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China’s bureaucrats are thinking of forcing couples to have 3 kids, as population decline accelerates
March 09, 2025
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University of Pennsylvania economist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde is a rare bird in academia. He is street-smart, so his thinking is not wholly derived from scholarship in the abstract. He recently told up-and-comers at Harvard that global population will peak about 2055. That’s a decade or more ahead of most projections. While the UN pegs the world’s total fertility rate (TFR) at 2.25, Fernández-Villaverde says it is 2.18, slightly above replacement-level 2.1. He says that UN population projections are “overly optimistic” and do not fully consider the acceleration of decline:
The world population will peak and then start declining and it’s likely to happen at a rapid rate. You’re going to be the first generation in human history that is going to see the population of the planet fall in a systematic way.
We’re going to start losing a lot of population, and it’s going to be very fast, much faster than anyone can think.
I believe him.
Nowhere is the professor’s prognostication more disquieting than in Beijing. China’s population began falling in 2021; there were 9.7 million abortions that year. The National Health Commission has since placed restrictions on abortion.
Also in 2021 the government allowed couples to have three children. There is even chatter about making it mandatory. Good luck with that.
In 2024 there were 9.54 million births and 10.93 million deaths. In 2023 kindergarten enrolment declined by over 5 million. Meanwhile Beijing bureaucrats, technocrats and all manner of egghead “experts” are feverishly trying to figure out how to turn things around and avert full throttle population collapse. It is an unprecedented challenge; they’re in uncharted territory. The hour is late.
Marriage
The Gray Lady just ran a pithy clickbait headline: “Chinese Company to Single Workers: Get Married or Get Out.” The Shandong Shuntian Chemical Group had sent a terse notice to unmarried employees:
If you cannot get married and start a family within three quarters, the company will terminate your labor contract.
Not responding to the call of the country and not getting married and having children is disloyalty; not listening to the words of parents and making the elderly worry is unfilial; not being able to get along with a partner after several attempts is unkindness; not listening to the advice of comrades and making workers worry is unrighteousness.
Sounds like corporate sector Confucianism: family formation as civic virtue.
After a social media storm, the directive was withdrawn. Despite what most Westerners may think they know about China, popular input is important. What we call “focus groups” are often used to gauge public opinion.
Then Yu Donglai announced that his Pangdonglai supermarket chain would forbid employees planning to get married from paying or receiving “bride prices,” amounts (dowry) customarily paid to the bride’s family. Yu also limited the number of guest tables at employee weddings. Nuptials are not cheap in China; Mr Yu was thinking that if it costs less to get married, more people will do so. His heart is in the right place. Marriage is critically important: Less than 9 percent of Chinese births are out of wedlock. In the US it is over 40 percent.
To Westerners (and quite a few Chinese) such employer meddling in personal affairs is outrageous. But a Chinese government official trying to somehow mandate a three-child policy would contend that because marriage and children are essential for China’s future, family formation is not a private matter but rather a public concern warranting state intervention. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) People’s Daily said Mr Yu’s edicts were “intended to promote a new trend of civilized marriage… Its guiding significance is worth paying attention to.” In other words, the state is OK with it.
So Mr Yu’s initiative stands. Noncompliant employees can continue in their jobs with existing benefits, though they will not be eligible for expanded ones.
Last year the city of Quanzhou directed government employees to “take the lead in implementing the three-child policy.” While there is no three-child policy, the directive is eerily reminiscent of the government’s infamous “one-child” policy that began by urging citizens to “take the lead.” It didn’t work out that way.
Mr Yu’s initiative was undoubtedly a reaction to the shocking news that Chinese marriages fell 20 percent from 2023 (the auspicious Year of the Dragon) to 2024. While the CCP is alarmed, a coherent strategy to reverse this has not emerged.
Party pro-natalism
At the 2023 National Women’s Congress, Chairman Xi Jinping did not focus on feminist issues familiar to the West. He told the gathering: “We should actively foster a new type of marriage and childbearing culture” and that a vital part of the CCP’s mission was to influence the younger generation’s views on “love and marriage, fertility and family.”
Vassar College’s Fubing Su is sceptical and recalls the forced abortions and sterilizations during the draconian “one-child” policy. “If the party could sacrifice women’s body and birth rights for its one-child policy,” said Mr Su, “they could impose their will on women again.”
CCP policy proposals for the National People’s Congress include increased old-age benefits and pensions, raising retirement age (already underway) and improving childcare subsidies, rural childcare and prenatal assistance. This follows piecemeal reforms like expanded maternity leave, tax benefits and financial incentives. Yet:
China's demographic profile is now transitioning from being a dividend to a drag on the economy. This shift carries profound implications for the country's economic trajectory.
Working-age population peaked in 2013 and is projected to fall 22 percent by 2050. The 2024 TFR was 1.0, one of the world’s lowest. Over 20 percent of the population is aged 60 and above. It will be one-third by mid-century.
Practice what you preach
A brilliant idea to boost fertility surfaced in a 2021 editorial on China Reports Network. It went viral but was quickly scrubbed. However, within hours screenshots exceeded 6 million views on China’s social media giant Weibo:
No party member should use any excuse, objective or personal, to not marry or have children, nor can they use any excuse to have only one or two children. Every CCP member should shoulder the responsibility and obligation of the country’s population growth and act on the three-child policy.
The editorial continued that CCP members unable to have children should:
[E]ducate, guide and assist family members and friends to proactively have three children… [Party members] should never do nothing when family and friends are not getting married or giving birth, and should never be indifferent about them only having one or two children with any excuse.
With almost 1 in every 15 Chinese belonging to the 95 million-strong CCP, its reach is formidable. Being a party member is respected; they are the leadership class. Shouldn’t they practice what they preach? If they want Chinese couples to have three children, why not set an example?
Leading through example is a virtuous course and makes for a better world. Should the CCP requiremembers to have three children, that would be drastic. Could such a harsh mandate be branded as natalist nationalism?
Instead I suggest the CCP tap those considerable state/corporate resources at their command and follow the example of South Korea’s Booyoung Group which pays employees the equivalent of US$70,000 for each new child. Employees are having more children. With the very survival of the nation at stake, that is a sensible proposition.
Tianmen, in China’s Hubei province, had a 17 percent increase in newborns from 2023 to 2024. Officials attribute that to new incentives for second children. The city of 1.1 million offers 35,300 yuan (US$5000) in cash plus 60,000 yuan (US$8400) in housing subsidies. A third child will mean up to 165,100 yuan (US$23,000) in cash. These are significant amounts in central China.
Demographer He Yafu: “Tianmen’s case proves that cash incentives are making a difference. If childbearing subsidies have no effect, it is because they are too little and the subsidy needs to be increased.” Mr. He has a point.
Per Professor Fernández-Villaverde, “All federal and state legislation should have an explicitly pro-marriage design.” We are in early-stage population collapse. Widespread public awareness is yet to come. If it is China that finds the solution, fine. Courageous, bold, drastic out-of-the-box action is needed. There is no alternative.
Demography is destiny.
Are you worried about population decline?
Louis T. March has a background in government, business, and philanthropy. A former talk show host, author, and public speaker, he is a dedicated student of history and genealogy. Louis lives with his family in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
Image credit: Happy school kids greet tourists as they prepare to return to school in Dali, China / Bigstock
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Dan Baynes commented 2025-03-12 08:16:50 +1100Paul, an authoritarian country like China might well attempt to do just that re. the religious orders – but given their relatively small numbers, a measure like that would be well down their list of priorities for tackling the broad problem. The obvious first steps are to restrict/outlaw mass abortion and throw lots of money at young people to marry/have children. Insofar as CCP membership is a respected status symbol in the country, their practical leadership also ought to make a general difference.
Re. the oft-noted point about educated women having fewer children – the ‘tendency’ applies to liberal social environments in general, so again, in attempting to pull out all available stops, the Chinese government might well try to show that under their coercive direction the correlation need not hold. It might well find ways to disincentivise women from entering tertiary education before marrying and having at least one child. -
Paul Bunyan commented 2025-03-09 21:55:07 +1100Why not outlaw nuns and monks? Push them to have children?
Or simply restrict education for women and girls? Educated women tend to have fewer children. -
