The west managed a massive decline in population growth without such draconian policies, and the west was popping out 6-10 babies on the regular till very recently. Also, the reason people were starving, and struggled to find work, wasn't because the proletariat was doing something wrong, it was because the elites horribly mismanaged the country's agriculture, despite the prols, who are supposed to be the dictators, telling the elite exactly why they didn't do things that way, and that this would destroy their crops. They couldn't keep up with the pace of jobs requirements because they forced a broad move to urbanized industrialization, then poorly planned that transition, and it took over 20 years to course correct, because they refused admit they didn't know what they were doing. A broad re-planning of this only came after Mao died, which lead to the arrest of the "Gang of Four", and a following liberalization of access to information, allowance of academic freedoms, and restructuring of schemes to move workers to an industrial economy.
Also the one child policy crippled and is still crippling China to this day. Even in the US the population growth is faltering. Long term US residents aren't having many kids and the only reason the population is going up is immigration.
This is something everyone should be discussing, no matter where they are in the political spectrum. There is no point in attempting to build a solar powered (or nuclear powered or wind powered) Utopia if there is no one left to run it. Your country and mine will be a quite chilly retirement home.
The key way of helping population growth is allowing immigration, that's what has enabled countries to flourish in the growth.
Population growth is only an issue if resources are hoarded and mishandled, which can be fixed with proper government regulations and giving parents time off, food, housing, etc.
I am basically an anti-natalist but I would be stupid to argue that mandatory requirements to fuck or not-fuck are needed or useful. If a country wants to have more kids it should try to ensure that those kids can grow up into a better country than their parents have it.