Chinese experts and local governments are coming up with many new ideas to encourage young people to find love, tie the knot, and make babies. But netizens remain skeptical about how effective the proposed measures really are.

An initiative by a local educational institute in Sichuan to introduce a spring break holiday to let students “experience the beauty of love” generated online discussions recently.

The school in question is the Sichuan Southwest Vocational College of Civic Aviation (四川西南航空职业学院) by the Panmerit Group (泛美集团), and they announced a spring break holiday for the April 1-7 period, which includes the Qingming Festival.

Although the school itself stated that the measure is in line with China’s plans to optimize domestic tourism and leisure, many netizens took the initiative as another way to encourage young people to marry and settle down.

“Does the pressure to marry and have kids start at university now?” some wondered: “Why don’t we skip college and get married right after high school?”, others wrote.

At a time when numerous initiatives are being introduced to encourage Chinese young people and couples to tie the knot and start a family, topics such as these are gaining significant online attention recently.

Textbook changes: same couple goes from one child to two children with a third one on the way (via Weibo).

Another example is the much-discussed topic of an adjusted textbook cover. While the textbook initially showed a couple and their only child, a newer version showed them with two children and a third one on the way to give the ‘right example’ to China’s younger generations.

 
“Achieving Zero Population Growth in 2022”
 

For years, Chinese experts, officials, and local authorities have explored new initiatives and measures to encourage Chinese couples to get married and have children. The country’s low birth rates and rapidly aging society are a cause for concern, especially because the end of the one-child policy and introduction of the so-called three-child policy (三孩政策) and further relaxation of family planning policies did not help to combat the declining birth rates.

While China’s dropping birth rates are an ongoing hot topic of discussion, the front page of of a Qilu Evening News newspaper dated April 2, 2003, has garnered online buzz recently for its headline about “achieving zero population growth in 2022.”

A newspaper frontpage dating April 2, 2003, has been shared a lot on Chinese social media for its headline about “achieving zero population growth in 2022.”

“We’ve achieved it,” one commenter wrote, with others saying: “They did keep their promise” and “they even achieved negative population growth.”

The annual statistics that were published three years ago, in January 2020, showed that China’s birth rate in 2019 had fallen to its lowest since the founding of the People’s Republic of China. In that year, the birth rate was 10.48 per thousand, and 14.65 million babies were born in mainland China. The data from later years showed that just 12 million babies were born in 2020 (8.5 births per thousand) and that only 10.6 million babies were born in 2021 – a rate of 7.52 births per thousand. The latest number, published in January 2023, is another record low: the total Chinese mainland population was 1.4118 billion by late 2022. Last year, 9.56 million people were born, while 10.41 million people died. The population in 2022 fell by 850,000 from 2021.

There are many different reasons why China’s birth rates keep dropping, such as the unbalanced male-female ratio (link) and statistical challenges to find a partner; the higher cost of living and competitive job market making it harder for young couples to start a family or have more than one child; the changing role of women and their increased focus on education, career and self-fulfillment (more here); or the profound cultural impact of the one-child policy, which has also led to a preference for having only one child even after the policy was lifted (read more here).

 
Birthrate Boosting Initiatives
 

To encourage young people to marry and have more children, various initiatives have been suggested or implemented over the past few years that go beyond a further relaxation of family planning policies.

Here a few examples of initiatives, ideas, and measures that have recently attracted attention in Chinese media and on social media:

◼︎ Seventeen government departments across China announced policies in August 2022 to encourage families to raise more than one child and create a “fertility-friendly society.” These measures include the promotion of prenatal and postnatal care, prolonged maternity leave, increased maternity allowances, and support for home purchases.

◼︎ Sichuan Province announced in January of 2023 that it would allow all people to register births, regardless of their marital status, starting from February 15, 2023. Sichuan previously only allowed married couples to register the births of up to two children. When parents are not legally married, it is usually not easy for a child in mainland China to get their household registration (hukou) and the educational, health and housing benefits associated with it, unless the parents pay a fine.

◼︎ In January of 2023, a Chinese demographer and other authors suggested in China’s Education and Population Report (中国教育和人口报告) that shortening the duration of education by two years – including an elimination of the middle school entrance exam – might help boost birth rates because young people would start their post-graduate life at an earlier age (and settle down sooner), and it would alleviate financial costs on parents paying for their children’s education.

◼︎ In February of 2023, China’s National Healthcare Security Administration announced that it would extend its coverage to help couples shoulder the costs for assisted fertility treatment and that TCM approaches to treating infertility will be promoted nationwide.

◼︎ Zezhou County, a county in the southeast of Shanxi province, introduced several measures recently to boost birth rates. One proposed measure was that families of two children or more would receive benefits in education; their second or third child would get ten additional points in their senior high school exams (zhongkao 中考). After triggering controversy, the measure was quietly removed.

◼︎ Zezhou will still offer other benefits for families with two or three children, including ‘baby benefits’ for the second or third child such as a ‘birth subsidy’ (生育补贴) and ‘milkpowder subsidy’ (奶粉补助) of 5000 yuan ($730) and 6000 yuan ($875) respectively, 218 days maternity leave, and free after-school care services.

◼︎ Shenzhen also announced that parents having a third child or more will be eligible for a cash allowance of 19,000 yuan ($2,800) until the child turns three years old.

◼︎ Significantly increasing personal tax deductions for families with two or three children was recently proposed by a representative of the National People’s Congress during the Two Sessions.

◼︎ Also during the Two Sessions this year, one member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) suggested a number of measures including an increase in the number of kindergartens; childcare subsidies (育儿补贴) for families raising children under the age of 5; a one-time financial ‘birth incentive’ (一次性生育奖励) for couples having their second or child child; educational subsidies (教育补贴) for families for their second or third child, along with more educational subsidies up to university level for the third child.

◼︎ Another CPPCC member suggested that young people should not work more than eight hours per day so they will still have time to “fall in love, get married and have children.”

◼︎ Guixi, a city in China’s Jiangxi province, launched its own matchmaking app (掌上贵溪) in March of 2023 to help residents find love and organize blind dates.

◼︎ Around the same time, Jiangxi Provincial authorities also strongly advocated against the practice of high bride prices. A bride price is an amount of money or goods paid by the groom’s family to the bride’s family upon marriage. Since China’s gender imbalance has made it more difficult for men to find a bride, the ‘bridewealth’ prices have gone up drastically. This holds especially true for the poorer, rural areas in China (read more here).

 
Social Media Responses
 

Looking at the social media responses to the many discussions on measures to encourage childbirth, there are roughly three kinds of perspectives.

There are those who reflect on China’s recent past and express anger about Chinese family planning policies changing so drastically while many families and mothers are still grappling with the effects of the one child policy, which have left them with painful memories and lasting scars. Many focus on the present, discussing the initiatives at hand and the practical issues that might prevent people from having (more) children. And then there are those who concentrate on what lies ahead, prioritizing personal happiness over state goals of boosting fertility rates and foreseeing a future with birthrates that will continue to decline.

In online discussions on this topic on Weibo, many netizens argue that the proposed measures are not effective enough to convince people to have a (second, third) child.

“The cost of housing needs to be lowered,” some popular comments said, suggesting that the surge in property prices is one major factor preventing couples from starting a family.

“Education, health care, and housing are the three big mountains you need to address first,” another commenter wrote.

Other people also raise the issue of long working hours and the ‘996’ work culture, as well as the aging society and the burden on younger people to take care of the elderly.

Then there are many discussions about the position of women in the workplace. Workplace pregnancy and maternity discrimination is a deep-rooted problem, and many fear that this will only get worse in light of the various measures introduced across the country promoting longer maternity leaves and more benefits for pregnant women and young mothers (read more).

“There are so many measures to encourage childbirth nowadays but there is no practical support and it only creates more worries for companies wanting to hire female workers of childbearing age,” one female commenter wrote.

Many netizens are not just expressing frustration about measures meant to encourage childbirth, they also have little confidence that the measures will eventually be effective.

One person who wrote they are part of a ‘DINK’ (Dual Income, No Kids) household, said they are not planning to have children at all: “In the end it is all about the wish to have children. If people do not have the wish to have babies, they will not have children. And you really can’t force us to have kids.”

By Manya Koetse 

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