Greenhalgh's footnote 3 pins Song Jian's 1995 self-credit essay to a specific citation: 'System science and policy-making,' in his 1999 collected papers, p. 537

chinapopulation-policyone-child-policyhistoriographybibliographicprimary-source-locationcold-war-science

claim-song-jian-self-credited-1980-projections-triggered-one-child-policy rests on a doubly-mediated quote — Susan Greenhalgh's English translation of a 1995 essay by Song Jian — flagged [unverified-quote] pending the original Chinese text, and routed at question-verify-song-jian-1980-self-credit-primary-chinese. That question asked, among other things, for "the bibliographic identity of Song's 1995 essay: title, venue, exact citation as given in Greenhalgh 2005's footnotes."

Footnote 3, page 254, of Greenhalgh's own paper supplies exactly this: "Song Jian, 'System science and policy-making' (1995), in Song Jian, Song Jian kexue lunwen xuanji (Selected Scientific Papers of Song Jian) (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1999), p. 537." This resolves an ambiguity a 2026-08-09 sibling capture's leads had left open: working from Liang Zhongtang's footnotes rather than Greenhalgh's, that capture named two candidate Song collected-writings volumes as possible homes for the essay — this 1999 volume (Science Press) and a 2002 volume (Atomic Energy Press). Greenhalgh's own footnote confirms the 1999 volume specifically, narrowing the search from two unopened books to one specific title, publisher, and page.

The 1999 volume itself remains unlocated and unread — this claim fixes where to look, not what the original Chinese text says. A separate footnote (61) in the same paper cites a distinct document — Song, Yu Jingyuan and Li Guangyuan's original January 1980 World Economy Research article, reprinted in the same 1999 volume at pp. 540–46 — as the paper that "presented for first time the detailed results of the projections and their policy implications." That is a claim about first publication: Greenhalgh treats the delivery of the work into leaders' hands as a separate, later step (p. 271, "Building networks to the top"). The article is also unopened, and a candidate primary source distinct from the 1995 retrospective essay carrying the self-credit line.