China to Raise Subsidies for Small Families to Introduce ‘Policy that Encourages Childbirth’

The government of China will soon increase compensation to small and childless families who endured the era of the one-child and two-child policies in anticipation for an end to these measures, the state-run Global Times newspaper reported on Tuesday.

For decades, the Communist Party strictly enforced a rule allowing only one child per family, forcing millions into painful, unwanted abortions and rendering any child born “illegally” a non-person before the law (known as “black children” in China). The policy has triggered a pronounced population decline and disinterest in young people regarding childbirth that are now threatening the nation’s economic future. Communist Party leader Xi Jinping began to reverse the policy by expanding the legal number of children per family from one to two, but the national birth rate declined following the new policy, indicating that many Chinese families were not interested in taking advantage of being able to legally raise a second child.

The United Nations now predicts that the population of India will overtake China’s by 2024.

To help promote more births, the Global Times reported this week, the Chinese government will begin compensating small families at larger rates.

“The government will gradually raise subsidies to families with few or no children in a move to compensate families affected by the previous birth control policy,” according to the newspaper. A population researcher identified as Yi Fuxian told the Global Times that the government is expected to end all family planning policies this year, allowing families to have as many children as they want. Yi predicted “a possible full termination of birth control policy in order to comfort those families affected by the old policy and to pave the way for a new policy that encourages childbirth.”

Subsidies to compensate families for enduring the communist one-child policy began in 2016, the newspaper notes, when “each rural resident over 60 years old without children, or with one child or two female children,” began receiving $88 a year. In many traditional Chinese communities, families prefer to have a son to inherit leadership of the family. Combined with the one-child policy, this preference has led to a significant gender imbalance in Chinese society, with too many men in younger generations for the number of women. The preference also means that a much larger number of girls have been killed through forced abortions than boys.

The state newspaper update is the latest in a series of reports that indicate Xi Jinping’s regime is growing increasingly concerned that its current youth population is not large enough to sustain the economy when the generation before it, already the largest elderly population in the world, retires. Local Communist Party officials throughout China have begun experimenting with different policies to encourage more couples to have children. In July, the Global Times reported that different provinces in China began offering expanded maternity leave and preventing workplaces from not paying women for hours during which they must attend prenatal visits. Some regions have offered free child delivery services to women in their second pregnancy and bonuses for having a second child.

In Jiangxi, rather than offering more help to new parents, officials have begun curbing the availability of abortions.

“The province’s Health and Family Planning Commission issued a notice recently saying that women who are pregnant for more than 14 weeks must have the signed approval of three medical professionals confirming that an abortion is medically necessary before any procedure,” the Global Times reported. The policy is intended to prevent the abortion of unwanted daughters, with the aim of correcting the artificially produced gender imbalance in the country.

In its July report, experts told the Global Times that offering new incentives to have a child would be less effective than simply ending punishments in place for families that violate the two-child policy. For months, Chinese government reports have hinted to the potential end of the two-child policy, as the Times did on Tuesday. Reports do not indicate that the Chinese government is ready to step back from any role in population control whatsoever, but instead that Chinese officials have stopped referring to “family planning” as a policy in an attempt to make it appear more friendly to large families.

While some Chinese officials appeared to worry that medical facilities would be overwhelmed by a baby boom following the repeal of the one-child policy in 2016, that concern rapidly yielded to alarm that Chinese couples simply did not want to have more children. In January, state media noted that the national birth rate declined in 2017 despite the expanded legal opportunity to have a second child. Chinese experts suggested, however, that the problem was not couples with one child not seeking to have another, but rather childless couples not expressing any interested in having children at all, and the small number of couples in general. Due to systematic removal of women from the general population through abortion, the number of women capable of having children has declined dramatically in the past generation and continues to do so.

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