China removed a three-decade-old tax exemption on contraceptive drugs and devices from January 1 in new steps to spur a flagging birth rate.
Condoms and contraceptive pills now incur value-added tax of 13%, the standard rate for most consumer goods.
China exempted childcare subsidies from personal income tax and rolled out an annual childcare subsidy last year, following a series of “fertility-friendly” measures in 2024, such as urging colleges and universities to provide “love education” to portray marriage, love, fertility and family in a positive light.
Top leaders again pledged last month at the annual Central Economic Work Conference to promote “positive marriage and childbearing attitudes” to stabilise birth rates.
China’s birth rates have been falling for decades as a result of the one-child policy China implemented from 1980 to 2015, and rapid urbanisation.
The high cost of childcare and education as well as job uncertainty and a slowing economy have also discouraged many young Chinese from getting married and starting a family.
I recently heard the opinion of Dan Wang that the USA and is a country governed by lawyers, and China is a country governed by engineers.
This tracks.
It’s almost comical (if we weren’t the ones living in it) that our governments seem dumbfounded that people don’t want to have kids when every part of raising children is extremely expensive.
Engineers wouldn’t just jump to “then make option B more expensive than option A”. It takes some rich fuck oligarchy bullshit to say “why make option A affordable when we can make option B more expensive?”
It"s not an engineer-coded action tho. It’s more of a authoritarian-signal coded one.