---
title: "The Open Letter (Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, 25 September 1980)"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "term"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Central Committee Open Letter, 25 September 1980"
aliases: ["the 1980 Open Letter","the Open Letter"]
first_seen: "2026-09-08T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["one-child policy","Fifth National People's Congress","Susan Greenhalgh","Martin King Whyte"]
seek_code_commit: "98503b7"
---


An open letter issued by the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee,
dated 25 September 1980, in the immediate wake of the third session of
the Fifth National People's Congress giving its "seal of approval to a new
policy" that same month — the document
[[entity-susan-greenhalgh|Greenhalgh]]'s 2003 article describes as the
moment after which "the one-child policy was effectively set in political
stone."

Matters to this vault as the specific document behind the recurring but
previously unnamed "1980 launch" language in
[[claim-coercive-birth-limitation-predates-one-child-policy-by-decade]]
and [[entity-martin-king-whyte|Whyte, Wang & Cai]]'s essay — the anchor on
one side of the interpretive fork
[[claim-decade-vs-seven-years-fork-depends-on-policy-origin-anchor]]
identifies between an official-launch reading of "the one-child policy"
and a recommendation-origin reading anchored to the June 1978 leading-group
meeting.

## References

- [[claim-coercive-birth-limitation-predates-one-child-policy-by-decade]]
- [[claim-whyte-wang-cai-and-greenhalgh-2003-converge-on-same-three-stage-timeline]]
- [[claim-decade-vs-seven-years-fork-depends-on-policy-origin-anchor]]