China Bans Crude Birth Control Slogans

So I just happened to stumble upon this article when I googled a completely unrelated topic, but since I got a bit of a laugh out of it, I figured I would share. The article, China Family Planning Slogans, is about the Chinese government's recent decision to revise their campaign to encourage people to have fewer children.

In 1979, in order to slow the rapid growth of the already enormous population, China implemented the "one child" law. In addition, ads featuring slogans discouraging large families have been displayed throughout the country ever since. Such slogans included "Raise fewer babies but more piggies" and "One more baby means one more tomb."

Believe it or not,these ads were considered to be "poorly worded" and "full of strong language" by the Chinese people and they felt as if the government were "simply forcing people to give up having more babies." In light of this, China has decided to "give a friendlier face" to the family planning campaign stop using these slogans, replacing them with "warm" and "humanistic" slogans to promote birth control and encourage people to have less children rather than frightening them into not having more. Some of these new slogans include emphasis on the 'equality of boys and girls' due to the still widespread preference of having boys over girls.

I was just amused by this because I would think that anyone who was at all concerned about possible public outcry and societal opinion would never force citizens to get abortions and sterilizations and issue slogans such as those promising to "topple houses and confiscate cows" if the demands of population control are not met.