Once the world’s most populous nation, China now grapples with a shrinking future. Alarmed by a birth rate collapse, authorities are launching campaigns to convince women to have larger families – a far cry from the coercive one-child era that defined the late 20th century.
January statistics reveal the scale of the problem: 2025 saw 7.92 million births, a sharp 1.62 million drop from 2024’s 9.54 million. The fertility rate sank to 5.63 per 1,000, the lowest in over 75 years. This follows policy U-turns – from one-child in 1979, to two in 2016, and three by 2021 – none of which stemmed the decline.
The legacy of past controls lingers. Women endured forced sterilizations, abortions, and fines, often prioritizing sons and distorting sex ratios. Now, economic realities deter parenthood: high housing prices, education costs, and gender biases at work make kids a luxury many can’t afford.
Government efforts include subsidies, tax breaks, and media appeals framing more births as a patriotic duty. But skeptics point to a fundamental disconnect. ‘Beijing treats reproduction as state planning, not family choice,’ one report notes. As the pool of potential mothers shrinks from prior imbalances and delayed marriages, experts warn of labor shortages, strained pensions, and a graying society. Will incentives work, or has the damage from decades of top-down control run too deep?