Open Editor's Digest for free
Rula Khalaf, editor of the Financial Times, picks her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
China has intensified a nationwide campaign to persuade singles to date, marry and have children as Beijing faces an increasingly severe demographic crisis.
Local governments contact married women to ask about their plans to have children, and also distribute money to parents to encourage them to have more than one child.
Universities have been asked to offer so-called love courses to single students, and articles regularly appear in state media about the benefits of having children.
China's population is shrinking The number of deaths exceeds the number of birthsThis increases pressure on local governments to address increasingly bleak demographic projections.
“China“China’s population is facing three major trends: aging, declining births, and declining marriage rates,” prominent economist Ren Ziping said in an interview with local press last month. “There are fewer children and more elderly people. The speed and scale of aging in China is unprecedented.
Beijing has pledged to offer greater subsidies and tax cuts to parents to reduce the cost of raising children. The State Council, China's cabinet, said in October that it was drafting a plan to build a “birth-friendly society” as part of a broader stimulus package to address the faltering economy. Details of this plan are still under study.
Meanwhile, married women in their 20s and early 30s across the country are receiving calls from local officials asking about their plans to start a family, according to several people who spoke with the Financial Times and posts on social media.
In some cases, callers asked women to attend prenatal body checks. Other callers were more direct, offering support to women with more than one child. Couples need to have 2.1 children on average to reach the population replacement rate.
A Zhejiang resident, who requested to remain anonymous, said officials offered local women a subsidy of 100,000 RMB ($14,000) to have a second child. “There is no clear policy, but if you ask, the village will find a way for you to get support,” she said. Currently, local governments determine subsidies for children depending on their financial health.
Personal pressure comes on the back burner Intensive media campaign Praise the benefits of childbirth. In recent months, the state-run People's Daily and Life Times newspapers have promoted scientific voices saying that childbirth is good for the mother's health and can help prevent cancer and treat some diseases.
A state-run circular issued by the National Health Commission in December called on universities to create “teaching courses on marriage and love” to encourage students to couple up.
“Universities are an important place for college students to fall in love,” she wrote, citing a poll that reported that 57 percent of students said they did not want to be in a relationship because of a heavy workload.
The article suggested that universities offer courses on love theory and analysis of real-life cases to enhance “systematic knowledge about love and marriage.”
However, experts doubt that official measures to boost the birth rate will convince young people to start families, especially as high unemployment and tepid economic growth have curbed spending.
Wang Feng, an expert on Chinese demographics at the University of California, Irvine, said officials are resorting to the same “rules of the game of using administrative power to achieve demographic goals” that were evident during the one-child policy era, 35 years after 1980. When Families were restricted to having one child.
He said that while Beijing has succeeded in preventing couples from having multi-child families, it is difficult to use administrative powers to achieve the opposite result. “Such old wine in a new bottle will not be effective, because the rationale behind late marriage and low fertility are completely different.”
Shen Yang, a feminist writer, said people can “see beyond the propaganda.”
“If the government wants to boost the birth rate, it should create a more friendly environment for parents, especially single mothers,” she said.
While Beijing is encouraging births, there is no evidence of this Limited access to contraception or abortion. The Beijing gynecologist said that although there may be specific cases where doctors refuse to perform procedures, this often reflects concern about legal action on the part of family members.
However, Wang said authorities faced an uphill battle to persuade “today's young men and women, who belong to the most educated generation in Chinese history” to have children.
“For young women in particular, they not only face high costs of living, but also severe occupational penalties when they leave their job position to have children.”
