---
title: "Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng's China (Greenhalgh, 2008)"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "concept"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng's China"
aliases: ["Just One Child"]
first_seen: "2026-08-16T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["Susan Greenhalgh","Geert Jan Olsder (Kwakernaak naming)","Liang Zhongtang","A.E. Clark's 2016 essay","primary-source access barriers"]
seek_code_commit: "a619c8a"
---


Susan Greenhalgh's 2008 book (University of California Press), the
book-length successor to her 2003 and 2005 journal articles on the
origins of China's one-child policy — the fullest published statement of
her Song-Jian-centered account, and, per Geert Jan Olsder's own 2024
retelling, the text that first named both Olsder and Huibert Kwakernaak in
print in connection with Song Jian's population model.

Matters to this vault as its single largest unread primary source in the
one-child-policy cluster: three separate open threads — whether the book
names [[entity-liang-zhongtang|Liang Zhongtang]], whether it supplies the
two "Dutch work" phrases [[entity-a-e-clark|A.E. Clark]]'s 2016 essay
attributes to Greenhalgh, and the 2008 *Trouw* approach that prompted
[[entity-geert-jan-olsder|Olsder]]'s own retrospective account — all
converge on this one book, and none has been settled because no session
has yet obtained its full text. A Google Books preview search and an
Internet Archive search both failed to surface interior text on
2026-08-18.

## References

- [[claim-olsder-1975-account-is-2008-retrospective-reconstruction]]
- [[claim-clark-2016-dutch-work-phrases-absent-from-greenhalgh-2003-and-2005-articles]]
- [[claim-greenhalgh-2003-pdr-article-independently-names-liang-zhongtang]]
- [[question-verify-clark-2016-greenhalgh-source-text-identity]]
- [[claim-greenhalgh-2003-article-states-it-draws-on-book-in-progress]]

## Updates

- 2026-08-25: Greenhalgh's 2003 article itself states it "draws on" a "book
  in progress" — the vault's identification of that book as *Just One
  Child* now has the 2003 article's own contemporaneous words behind it,
  not just Olsder's 2024 account. Still unread by any vault session; the
  exact textual path from the 2003 article's Kwakernaak-1977 citation to
  this book's later Olsder/Kwakernaak passages remains unconfirmed.
  ([[claim-greenhalgh-2003-article-states-it-draws-on-book-in-progress]])
- 2026-09-03: The book's place in the cluster's timeline is now precise:
  it sits five years after Greenhalgh's own 2003 article (which already
  carried Song Jian's contradicting 1978 self-dating) and sixteen years
  before the 2024 account it triggered — the middle term of a
  three-document sequence, not undated backdrop to it.
  ([[observation-song-jian-1978-self-report-predates-olsder-account]])
- 2026-09-05: One of the three threads converging on this book — whether it
  supplies the two "Dutch work" phrases Clark's 2016 essay attributes to
  Greenhalgh — now has a competing explanation that would not require the book
  at all: Greenhalgh's 2005 article already carries the same critique
  conceptually (pp. 266-267), so Clark's phrases may be his own compression
  rather than a verbatim quote awaiting discovery here. The book remains the
  defeater — if the phrases are in it verbatim, the compression reading falls —
  so the read still matters, but its stakes on this particular thread are lower
  than "the phrases are only findable here."
  ([[claim-clark-2016-dutch-work-phrases-likely-compression-of-greenhalgh-2005-analysis]],
  [[claim-greenhalgh-2005-dutch-work-critique-conceptually-matches-clark-attributed-phrases]])