{"id":345477,"date":"2025-12-31T23:31:05","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T23:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/345477\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T23:31:05","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T23:31:05","slug":"chinas-plan-to-boost-birth-rates-with-condom-tax-and-cheaper-childcare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/345477\/","title":{"rendered":"China’s plan to boost birth rates with condom tax and cheaper childcare"},"content":{"rendered":"

Official figures show that China’s population has shrunk three years in a row, with just 9.54 million babies born in 2024. That is around half of the number of births recorded a decade ago, when China started to ease its rules on how many children people could have. <\/p>\n

Still, the tax on contraceptives, including condoms, birth control pills and devices, has sparked concern about unwanted pregnancies and HIV rates, as well as ridicule. Some people point out that it would take a lot more than pricey condoms to persuade them to have children.<\/p>\n

As one retailer urged shoppers to stock up ahead of the price hike, a social media user joked: “I’ll buy a lifetime’s worth of condoms now.”<\/p>\n

People can tell the difference between the price of a condom and that of raising a child, wrote another. <\/p>\n

China is one of the most expensive countries<\/a> in which to raise a child, according to a 2024 report by the YuWa Population Research Institute in Beijing. Costs are pushed up by school fees in a highly competitive academic environment, and the challenge women have juggling work and parenting, the study said.<\/p>\n

The economic slowdown, partly brought on by a property crisis that has hit savings<\/a>, has left families, and especially young people, feeling uncertain or less confident about their future. <\/p>\n

“I have one child, and I don’t want any more,” says 36-year-old Daniel Luo, who lives in the eastern province of Henan.<\/p>\n

“It’s like when subway fares increase. When they go up by a yuan or two, people who take the subway don’t change their habits. You still have to take the subway, right?”<\/p>\n

He says he is not concerned by the price hike. “A box of condoms might cost an extra five yuan, maybe 10, at most 20. Over a year, that’s just a few hundred yuan, completely affordable.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Official figures show that China’s population has shrunk three years in a row, with just 9.54 million babies…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-345477","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}