From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Enforcers of China’s One-Child Policy Are Now Cajoling People to Have Three   
   By Liyan Qi, June 5, 2023, WSJ   
      
   Using coercion and fines, China was adept at preventing couples from having   
   children during the decades of its one-child policy. It has been less   
   successful in fostering a “birth-friendly society.”   
      
   Births in China continue to fall despite the govt’s efforts to shift away   
   from birth restrictions to encouraging all couples to have 3 kids. With a drop   
   in its population last year, China is ceding its long-held title as the   
   world’s most populous    
   country to India.   
      
   Chinese births have gone from around 18 million a year in 2016, when the   
   one-child policy was scrapped, to below 10 million now, a drop of 46%. Even   
   during starvation years in the early 1960s, when China’s population was less   
   than half what it is now,    
   births never fell below 10 million.   
      
   The U.S. has also faced a drop in births in recent years, although not as   
   dramatically as China. About 3.7 million babies were born in the U.S. in 2022,   
   largely unchanged from 2021 and down 15% from the peak in 2017, federal data   
   released Thursday showed.   
      
   In China, the new demographic reality has prompted a campaign to change the   
   mind-set of a generation less eager to start a family, and rebuild a   
   “pro-birth” culture.   
      
   At the center of the effort is the government-backed Family Planning Assn,   
   which was originally set up in 1980 as a network of enforcers of the one-child   
   policy and which has since been reprogrammed to focus on boosting births.   
      
   Wang Pei’an, the Communist Party chief at the association and for years a   
   staunch defender of China’s birth restrictions, is leading the campaign for   
   more babies. At a population forum earlier this year, he attributed China’s   
   low birth numbers to    
   changing family values.   
      
   “Without nurturing the ideas of marriage and childbearing, it will be   
   extremely difficult to improve the level of fertility,” Wang said.   
      
   In a park in Miyun, on the far outskirts of Beijing, the local govt has   
   installed sculptures of two parents playing with three children. The Miyun   
   branch of the Family Planning Assn has set up a squad of 500 people to   
   “promote the new-style marriage    
   and birth culture.”   
      
   Officials have given out gifts such as rice cookers and water bottles to women   
   attending events centered on showing that getting married and having children   
   is a good thing.   
      
   In March, local officials organized a hike for more than 50 younger female   
   workers at a local gardening company to strengthen the women’s physical   
   fitness and make them more attuned to the values of marriage and starting a   
   family.    
      
   Similar to how in the past local officials were evaluated on how well they   
   enforced the one-child policy, officials in Miyun will be judged partly on   
   whether they can shift the trend in marriage and births, the local family   
   planning assn said in a    
   statement in early May.   
      
   Miyun was selected as one of 20 testing grounds for the new birth-culture   
   campaign, launched last year. In another city, Baoding in Hebei province,   
   local officials in April organized a matchmaking event for young people who   
   dressed up in traditional Han    
   dynasty costumes.    
      
   In the southeastern city of Ningbo, to encourage men to play a bigger role in   
   raising children, officials lauded “penguin dads”—a reference to how   
   penguin parents take turns keeping eggs warm and taking care of the chicks.   
      
   Last month, authorities said that on top of the 20 cities, where the   
   government says the campaign has increased “family happiness,” another 20   
   cities had been added to the testing grounds.   
      
   Turning things around is an uphill battle.    
      
   At a Beijing mall on Thursday, Yang Ri, a 35-year-old state-sector employee,   
   said she spends up to $28,000 a year on food, toys and after-school classes   
   for her daughter, a first-grader, and can’t afford another child. “All of   
   a sudden, we’re    
   expected to have three children without any help. That’s unreasonable,”   
   she said.   
      
   Li Juan, who works in finance, said she feels bad that her son is growing up   
   as an only child, but with no child-care help, she would have to quit her job   
   if she were to have another child. “It isn’t simply a matter of a lack of   
   subsidies,” said Li,   
    40.   
      
   Thursday was Kid’s Day in China, and schools were closed. Both Yang and Li   
   had to take time off from work for lack of other child care.   
      
   Many young Chinese have soured on marrying and starting a family. Marriage   
   registration has dropped for years and declined further during China’s   
   Covid-19 lockdown. Local data indicated that the numbers dropped even over the   
   May 20 weekend, a    
   traditional peak of marriage registrations because the date sounds like “I   
   love you” in Chinese, offering a peek into the current marriage situation.   
      
   The Ministry of Civil Affairs, which normally releases a set of data that   
   includes the number of marriages, divorces and cremations in any given   
   quarter, hasn’t released any reports since last year’s third quarter. Some   
   sociologists and demographers    
   say the govt has been reluctant to publicize cremation data that may point to   
   a surge in excess deaths after Beijing abruptly abandoned nearly all Covid-19   
   restrictions late last year.   
      
   Neither the Ministry of Civil Affairs nor the Family Planning Assn responded   
   to requests for comment.    
      
   Based on the latest data the ministry published, marriage registrations   
   dropped 7.5% over the first three quarters of last year compared with a year   
   earlier.   
      
   While there have been efforts to lower the cost of rearing a child, there has   
   been no nationwide rollout of financial incentives for parents. It is left to   
   cash-strapped local govts to provide the monetary rewards and child-care   
   assistance that    
   demographers say would help change young people’s minds.    
      
   Huang Wenzheng, a researcher with the Center for China and Globalization, a   
   think tank in Beijing, said that without cash incentives, China won’t be   
   able to lift its fertility rate.   
      
   Earlier this year, the city of Shenzhen announced a plan to give local   
   residents up to about $1,420 as a lump-sum birth bonus and up to about $426 a   
   year in child-rearing costs until the child is 3 years old.   
      
      
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