One Child Policy

China’s National Bureau of Statistics produced its data for 2023 on Wednesday, revealing the population fell for the second year in a row and fertility rates are stuck at record lows.

The county of Changshan in eastern China offers a “reward” of $140 for couples if the bride is 25 years old or younger.

The Chinese city of Xian on Tuesday observed the holiday of Qixi – essentially China’s Valentine’s Day – by peppering residents with text messages urging them to have more children to reverse the population crash initiated by the Communist Party’s brutal One Child Policy.

China’s state-run National Business Daily reported Tuesday the nationwide fertility rate dropped to 1.09, a shockingly low number.

The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the advisory body that meets once a year in concert with the National People’s Congress (NPC) for the policymaking “Two Sessions,” is considering proposals that might turn around China’s accelerating demographic decline. 

The top Chinese health official in charge of population monitoring on Friday called for “bold” action to reverse China’s population decline, specifically including programs to reduce the cost of childbirth so Chinese families will begin having more babies.

The Chinese Communist Party’s National Bureau of Statistics reported on Tuesday that it had documented a decline in its population of about 850,000 people in 2022, the first official drop since 1962 despite many demographers warning that China may have been in population decline since at least 2020.

Hu Xijin, a top Chinese communist propagandist and former editor of the state-run Global Times, slammed the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday for overturning Roe w. Wade. Hu saluted abortion and sneered at the supposed hypocrisy of a “U.S. that advocates human rights vigorously.”

Data released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics on Monday showed births running only slightly ahead of deaths in 2021, providing further evidence that the Chinese population has stalled out at 1.413 billion and might already be declining – a fearsome prospect for an economic system designed on the assumption of stable or steadily-increasing population.

Chinese state media reported Sunday on a new “five-year plan” to massively increase in vitro fertilization (IVF) to stave off demographic collapse. The Chinese government officially admitted over the weekend that birth rates have dropped beneath one percent, hitting a 43-year-low.

The Chinese government has grown concerned about falling birth rates and demographic decline over the past few years, but according to independent demographer He Yafu, China may have actually encountered negative population growth this year.

China’s top legislative body has passed a three-child policy into law to encourage childbearing.

Research published in the BMJ medical journal on Tuesday estimated 4.7 million fewer girls will be born worldwide in the next ten years due to sex selection practices, including abortion.

The South China Morning Post on Thursday quoted Chinese biologists, maternity doctors, and political advisers saying that Chinese infertility rates increased much faster than expected over the past decade, making it harder to pull out of the demographic crisis that was caused in part by China’s draconian “One Child Policy” population controls.

Chinese subjects harshly punished for violating the communist nation’s “One Child Policy” vented their anger and frustration on Tuesday at Beijing’s desperate call for more children to stave off demographic collapse.

China’s Global Times propaganda outlet attempted to calm mounting concerns about the nation’s collapsing birth rate on Wednesday, assuring readers that China’s “capacity for macro-control is the strongest in the world” and will strong-arm families into growing.

The Communist Party of China announced on Monday it would allow couples to have a maximum of three children, an expansion of the recently imposed “two-child” policy and apparent response to its dismal, and worsening, national birth rates.

Chinese officials are setting the stage for an increase in the retirement age, a deeply unpopular step they feel obliged to take because decades of harsh population control measures left Beijing with a drastic shortage of young workers to pay the expenses for a tidal wave of retirees.

China’s state-run Global Times on Tuesday reported the country registered 10 million newborns in 2020, a 15-percent decline from 2019 that brought China’s birth rate well below the “warning level” demographics experts have established.

China’s state-run Global Times reported Tuesday that Shanghai is exploring a “pilot” program in which the government helps women who wish to have children but are not in a position to have them to freeze their eggs for future use.

The state-run propaganda outlet China Daily noted on Friday the growing concern among Chinese Communist Party officials that the national birth rate continued to decline for at least two years despite Beijing allowing couples to have more children.

A scientist studying population development in China revealed on Tuesday that the Communist Party “seriously overestimated” how many babies were born in 2019, a year whose official birthrate was the lowest in the history of the People’s Republic.

According to data compiled by the Chinese government and released by its National Bureau of Statistics on Friday, the birth rate in 2019 fell to a level not seen since 1961. That still worked out to 14.65 million babies, however, so the population now exceeds 1.4 billion and is still growing.

One would think that China’s brutal one-child policy would have discredited population control programs for all time, but socialist Bernie Sanders is still pushing them.

China appears to be experiencing a dip in marriage rates very similar to the one observed in Western societies years ago, and for much the same reason: young urban professional Chinese are putting off marriage because living alone has become more affordable, and they wish to defer marriage until they find the ideal mate.

A local government in China has embarked on an effort to train rural matchmakers to restrict “surging bride prices” fueling “mercenary marriages,”  which involve families marrying off their daughters to the highest bidder to pay for their son’s dowry, the state-run Global Times reported this week.

China’s authoritarian government has been sending mixed signals about population control to the populace. On one hand, the government admits it faces a demographic crisis that can only be solved by increased fertility rates and large families, sending signals to the public that having two or three children is now their patriotic duty. On the other hand, a couple from the eastern province of Shandong is suffering steep fines and persecution for the crime of birthing a third child.

Prominent human rights advocate Reggie Littlejohn issued a scathing indictment of New York’s recently passed abortion legislation, saying on Friday that the law permits practices “more barbaric than that of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Two tourism companies in China announced that they will offer single women employees over age 30 an eight-day “dating leave” for the lunar new year next month, the South China Morning Post reported Monday.

China’s state-run Global Times on Monday downplayed the significance of new data suggesting China has entered a period of significant population decline, essentially arguing that China’s prosperity over the past few decades has little to do with the size of its workforce.

China’s effort to perform a U-turn on its notorious population control policies and stave off demographic collapse continued this week with a new report warning of negative population growth by 2030 unless Chinese couples begin having the children they would have been arrested for conceiving just a few years ago.

China’s state-run Global Times newspaper reported on Tuesday that the government will shut down all its family planning administrative departments to spend more money on caring for the elderly, relegating family planning control to a new “Department of Demographic Surveillance and Family Development.”

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.

China’s shifting position on population control was signaled this week by a new postage stamp showing a happy family of pigs with three piglets – a strong signal to a populace long forced to have only one child per family and then grudgingly permitted to have two. The message was then transmitted even more clearly by a full-page article in a state-run newspaper mourning “the impact of low birth rates on the economy” and urging citizens to do something about it.

Chinese state media noted on Wednesday that at least one province in the country is considering offering financial rewards to couples to incentivize them to have children, following an unsuccessful campaign to increase the country’s birth rate that began with a loosening of the previous one-child policy.

China’s state-run Global Times newspaper reported Friday that, in a stunning walkback of its decades-long policy of forced abortions, at least one province in China has begun restricting women’s access to abortions by demanding the approval of three medical professionals.