China's Party leadership was already contemplating a one-child-type policy in 1978, before Song Jian's population projections existed

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Whyte, Wang, and Cai write that "already in 1978, the Chinese leadership began contemplating the need for a one-child policy," driven by "the urgent search by Deng and other post-Mao leaders to find any conceivable way to increase the per capita economic growth rate" — a search that "led to a strong desire among the Party leadership for a birth-control program that was even more restrictive than in the 1970s." Song Jian enters their account one step later and in a supporting role: "Even more ambitious official fertility control targets found a ready and purportedly scientific rationale after 1979 in demographic projections produced by a small group of scientists headed by Song Jian." The sequence on this account therefore runs: leadership desire for a more restrictive policy (1978) preceded the moment the projections became its scientific rationale (after 1979), rather than the projections manufacturing the desire from nothing. Note the exact load the sentence bears — the essay dates the projections' use as justification, not their composition; it does not say when Song's group began work.

A footnote in the same essay names Chen Muhua — the official "newly charged with developing an even more restrictive fertility regime" — as the figure who "played a critical role in pushing for a one-child policy," with likely backing from Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping. The authors caution that "the historical record is still unclear about the decision-making process" behind the policy overall, so this is a leadership-side actor and a timeline, not a full causal account. It complements claim-coercive-birth-limitation-predates-one-child-policy-by-decade: that note establishes the apparatus was already coercive; this one establishes the specific, more-restrictive intent was already forming, independent of Song.