\u201cWhat are your parents\u2019 names?\u201d <\/p>\n
Fang, then a third grader, hemmed and hawed at the simple question as her teacher waited impatiently, unaware the 9-year-old was caught in a dilemma. <\/p>\n
Since preschool, Fang had been officially registered as the daughter of her eldest uncle \u2013 an attempt by her birth parents to circumvent harsh penalties for having a second baby under China\u2019s controversial one-child policy that was enforced from 1980 to 2015. <\/p>\n
Since then, Beijing has gradually lifted the birth caps from one to two children, then to three in 2021, in a bid to arrest a looming demographic crisis. <\/p>\n
The one-child rules have gone, but the wounds of the past cast long shadows. A new generation of women like Fang, haunted by their parents\u2019 struggles and their own sacrifices as children under the one-child policy, now eye parenthood with reluctance \u2013 making Beijing\u2019s current pro-birth push a tough sell. <\/p>\n
Fang was born in the 1990s \u2013 when the one-child limit was at its strictest \u2013 and became a big sister just a year later, when her mother \u201cillegally\u201d became pregnant again. To avoid punishment, the family sent Fang to live with extended family members, while her mother pretended her second pregnancy was her first. <\/p>\n
Fang, now 30 and married, doesn\u2019t want children at all. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll the fears, drifts and insecurity felt throughout my own childhood have, more or less, played a part in my current call,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Keeping their firstborn secret spared Fang\u2019s parents ruinous fines, job loss and even forced abortion and sterilization \u2013 the heavy price for having an \u201cunauthorized\u201d second child, another daughter. <\/p>\n
Fang was finally allowed to return home at age 10 \u2013 but was still registered as her eldest uncle\u2019s daughter and told to \u201cstick with her official registration\u201d whenever she was asked about her parents. <\/p>\n
After the one-child policy was dismantled in 2015, Fang\u2019s parents tried for another child. Fang sensed their unstated wish for a son, but her mother gave birth to a girl \u2013 her third. <\/p>\n
Over 30 years of China\u2019s one-child policy, an estimated 20 million baby girls \u201cdisappeared\u201d due to sex-selective abortions or infanticide, according to Li Shuzhuo, director of the Center for Population and Social Policy Research at China\u2019s Xi\u2019an Jiaotong University. <\/p>\n
She was born in a rural village in northeastern Shandong, one of the 19 provinces that allowed rural couples to have a second child \u2013 if their first was a girl \u2013 during the single child policy\u2019s reign. <\/p>\n
This \u201cone-and-a-half child policy\u201d variant, introduced in 1984, reinforced the traditional Chinese preference for sons by implying that girls were worth \u201chalf\u201d as much as boys, as noted in a leading Chinese academic study published last year. <\/p>\n
Yao\u2019s first sibling was a girl \u2013 allowed under the policy \u2013 but then her mother fell pregnant with a third child \u2013 a forbidden one \u2013 and soon fled to another village with Yao\u2019s sister, leaving Yao in the care of her grandparents. <\/p>\n
Yao said her mother was forced to keep her pregnancy secret to avoid a potential forced abortion. But after the \u201cextra baby\u201d arrived, she sought to officially register him as her son \u2013 and paid a crushing fine of 50,000 yuan (about $7,000). <\/p>\n
For Yao, it meant losing her mother\u2019s companionship for nearly a year when she moved out to carry her son to term. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was only a first grader then and had no one to walk me to and from school,\u201d Yao recalled. <\/p>\n
\u201cI felt all alone at that time.\u201d <\/p>\n
Since the shift to a three-child policy in 2021, Beijing has been running national campaigns to foster a \u201cpro-birth culture\u201d as China\u2019s population shrinks and grays at an alarming rate. <\/p>\n
Posters and slogans once warning of the perils of having more than one child have been replaced with ones encouraging more births. Local governments have rolled out a flurry of policy incentives, from cash handouts and real estate subsidies to the extension of maternity leave. <\/p>\n
The policy U-turn, from birth limits to birth boost, has left Yao \u201cspeechless.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cHow \u2018well-planned\u2019 the family-planning policy is!\u201d Yao mocked. \u201c(The government) used to slap us for having two (babies) and now expects us to have three?\u201d <\/p>\n
Fang said she was \u201csomewhat nettled\u201d by Beijing\u2019s initiatives to spur births, arguing: \u201cHaving kids or not is purely a woman\u2019s personal choice, not out of any policy, be it a stick or a carrot.\u201d <\/p>\n
In May, China\u2019s National Health Commission issued a dozen \u201cbirth-friendly theme posters\u201d to local bureaus, calling for a \u201cwidespread dissemination\u201d from social media to community parks. <\/p>\n
The move was met with wry comments online, referencing past one-child slogans like \u201cFewer kids, happier lives,\u201d and, \u201cIf you want to be rich, have fewer children and plant more trees.\u201d <\/p>\n
These chants are not just recounted for ridicule \u2013 people have found new resonance with the ruling Chinese Communist Party\u2019s old teachings and are now acting on them earnestly. <\/p>\n
Last year, the country\u2019s total fertility rate (TFR) \u2013 meaning the average number of children a woman delivers during her reproductive years \u2013 stood at around 1.0, according to the 2024 China Birth Report from the YuWa Population Research Institute, a China-based think tank. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s far lower than the 2.1 rate needed to maintain a stable population, or the \u201creplacement rate\u201d in demographic terms, and ranks as the second lowest among the world\u2019s major economies. <\/p>\n
The birth deficit is even grimmer in China\u2019s richest city, Shanghai, where roughly half of all women do not have children throughout their reproductive periods, based on the city\u2019s 2023 TFR figure (0.6) announced in May. <\/p>\n
Yi Fuxian, an expert on China\u2019s demographics at the University of Wisconsin, says the country faces three major obstacles to reversing its shrinking population: low fertility desire, high child-raising costs and a climbing infertility rate. <\/p>\n
Of these, \u201cthe sole challenge Beijing has any capacity to impact is the affordability issue,\u201d Yi said. <\/p>\n
Last month, the Communist Party proposed boosting incentives, including childbirth subsidies and more affordable childcare, at a key meeting of party leaders. <\/p>\n
Yet, debt-stricken local governments \u2013 including many that are struggling to recover from three years of strict pandemic controls and a loss of revenue from a real estate crash \u2013 can only carry them out on a shoestring budget, dooming the party\u2019s birth boost attempt, according to Yi. <\/p>\n
Chinese state-run media outlet Jiemian reported in early June that the highest childcare subsidies nationwide amount to only 57,800 yuan (about $8,000) \u2013 a drop in the bucket for one of the world\u2019s priciest countries to raise kids. <\/p>\n
The cost of raising a child to age 18 in China is 6.3 times its gross domestic product (GDP) per capita – second only to its neighbor South Korea at 7.79 times, according to a YuWa report. <\/p>\n
The hefty price tag means some people are putting off parenthood until later in life, when their fertility and openness to child-rearing might be on the wane. <\/p>\n
\u201cChina has fallen into a \u2018low-fertility trap\u2019 and the figure will only dip further,\u201d warned Yi. <\/p>\n
A \u201clow fertility trap\u201d describes a self-reinforcing cycle, where low fertility rates (typically under 1.5) drive population aging and economic stagnation \u2013 which further deter childbearing and sink the figure even lower. <\/p>\n
\u201cChina\u2019s fertility rate should have been falling naturally as its economy advances, like a giant rock gradually rolling down along a hillside,\u201d Yi said. \u201cBut the one-child policy kicked the rock right down the cliff \u2013 it\u2019s extremely hard to lift the rock back now.\u201d <\/p>\n
Online discussions in China about childbirth decisions are often dominated by economic concerns, but some have also thrown shade at the country\u2019s one-child policy by sharing decades-old receipts for over-quota birth fines on Xiaohongshu, China\u2019s version of Instagram. <\/p>\n
\u201cChildbearing isn\u2019t just a financial matter,\u201d said L\u00fc Pin, a prominent Chinese feminist. <\/p>\n
\u201cCoercive family planning, as a form of state violence, has scarred women deeply \u2026 and people just haven\u2019t got over it yet,\u201d added L\u00fc, who\u2019s pursuing a doctorate in women and politics at Rutgers University in the United States. <\/p>\n
Forced abortion and sterilization, arguably the most ghoulish facet of China\u2019s one-child \u201csocial engineering,\u201d have left an indelible mark on hundreds of millions of Chinese women, physically and mentally. <\/p>\n
According to state-owned news outlet The Paper, between 1980 and 2014, 324 million Chinese women were fitted with intrauterine devices (IUDs) and 107 million underwent tubal ligations to prevent pregnancy. <\/p>\n
Decades after the one-child policy\u2019s introduction in 1980, those contraceptive devices \u2013 only meant to remain in women\u2019s bodies for five to 20 years \u2013 have long outlived their safe stay. <\/p>\n
But family planning officials, who once had performance targets to push women to fit IUDs after having their first child, now lack similar incentives to remove those devices in a timely manner, demographer Sun Xiaoming told The Beijing News, a state-linked newspaper. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe government has stretched its hands far enough \u2013 even into common folks\u2019 bodies!\u201d Yi said. <\/p>\n
L\u00fc added that Beijing had not conducted any \u201copen self-reflection, nor even admission (of the state-inflicted trauma).\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cNow it expects women to forget all this and embrace its lurch to birth boost? Fat chance.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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