📝 China’s zero-Covid policy is not helping its drive to raise birth rates
A woman and a child look out through gaps in the barriers at a closed residential area during a Covid-19 lockdown, in Shanghai, on May 10. Photo: Reuters
Many women are putting off pregnancy due to concerns over lockdowns and being turned away at hospitals, even as the economy and household finances suffer
Instead of spending huge sums on mass testing, Beijing should make housing, schooling and childcare more affordable and stop treating women as reproduction tools
By Shen Yang
China’s population is heading for a major decline and could halve by 2065 if the falling birth rate is not arrested – which could mean a plunge to just 700 million people. Surveys confirm that across both urban and rural areas, only a minority of women have a second child and very few have a third.
The reasons are well known. Simply put, it is becoming more expensive to raise children due to the rising costs of property, education and childcare, especially in increasingly crowded cities. In recent years, the zero-Covid policy has also become an important factor.
Many women are delaying pregnancy due to concerns over sudden lockdowns and fears of being refused care at maternity hospitals over Covid-19 test results. The zero-Covid policy has also affected the economy and household finances.
Local governments are diverting much of their finances towards maintaining the immensely costly regime of mass testing. They are thus less able to fund other basic services and even infrastructure projects, resulting in company difficulties and lay-offs in the sector.
Manufacturing is doing no better, as lockdowns and travel restrictions affect the availability of components and ability to ship timely, forcing many factories to cut salaries or downsize, the effects rippling through communities.
China’s fertility rate has been declining since the adoption of the one-child policy in 1980. In 1987, births reached 25.5 million and seemed to finally be decreasing but, in reality, many families had more than one child, often in an attempt to have a male offspring. These heihazi, or so-called excess children, were hidden from the authorities.
Then came the 1990 census and the government offer to legalise excess children, to get a more accurate result. Officials were shocked to discover that births still hovered around 24 million.
As a result, the one-child policy was enforced even more severely throughout the country, with more threatening slogans, heavier fines, confiscation of property, daily raids and forced abortions. It was effective. But the definitive decrease in population growth also perpetuated social changes that led to the dismal fertility rate today.
For instance, restricting families to one child, paired with the traditional preference for males, led to a massive number of abortions of baby girls and their abandonment, many of whom were illegally adopted abroad. This in turn created a big gender bias that persists to this day. According to the latest census, men still outnumber women by 34.9 million.
Simultaneously, as families focused all their resources and care on a single child, male or female, they gave rise to generations of highly educated, financially capable offspring. This meant a larger number of women pursued a career over marriage, a choice compounded by the smaller pool of suitable male partners.
The one-child policy also resulted in nearly 12 million “invisible”, illegal children (possibly more), again mostly girls, who were born in secret and sent away to live with other relatives to avoid being discovered, losing the chance to grow up with their biological families. I was one of them.
My parents had their first child in 1982, a baby girl. They tried again for a son but I showed up instead and, soon after, so did a third and fourth girl. Initially, we three “illegal” excess children were sent to live with different relatives for a few years but my two younger sisters were quickly reunited with our parents (they were, however, discovered by the authorities and my parents’ furniture was confiscated).
I had been sent to live with my aunt and uncle 500km away from home, under a different name and hukou, or household registration. To this day, my name doesn’t appear on the registry of my biological family.
Now, decades later, my elder sister, who has settled in Beijing with her husband, has a nine-year-old son and no intention of having a second child. My younger sister, who lives in Shandong’s Jining city with her seven-year-old son and her husband’s family, is also reluctant to have another child, even with her in-laws to help with childcare. The same goes for my youngest sister, who bought a flat in Zhejiang’s Ningbo city, and is perfectly happy with her partner and four-year-old daughter.
None of my sisters, regardless of what tier of city they live in, are willing to have a second child, never mind a third, citing the prohibitively high costs and lack of time and energy.
Besides, as “illegal” excess children, we all have horrible memories of family planning, and we cannot help but vent our anger and frustration at the latest attempts at population control. I asked my sisters about the three-child policy. Here’s what they said:
“I’m sick of being told how many children we should have; it’s time for us women to be the master of our wombs,” said my youngest sister
“Our parents got heavily fined for having us, now they want us, the so-called illegals, to have more babies to support the country? How ridiculous!” said my middle sister.
“Third child? No thanks, our parents contributed enough,” said my oldest sister.
As for me, I don’t have any baby plans for now; I want to focus on my next writing project. But I believe millions of women like my sisters might change their minds if China ended its zero-Covid policy and started allocating proper funds to affordable housing, schooling and childcare, both in cities and the countryside.
Most importantly, China must start to treat its women with respect and protect their rights, instead of seeing them as a programmable tool for reproduction.