Liang Zhongtang dates the one-child policy's origin to the State Council Family Planning Leading Group's 26-28 June 1978 'three-day meeting,' chaired by Chen Muhua

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Liang Zhongtang's 2009 essay traces the one-child policy's origin further back than a general "1978": on 24 February 1978 the State Council approved the family-planning leading group's report confirming the growth-rate target, and on 26 February premier Hua Guofeng's government work report to the Fifth National People's Congress set the goal of bringing the national natural growth rate below 1% within three years. The newly reconstituted (新一屆) State Council family-planning leading group, headed from June 1978 by Chen Muhua, then held the new session's first meeting — the "三天會議" (three-day meeting), 26-28 June 1978 — which treated "one couple, one child" as the primary means of hitting that target. Liang writes — translation for this capture, not independently cross-checked against a published English rendering — "given that both the leading group's own meeting report and the Party Central Committee's 1978 Document No. 69 confirm that this meeting proposed 'one is best, two at most,' we have reason to regard the 'three-day meeting' as the instigator of the 'one-child' policy."

This gives a specific date, meeting, and Party document to the "leadership already moving before Song" claim recorded in claim-china-leadership-contemplated-one-child-policy-1978-before-song (Whyte, Wang & Cai's 2015 secondary account, which places Chen Muhua's role in a footnote without this level of detail) — sourced independently, from Liang's own primary text rather than a citation of it.