Political advisors to the Chinese government have made over 20 recommendations to increase the birth rates in the country at the annual meeting of China’s People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) this month. This move seems to be China’s act of desperation to address its dwindling population.
The Chinese government under President Xi Jinping is enticing people with incentives like reducing working hours, providing childcare subsidies, eliminating the three-child limit, and even eliminating the requirement that women be legally married in order to register their children. All of this is done to encourage families to have more children and turn the tide.
China’s high-handedness in implementation of its now scrapped one-child policy gave a severe blow to country’s population, shrinking it for the first in past six decades.
Now, even as Beijing is jumping to tackle the impending population crisis, experts are of the opinion that the best China can do now is to slow the population’s decline. China’s negative population growth is a historic one since the devastating famine between 1958 and 1961.
But all of this comes with an added problem. The young Chinese do not want kids. Chinese authorities increased the child cap to three in 2021. But even in Covid time, the stay at home era, couples resisted having children. High childcare and school costs, poor salaries, a frail social safety net, and gender inequities are cited by young people as deterrents.
The CPPCC recommendation include extending access to free public education, increasing financial aid for couples raising their first kid rather than merely the second or third, and subsidising fertility procedures. Few experts have expressed a glimmer of hope in the recommendations praising China for showing urgency to the matter at hand.
“You cannot change the declining trend,” said Xiujian Peng. Peng, who is senior research fellow at the Centre of Policy Studies at Victoria University in Australia added, “But without any fertility encouragement policy then fertility will decline even further.”
In order to prevent women from being overworked, Peng stated Jiang Shengnan’s (a CPPCC member) proposal that young people work just eight hours each day is a positive one. He argued that this will provide young people to have time to “fall in love, get married, and have children.”
The National Health Commission (NHC) released draft regulations on Wednesday that would let qualified people to establish day care facilities for up to five children under the age of three, easing the burden on young families.
Experts added that boosting paternity leave eliminates a barrier for dads to take on greater parental obligations, while CPPCC suggestions like maternity leave paid by the government rather than the employer will help minimise discrimination against women.
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