The director of China’s National Health Commission (NHC) announced during a press conference Monday that the Communist Party will be investing heavily in programs intended to raise the birth rate, particularly in expanding access to pediatric care and child care for working families.
The ambitious program is part of the Communist Party’s “15th Five-Year Plan” to improve the strength of the state generally, which emphasized the need to encourage Chinese citizens to marry and start large families. China has documented a dramatic decline in its birth rate over the past decade, defying the government’s decision to do away with the Mao Zedong-era “one-child policy” in 2015 and ultimately allowing families up to three children before forced government abortions and sterilization.
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Despite the legal approval to reproduce, many Chinese citizens have foregone marrying and building families. China’s birth rate hit record lows in 2025, according to official government statistics, and China lost its status as the world’s most populous nation to India in 2023. Complicating factors is the reality of a much more substantial male than female population – estimates suggest China is home to about 33 more men than women – as a result of parents killing girl babies during the “one-child policy” era to try again for a more prestigious son.
Chinese statistics authorities announced in January that the population of China at the end of 2025 was 1.404 billion, down 3 million from the prior year. The birth rate declined 17 percent in a year, resulting in under 8 million births in 2025. Some experts attributed the decline to 2025 mostly overlapping with the Year of the Snake, which many Chinese parents consider inauspicious for giving birth.
Despite the years of discouraging statistics, NHC chief Lei Haichao attempted to present a more optimistic take on the nation’s demographic future during his remarks on Monday, offered to reporters during an event hosted by the country’s State Council Information Office, a formal government propaganda wing. Lei insisted that China was not alone in seeing its birth rate decline, especially among countries with rapid industrialization and growing economies.
“Compared with other developed and developing countries, the number of nations with this level of births is still very small, so China will still have a relatively ample labor force in the future,” Lei suggested.
Given the high population in absolute terms and the current population of college students in the country, Lei recommended economic optimism – a factor often believed to increase fertility rates, as would-be parents bet on a prosperous future for their children.
“With a population currently standing at 1.405 billion, China is expected to maintain its status among the world’s most populous nations for a long time to come, Lei told reporters,” according to China’s state-run Global Times. “With more than 10 million students enrolling in colleges and universities each year, the nation maintains a robust supply of high-caliber talent to drive economic growth.”
Lei’s tone is a notable contrast from the alarm that Chinese officials had shared publicly in recent years. In 2022, the Global Times shared comments from a demographer, Huang Wenzheng, who insisted that low fertility would “be the dominant trend” in China “for a long time” and that population reduction was inevitable.
Lei announced an impending rollout of new measures to help boost fertility and aid parents in raising their children, most of them associated with offering child care services.
“In detail, Lei mentioned that the initiative supports communities and employers in setting up child care service institutions, enabling residents to access nearby, convenient, and reasonably affordable child care services,” the Global Times shared. “Raising the enrollment rate for child care will effectively lower family costs related to childbirth, child-rearing, and education, the official said.”
Lei also announced a dramatic expansion of pediatric health care nationwide, particularly in health centers already operating.
“By the end of the year, over 95 percent of township health centers and community health service centers are expected to provide pediatric services,” the Global Times shared, paraphrasing Lei. “Additionally, 3,100 pediatricians have already been dispatched to primary-level healthcare institutions, the health official said at the press conference.”
Both childcare for working parents and medical services for children have become more difficult to secure in China as, due to the lack of children, demand for them has dwindled. This has also affected education. In 2024, for example, the Global Times reported that owners of kindergarten and other early childhood classrooms for children, whose businesses are technically “private” but fully controlled by the state under communism, began to switch industries and remodel their facilities into nursing homes. At the time, the state newspaper reported “nearly 5.35 million fewer kindergartners in 2023 than in the previous year.”
Increased government spending to help parents with child care is among the least intrusive ideas the Communist Party has brainstormed to improve the nation’s birth rate. In 2024, the Party apparently rolled out a program in which comrades would call and harass random women about their menstrual cycles – revealed after women took to Chinese-controlled social media to complain. The “fertility call checks” reportedly consisted in Party members randomly calling women, asking if they were pregnant, then demanding details about their periods and ovulation cycles to pressure them into having a child.
“Some people believe that marriage and childbirth are only private matters, and up to each individual. This view is wrong and one-sided,” an anonymous Party member told the leftist New York Times at the time.
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