blunt force regulation is used not to scare polluters into respecting pollution standards, but to scare bureaucrats into respecting central orders. It begins with process tracing on a case of blunt force regulation from southern China to show that two common explanations for this phenomenon – deterring excess pollution and reducing industrial overcapacity – fail to account for local authorities’ indiscriminate shutdown of polluting industries. Instead, the sequence of events reveals how local officials undertook blunt force regulation in response to sudden scrutiny from higher-level officials. Quantitative methods are then used to test this theory on a national scale. Results demonstrate that cities in which local officials were underenforcing pollution regulations were more likely to be subjected to blunt force pollution regulation than those with high levels of pollution or industrial overcapacity. These findings reveal that blunt force regulation is undertaken as a form of bureaucratic control.

Chapter 2 focuses on the praxis of birth control and abortion during the Republican era. Although sterilization and abortion were criminalized, contraception was neither explicitly endorsed nor banned. Yet, at times, local police cracked down on those who sold or consumed these products. In spite of the law, a wide range of contraceptive and abortive techniques were available to women in urban China. Grounded in folk practices, traditional Chinese healing, and Western medicine, abortion was the most prevalent form of fertility regulation that appeared in the historical record. Tiaojingyao – patent drugs and homemade herbal decoctions that blurred the line between abortifacients and emmenagogues designed to induce regular menses – were also particularly common, and by their nature, difficult to police.

The chapter tests a further observable implication of the theory that blunt force regulation does reduce pollution. Regressing pollution levels on blunt force measures, this chapter shows that this type of regulation is effective at overcoming enforcement failures; indeed, it is associated with much greater reductions in pollution than conventional regulation. These findings challenge a common conception that blunt force regulation is mere political theater, in which the government uses highly publicized spectacles to convince the public it is doing something about pollution. Drawing on interviews with national and local regulators, this chapter further illustrates that far from mere performance, blunt force measures are the result of high-level government planning, enlist the efforts of several government agencies, and constitute part of a concerted, multiyear strategy to reduce pollution levels across the country.

In the past decade, the Chinese government has resorted to forcibly shuttering entire industries or industrial areas to clean up the air. These “blunt force” measures are often taken as a sign of authoritarian efficiency; the state uses its coercive powers to swiftly eliminate polluting industries and then silence social dissent. This chapter introduces an alternate perspective: that blunt force regulation is a sign of ineffective bureaucratic control. When institutions are too weak to hold bureaucrats accountable, central leaders increase oversight by drastically reducing the number of steps and resources required to produce a regulatory outcome – resulting in blunt force measures. Through an overview of the causes and consequences of China’s blunt force pollution regulation, this chapter challenges the tenets of authoritarian environmentalism, forcing us to rethink what it means to be a “high-capacity” state.