A draft internal document leaked by the municipal health authority in southeastern China’s Quanzhou city aimed at encouraging government officials and employees to have three children in order to boost falling birth rates has sparked a heated debate on social media.
The document, which circulated online as a screenshot before being identified as a draft leaked by the Quanzhou Municipal Health Commission, lists a number of ways municipal authorities are considering to “organize and implement the three-child policy.”
China abandoned its policy limiting most couples to one child in 2015, after decades of human rights abuses, including late-term forced abortions and sterilizations, as well as widespread monitoring of women’s fertility by authorities.
Couples were then limited to two children, but in 2020, the fertility rate stood at around 1.3 children per woman in 2020, compared to the 2.1 children per woman necessary for population renewal, and the limit was increased to three in May 2021.
Yet the people who do most of the mental, physical and emotional labor of childbearing and childcare – Chinese women – are reluctant to step in to solve the government’s demographic problems, despite Communist Party leader Xi Jinping’s assertions that they have an “irreplaceable” role to play in the “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
The leaked document in Quanzhou, which was confirmed by health officials as a real leak from “negligent” staff in comments reported by Jiemian News, goes a little further than slogans, calling on officials to lead by example and have more children themselves, while offering a range of support services to help them.
“Party members and cadres at all levels and executives of public enterprises benefiting from [connections to government] Business units should take the lead in implementing the three-child policy,” the document said in a section titled “Key Tasks and Measures.”
This would include families of officials and employees working across the municipal government and party committee system, as well as state-owned enterprises with ties to Quanzhou or counties under its jurisdiction, according to a screenshot of the document widely circulated on social media this week.
He also calls for “eugenics” and postnatal care. Although eugenics was originally a socialist and progressive movement, it became closely linked in some countries to discrimination against minority groups, often based on ethnicity or disability, using “scientific” justifications, according to a 2020 article by Leo Lucassen in the International Journal of Social History.
Lively online discussion
In Nazi Germany, women deemed “fit” to have children by authorities were prohibited from having an abortion, according to Lisa Pine’s 1997 book. Nazi family policy, 1933-1945.
Although no overt plans to force people to have children have yet been presented in China, the screenshot sparked heated discussions online, according to Jiemian News, as “some people feared it was a veiled reference to forcing people to have three children.”
Blogger Tuzao Ershan commented that if this policy is implemented, civil servants who do not have three children “will be able to forget about being promoted or getting rich”, while blogger Xiao Lu Jie said that there are two main ways Chinese people demonstrate their patriotism: spending money and having children.
“There is nothing wrong with party members and officials taking the lead in having children, as it is an important way to demonstrate patriotism,” the blogger wrote. “They should just create a birth promotion office.”
Another blog post seen by RFA Mandarin indicates that the families of civil servants who answered the call to have a second child in 2015 are already struggling.
“This reminds me of what happened to many of my classmates… who are now couples with four elderly parents and two children who have to repay their loans, raise their children and also take care of their elders’ medical treatments and health problems,” wrote blogger Chuanfu Buhuo. “It’s really not worth thinking about.”
Xi Jinping told the All-China Women’s Federation in 2023 that Chinese women should be mobilized “to contribute to China’s modernization.”
“The role of women in the great cause of national renewal is irreplaceable,” he said.
The push to increase births comes as young Chinese increasingly avoid marriage, have children and buy homes amid an economic slowdown and rampant youth unemployment.
The number of Chinese couples getting married for the first time fell by 8.3% in the first quarter of 2024, while first marriages fell by almost 56% over the past nine years, according to the 2023 China Statistical Yearbook.
This is contributing to a sharp decline in the birth rate and an aging and shrinking population – a trend that the United Nations predicts will lead China’s population to shrink from 1.4 billion to 800 million by 2100.
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Passive resistance
News commentator Fang Yuan said the official push to have more children was part of the planned economy and system of social control implemented by Xi.
But he said it wouldn’t bear fruit for at least two decades.
“It takes at least 20 years to raise a generation,” Fang said. “Their hope that the population structure will be optimized immediately and that major long-term problems like low productivity and population aging will be resolved immediately… is wishful thinking and unrealistic.”
He added that such a project was unlikely to succeed in the absence of huge government subsidies, due to the huge cost of educating children in today’s China.
Without substantial financial aid, it will be a case of passive resistance to a policy imposed from the top down, Fang said.
Economist Si Ling said party members and government officials make up about 7 percent of China’s population, which is probably not enough to solve the country’s demographic problem even if all complied.
“Stretched for financial resources, the Chinese government has found that it still has to rely on foreign investment to drive economic growth,” Mr. Si said. “But it no longer has the ability to make concessions in terms of administrative costs and tax rates.”
He said any attempt to pressure authorities into having more children would fail if the cost of subsidizing those children was not fully calculated in advance.
“All it can offer is cheap labor…so the Chinese government needs people to have more children to attract foreign investment, but that is a false proposition because it is almost impossible to achieve in the short term,” he said.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie.