China Health & Science
More Wombs, More Babies? China Hints at Legalizing Surrogacy to Increase Birth Rates
A state media article that calls for a loosening of surrogacy bans has stirred controversy among Chinese Weibo users.
Published
6 years agoon
By
Yue XinChinese Party newspaper People’s Daily published an article on Friday that featured older couples struggling with infertility and called for a loosening of surrogacy bans. The article immediately stirred controversy among Chinese Weibo users.
January 2016 officially marked the end of China’s contentious one-child policy of 36 years that made it illegal for couples to give birth to more than one baby, implemented to slow the country’s population growth rate. Since the end of the policy, couples of which at least one of the pair is an only child are legally permitted to have a second child.
Unsurprisingly, 2016 saw the highest birth rate in a century. With 17.86 million of births in total, there was an increase of 7.9% in childbirths compared to the year before according to China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission.
“Doctors suggest to relax existing surrogacy bans while still preventing commercialization of the practice.”
However, the figure still falls short of government’s estimations for the population to reach 1.42 billion by 2020, and might be too low to balance the consequences of the aging society and the shrinking workforce. By 2050, 370 million people in China are expected to be aged 65+ – it is often called a “demographic crisis.”
When dropping the one child policy, Chinese authorities also halted a plan to ban surrogate motherhood. Since 2001, the Ministry of Health laid out rules that made it illegal for medical staff to offer surrogacy services, and in 2015 there were official plans to completely curb surrogate pregnancies.
The timing of the reversal of the surrogacy ban was ambiguous, especially because it was called “unprecedented” for the Chinese government to reverse a draft law after it has already been publicized.
On Friday, an article in Chinese state newspaper People’s Daily enraged Chinese netizens as it focused on the topic of second pregnancies in older couples and suggested a legalization of surrogacy to give couples more opportunities to have a (second) child.
It says:
“In the ninety million families that are qualified to have the second child in China, 60% of women are over 35 years old and 50% are over 40. The fertility rate is obviously going down because women are getting older, and the average age for a woman to have a last pregnancy is generally around the age of 40. Therefore, doctors suggest to relax existing surrogacy bans while still preventing commercialization of the practice.”
Surrogacy often comes up when there are fertility problems or other reasons; a surrogate mother can carry the baby for a couple through artificial insemination of the father’s sperm, or, if possible, through IVF.
“They have totally gone mad! Surrogacy was illegal and now it is being promoted to increase birth rates!”
Perhaps uncoincidentally, one of the most controversial sketches of the CCTC Chinese New Year Gala last week focused on an older couple of which the woman was not able to conceive. The sketch also mentions the possibility of IVF, and led to angry reactions on Weibo of women who felt like the government was pushing women to have children.
Friday’s People’s Daily article also immediately triggered thousands of comments on Chinese social media. On Weibo, there were over 14K comments within several hours.
The vast majority of commenters criticized the article and made sarcastic comments about it: “They have totally gone mad! Surrogacy was illegal and now it is being promoted to increase birth rates!”
“We as Chinese women are not being treated as human beings but as breeding machines!” some wrote.
There were also netizens that sharply pointed out the improbability of the suggestion that surrogacy could be legalized without making it commercial: “I’ve never heard of any voluntary surrogate mothers. Whoever is willing to provide this kind of service for free? What can you say to surrogate mums? ‘Sorry I need to borrow your womb?'”
There are also those who sarcastically wondered: “If we are struggling with infertility, can we expect that child trafficking will also be legal one day?”
“Our wombs do not belong to ourselves, but to the country and the Party.”
Many commenters worry about the future of birth intervention in China, writing: “When I want to have more babies, it is prohibited. And now they’ve [suddenly] worked out this unethical way to force us to give birth. This is another insane form of birth control – they may eventually start to fine couples who don’t give birth one day.”
China’s strict control over children births has been controversial in international society for a long time.
At present, only rich parents can afford to resort to alternative ways to have a child, such a IVF and using surrogate mothers or receiving high-quality medical treatment in foreign clinics.
China’s huge underground market in surrogacy has thus been rapidly growing with demands largely exceeding supplies. According to the article, the number of couples suffering from infertility in China is about 15 million, which means that whether surrogacy remains illegal or not, it will still be a booming sector with potential profits.
There have been radical changes in China’s child policies over the recent years: from “over-produced” children being deprived of official documentation for basic social services to the wide-publicizing encouragement of second babies’ births.
“Our wombs do not belong to ourselves, but to the country and the Party,” one female Weibo user sadly commented.
– By Yue Xin
Follow on Twitter or Like on Facebook
(Featured image: the slogan on the wall in rural China has been edited after the change of policy. Photo credit to CNR. “Better to let the blood flows like river, not allowing to give birth to one more/less.”)
Additional editing by Manya Koetse
©2017 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com.
Yue Xin is a bilingual freelance journalist currently based in the Netherlands with a focus on gender issues and literature in China. As a long-time frequent Weibo user, she is specialized in the buzzwords and hot topics on Chinese social media.
China and Covid19
Chinese Online Discussions on the Origins of Covid-19 after FBI Statement on Wuhan Lab Leak
After the FBI suggested it is likely that Covid-19 originated in a Wuhan lab, commentator Hu Xijin posted about “the United States of Rumors.”
Published
3 weeks agoon
March 4, 2023Is it a political issue or a scientific problem? The recent FBI statements on the origin of Covid-19 have brought the lab leak theory back on the table and, once again, triggered political blameshifting and online discussions about the roots of the pandemic.
Over three years since Covid-19 was first discovered in Wuhan and was linked to the local Huanan Seafood Market, the debate on the roots of the Covid-19 pandemic is still ongoing and has again made headlines this week as FBI director Christopher Wray endorsed a theory that the Covid pandemic was a result of a laboratory leak in China.
Wray’s remarks came after a Wall Street Journal report about an updated classified intelligence report from the United States Department of Energy. That report concluded that the pandemic probably – with “low-confidence” assessment – started with an unintentional lab leak in Wuhan.
China’s Foreign Ministry responded to the issue during a regular press conference earlier this week, blaming the Americans for using the problem regarding the origins of SARS‑CoV‑2 (the strain of coronavirus that causes Covid-19) for “political manipulation” (“政治操弄”). Spokesperson Mao Ning (毛宁) also said that the claims lacked credibility and were simply politicizing the issue instead of taking a scientific approach.
LAB LEAK THEORIES
“Although many lab leak conspiracy theories started in the U.S., some also began on the Chinese internet.”
Over the past years, discussions over the origins of SARS-CoV-2 have become increasingly politicized and both American and Chinese sides have pointed the finger at each other and shifted blame for the spread of the virus and the pandemic response on both sides.
Speculations, rumors, and theories that Covid-19 may have emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan were first raised in early 2020. Although many of these lab leak conspiracy theories started in the U.S., some also began on the Chinese internet.
In February of 2020, a rumor circulated on Chinese social media that a postgraduate named Yanling Huang from the high-security lab Wuhan Institute of Virology was the “Patient Zero” of Covid-19 (Wang et al 2021, 73). This was determined to be false, and other similar rumors making their rounds were also refuted and sidelined as a “conspiracy theory” by many scientists.1
A statement in The Lancet published in February of 2020 condemned any rumors on the virus origins, claiming that scientific research “overwhelmingly” concludes that the new coronavirus originated in wildlife.
The World Health Organization (WHO) research team investigating the origins of Covid-19, and which visited China in January of 2021, also called it “extremely unlikely” that the virus leaked from a lab in China. At the same time, all hypotheses on the origin of the virus remained on the table, and later on in 2021, the debate intensified after American President Biden called for a next phase study into the origins of the virus.
Dr. Fauci, director of the American National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had been among scientists who originally refuted the ‘lab leak’ theory, but in May of 2021, he changed his tune and said he was “no longer convinced” that the Covid-19 pandemic originated naturally.
The Chinese official side has consistently refuted claims that Covid-19 might have come from a Chinese laboratory leak, saying it is all about “political manipulation” and “blame shifting.”
China’s Foreign Ministry has turned the tables on the U.S. multiple times, demanding a thorough investigation into the source of the epidemic in the United States and a further probe into safety concerns at Fort Detrick and other American biological labs.
COVID-19 ORIGINS: HARDER TO TRACE
“The Covid-19 origin debate remains to be both a political and a scientific conundrum.”
Important keys to the SARS-CoV-2 origin question seem caught in a web of strategic narratives, political games, and colored perspectives.
Despite the recent U.S. Department of Energy report, there is still consensus among scientists – supported by a substantial body of research – that SARS-CoV-2 is of zoonotic origin, although the specific animal host has not been identified.
A study published in Science in July of 2022 concludes that SARS-Cov-2 most likely jumped from animals to humans at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market back in December 2019 (Worobey et al 2022).
Other recent studies that have come out on the research surrounding the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic argue that the complexity of the virus and the lack of harmonious international cooperation are making it harder to draw definite conclusions. Since the research requires international data from 2019 and is time-sensitive, the delays are also making it more tricky to identify the source of SARS-CoV-2 (see Hao et al 2022, 3189-3190).
The official Chinese stance (August 2021) is that the virus is of zoonotic origin and that China supports scientific research into the sources of the virus, as long as this does not become a political tool. The Chinese side also stresses that the fact that the virus was first discovered in Wuhan does not mean that the “Patient Zero” was also in Wuhan, as some studies indicate that there were positive Covid-19 cases before December 2019 in America, Brazil, and Italy (Hao et al 2022, 3185-3186).
In May of 2022, Chinese researchers published a blood-donors study analyzing samples supplied to the Wuhan Blood Center before December 2019, researching if there were SARS-Cov-2 antibodies in the blood provided between Sept-Dec of that year. That study reportedly did not find antibodies amid over 88,000 samples, showing the virus was not widespread in Wuhan in late 2019 (Chang et al 2023; Mallapaty 2023).
With so many questions left unanswered, a second phase study by the WHO into the origins of Covid-19 was much-anticipated. But it recently became known that the WHO shelved this investigation. According to Nature, the stalling of the research relates to ongoing challenges over attempts to conduct crucial studies in China.
And so the Covid-19 origin debate remains to be both a political and a scientific conundrum. Some scientists have voiced concerns that the FBI statement could lead to a renewed wave of harassment against scientists, with such statements only further clouding the debate instead of contributing to it (Euronews).
WEIBO DISCUSSIONS
“As long as politics and science cannot operate independently of each other, there is no conclusion in sight.”
Although the Chinese side supposedly condemns blame-shifting and finger-pointing in the Covid-19 origins issue, the media-led and official online discourse regarding the ‘origins problem’ is mostly accusing the U.S. of hyping the issue and making China the scapegoat. Various Weibo hashtags that are used in posts about the topic literally include the words “hyping” and “politicizing” (#美方应该停止搞政治溯源情报溯源#, #美方再次翻炒实验室泄漏论抹黑不了中国#, #有关方面应停止对新冠溯源政治化#, #FBI局长炒作新冠病毒实验室泄漏论#).
Well-known political commentator Sima Nan (@司马南) accused the American side of dredging up and repeating the same old issues again and that the U.S. is “increasingly becoming the world’s laughingstock” for spreading rumors via its official and media channels.
On March 3rd, another Chinese political commentator, Hu Xijin (@胡锡进) also published about the issue, again raising the issue of how Fort Detrick and a lab leak may be connected to the roots of the pandemic:
“In China, there are also many people who think that Covid-19 could come from a laboratory, but that it is America’s Fort Detrick lab. The WHO experts have already visited the Wuhan lab, but the expert group still has not visited the Fort Detrick lab despite the serious doubts about a Covid lab leak there. If the U.S. has nothing to hide, then it should do what China did in 2021 and open the doors of Fort Detrick to the WHO. The biggest lie in human history is that of former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell holding a bottle of washing powder at the United Nations and saying it was an Iraqi chemical weapon. That lie was used as pretext to launch a bloody war. The United States should change its name to “the United States of Rumors” (“谣言合众国”).”
One of the top replies on Hu’s post mentioned the American “vaping disease” that broke out in 2019 and peaked in September of that year. “It must have been the Yankees,” another commenter wrote.
The claim that Fort Detrick is related to the start of the pandemic or that the U.S. army brought Covid-19 to Wuhan has already been circulating since 2020, and these speculations were strengthened by Chinese official sources, including Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian, that pointed the finger at the U.S.
Many online discussions on Chinese social media, including those on Q&A platform Zhihu.com, still accuse the United States for covering up Covid-related facts and for putting the blame on China to cover their own tracks.
In light of the recent balloon controversy, some called the latest statements “another balloon.” By now, it seems impossible to separate the problem of Covid-19 origins from the bilateral relationships between China and the U.S. anymore.
In this regard, the online discussions surrounding the origins of Covid-19 have not changed a lot since 2020. It is a bit of a Catch-22, since these discussions are politicized as they are focused on how the U.S. is politicizing the issue. As long as (international) politics and science cannot operate independently of each other, there is no conclusion in sight that will bring the discussion on the exact origin of Covid-19 to a definitive end.
By Manya Koetse
1 Besides the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Wuhan-based Chinese Center for Disease Control has also been considered a possible source of a lab leak – the latter is also the one mentioned in the U.S. Department of Energy report.
References
Chang, Le, Lei Zhao, Yan Xiao, Tingting Xu, Lan Chen, Yan Cai, Xiaojing Dong et al. 2023. “Serosurvey for SARS-CoV-2 among blood donors in Wuhan, China from September to December 2019.” Protein & Cell 14 (1): 28-36.
Hao, Ying-Jian, and Yu-Lan Wang. 2022. “The origins of COVID-19 pandemic: A brief overview.” Transboundary and Emerging Diseases (69): 3181–3197.
Khatsenkova, Sophia. 2023. “China COVID lab leak: What we know and what we don’t know about the origins of the virus.” Euronews, # March https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/02/china-covid-lab-leak-what-we-know-and-what-we-dont-know-about-the-origins-of-the-virus [4 March 2023].
Mallapaty, Smriti. 2023. “WHO abandons plans for crucial second phase of COVID-origins investigation.” Nature, 14 February (Updated 3 March) https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00283-y#ref-CR1 [4 March 2023].
Wang, Xin, Fan Chao, Guang Yu. 2021. “Evaluating Rumor Debunking Effectiveness During the Covid-19 Pandemic Crisis: Utilizing User Stance in Comments on Sina Weibo.” Frontiers in Public Health (9): 70-87.
Worobey, Michael, Joshua Levy, Lorena Serrano, Alexander Crits-Christoph, Jonathan Pekar, Stephen Goldstein, Angela Rasmussen, Moritz Kraemer, Chris Newman, Marion Koopmans, Marc Suchard, Joel Wertheim, Philippe Lemey, David Robertson, Robert Garry, Edward Holmes, Andrew Rambaut, Kristian Andersen. 2022. “The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.” Science 377 (6609): 951-959.
Featured image:
Background image by Martin Sanchez.
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China and Covid19
Video Shows Real-Time “Departure” Information Board at Chinese Crematorium
From “cremation in process” to “cooling down,” the digital display shows the progress of the cremation to provide information to those waiting in the lobby. The crematorium ‘departure’ board strikes a chord with many.
Published
2 months agoon
January 16, 2023A video showing a live display screen announcing the names and status of the deceased at a Yunnan crematorium has been making its rounds on Chinese social media, from WeChat to Weibo, where one version of the video received over 1,7 million views.
Somewhat similar to a real-time platform departure display on train stations, the screen shows the waiting number of the deceased person, their name, gender, the name of the lounge/room (if any) for families, the name of the crematorium chamber, and the status of the cremation process. Below in the screen, it says “the final journey of a warm life” (温暖人生的最后旅程).
For example, the screen displays the names of a Mr. Chen and a Mr. Li; their bodies were in the process of being cremated (火化中), while other cremations were marked as “completed” (完成) or “cooling down” (降温中).
This video of a real-time "departure" information board in the lobby of a Chinese crematorium is making its rounds on Weibo/Wechat these days. The display shows the name and gender of deceased, which cremation chamber, and the cremation status to inform families of the progress. pic.twitter.com/EA94OWGwdk
— Manya Koetse (@manyapan) January 16, 2023
Through such a screen, located in the crematorium lobby, family members and loved ones can learn about the progress of the cremation of the deceased.
The video, recorded by a local on Jan. 7, received many comments. Among them, some people commented on the information board itself, while others simply expressed grief over those who died and the fragility of life. Many felt the display was confronting and it made them emotional.
“It makes me really sad that this how people’s lives end,” one commenter said, with another person replying that the display also shows you still need to wait in line even when you’re dead.
“I didn’t expect the screens [in the crematorium] to be like those in hospitals, where patients are waiting for their turn,” another Weibo user wrote. “It would be better if the names were hidden, like in the hospitals, to protect the privacy of the deceased,” another person replied.
Others shared their own experiences at funeral parlors also using such information screens.
Another ‘departure display’ at a Chinese crematorium, image shared by Weibo user.
“My grandfather passed away last September, and when we were at the undertaker’s, the display was also jumping from one name to the other and we could only comfort ourselves knowing that he was among those who lived a relatively long life.”
“Such a screen, it really makes me sad,” another commenter from Guangxi wrote, with others writing: “It’s distressing technology.”
Although the information screen at the crematorium is a novelty for many commenters, the phenomenon itself is not necessarily related to the Covid outbreak and the number of Covid-related deaths; some people share how they have seen them in crematoriums before, and funeral parlor businesses have used them to provide information to families since at least 2018.
According to an article published by Sohu News, more people – especially younger ones – have visited a funeral home for the first time in their lives recently due to the current Covid wave, also making it the first time for them to come across such a digital display.
The online video of such an information board has made an impact at a time when crematoriums are crowded and families report waiting for days to bury or cremate their loved ones, with especially a large number of elderly people dying due to Covid.
On Jan. 4, one social media user from Liaoning wrote:
“I really suggest that the experts go to the crematoriums to take a look. There is no place to put the deceased, they’re parked outside in temporary containers, there’s no time left to hold a farewell ceremony and you can only directly cremate, and for those who were able to have a ceremony, they need to finish within ten minutes (..) At the funeral parlor’s big screen, there were eight names on every page, and there were ten pages for all the people in line that day, I stood there for half an hour and didn’t see the name of the person I was waiting for pop up anymore.”
As the video of the display in the crematorium travels around the internet, many commenters suggest that it is not necessarily the real-time ‘departure’ board itself that bothers them, but how it shows the harsh reality of death by listing the names of the deceased and their cremation status behind it. Perhaps it is the contrast between the technology of the digital display boards and the reality of the human vulnerability that it represents that strikes a chord with people.
One blogger who reposted the video on Jan. 13 wrote: “Life is short, cherish the present, let’s cherish what we have and love yourself, love your family, and love this world.” Among dozens of replies, some indicate that the video makes them feel uncomfortable.
Another commenter also wrote:
“I just saw a video that showed an electronic display at a crematorium, rolling out the names of the deceased and the stage of the cremation. One name represents the ending of a life. And it just hit me, and my tears started flowing. I’m afraid of parting, I’m afraid of loss, I just want the people I love and who love me to stay by my side forever. I don’t want to leave. I’m afraid I’ll be alone one day, and that nobody will ever make me feel warm again.”
One person captured why the information board perhaps causes such unease: “The final moments that people still spent on this earth take place on the electronic screen in the memorial hall of the funeral home. Then, they are gone without a sound.”
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By Manya Koetse
with contributions by Zilan Qian
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Jully
February 4, 2017 at 6:11 pm
Oh, they have a great population. In fact, they even have two-children policy. It was made not for nothing. Thus, they give birth many. But, you know, at the same time, there are families who have infertility. One couple can have three babies, for example. While, another family can have none. In such situationб infertile will feel a piece of in justice. And I can understand them. Thus, it is rather complicated issue. Interests of all people must be considered. As of surrogacy, maybe it can be allowed only for infertile. It can be used only in the case of medical reasons. In such cases, it can be. It must be only strictly regulated.
Siobhan Justin
February 11, 2017 at 6:36 am
The logical course of action would be to lift the bans on childbirth altogether. The two child policy isn’t much better than the one child policy; it still leads to forced abortions. Procreation is a gift from God; it should not be limited by man.
Megan
July 3, 2018 at 7:50 pm
Oh, they have a great population. In fact, they even have two-children policy. It was made not for nothing. Thus, they give birth many. But, you know, at the same time, there are families who have infertility. One couple can have three babies, for example. While, another family can have none. In such situationб infertile will feel a piece of in justice. And I can understand them. Thus, it is rather complicated issue. Interests of all people must be considered. As of surrogacy, maybe it can be allowed only for infertile. It can be used only in the case of medical reasons. In such cases, it can be. It must be only strictly regulated.