The Journal. - China Wants More Babies. Many Women Are Saying No.

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

The Chinese government is concerned about the country's birth rate. The population in China is now approximately 1.4 billion and could drop to roughly half a billion by 2100. Beijing is demanding that women have more children, but many Chinese women are saying no. WSJ's Liyan Qi reports. Further Reading: - China Is Pressing Women to Have More Babies. Many Are Saying No.  - China’s Economic Slump Bodes Ill for Birth Numbers  Further Listening: - The Unintended Consequences of China’s One-Child Policy  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2014, a Chinese woman named Zhang was pregnant with her second child. She's asked us not to use her first name. Her pregnancy was a problem because China was still under its one-child policy. Zhang tried to keep her pregnancy under wraps. She was worried she'd be pressured to have an abortion. Because over the decades that the one-child policy had been in place, there were reports of forced abortions. After Zhang gave birth, she tried to hide her baby. But authorities found out, and they fined her and her husband roughly $10,000.

And the repercussions didn't end there. Zhang was forced to have an IUD implanted to prevent future pregnancies. And authorities required her to get a checkup every three months. But just months later, in 2015, the Chinese government did a full 180. And China could be set this morning for a demographic boom. The world's most populous country is dumping its long-standing one-child policy. At first, families were allowed to have two children, then three, and fines like the one given to Zhang have disappeared. Instead, the Chinese government

is paying families to have children. Now, women like Zhang are being urged to get pregnant. She even gets text messages from local authorities, encouraging her to consider having a third child. After everything she went through, Zhang deletes the messages in anger. She's frustrated by the sudden change, and she told the Wall Street Journal, quote, I wish they would stop tossing us around and leave us ordinary people alone. And across China, a younger generation of women is resisting the government's new pressure to have babies. For Beijing, that is fast becoming a big problem. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Friday, January 5th. Coming up on the show, China wants more babies. Why many women are saying no.

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And now that the government is encouraging women to have more children, you know, to shift their focus back from careers and other things to families. More and more women are realizing this seems to be a raw deal, and they want to have more control of their own lives. You know, they don't want either their families or the government to have a bigger say in their lives. or the government to have a bigger say in their lives. When China announced in late 2015 that it would end the one-child policy, Beijing expected a baby boom. New maternity wards and preschools were built. Baby-focused businesses popped up.

And Lian says people welcomed the change. You know, I was in social media groups of these parents who have for years called for loosening of the one-child policy. Some of them became so-called activists. They were cheering. They were sending out, you know, digital red envelopes. Sorry, digital red envelopes? Yes. You know how in Chinese New Year, we wrap up cash in red envelopes to share the festivity?

This is what they did. They were literally sharing digital red envelopes to celebrate. It was a big celebration. So people were celebrating. But did they begin to have more kids? In the immediate aftermath, yes. to have more kids? In the immediate aftermath, yes. So in the year following the abandonment of the one-child policy, there's a small bump. But that small baby bump was just that,

small, around 2 million. Since 2017, the birth rate in China has been in free fall. So now, the government is encouraging people to get married and have more kids. And what did the government do? What did the efforts to encourage people to have kids look like? One, if we sum it up, is, you know, the good old cash incentives other countries have done. Like, they are offering thousands of yuan for couples who have more than just one child. And then at the same time,

they're giving out longer maternity and paternity leaves for parents. And then it's the government propaganda. They're trying to build so-called baby-friendly or birth-friendly culture. And if you walk around in China, you will see government propaganda showing couples, you know, statues of couples with three children instead of one child. The cover page of textbooks, there will be parents or mothers with three children instead of one child.

parents or mothers with three children instead of one child. And if you go to a medical facility, it's increasingly difficult to get some birth control procedures, at least not as easy as before in big cities. So it's on different levels. Lian says Beijing wants to rein in the number of abortions. On social media, people also complain that getting a vasectomy appointment is as difficult as winning the lottery. And the government has also tried some less conventional approaches. In one region of China, women were given rice cookers and water bottles

if they attended events focused on showing that having kids is a good thing. And there's text messages, like the ones Zhang received. In China, local governments will try to reach the public, send their messages through various channels. One of them is text messages. But among a slew of the messages is one during the Chinese Valentine's Day last year, you know, gently reminding people that it's better for you to get married at a younger age and have children, which is good for our country. It's not quite a weather alert, that. No, it's a little bit different. Yeah, it's a little different. But the government is fighting an uphill battle.

Today, China's population is around 1.4 billion. Some projections see it dropping to roughly 590 million by the year 2100. And Lian says signs of a plummeting birth rate are appearing across China. That's why we're seeing this wave of preschool closures. My co-workers in China checked out some in Shanghai and a few in Anhui province. It's definitely bleak. You know, the pictures they took show empty playgrounds, chairs, tables, abandoned big locks on the gates, stuff like that. And the flip side of this is a rapidly aging society, especially in certain parts of the country. You know, local governments have already seen shortfalls of government pensions, which retirees heavily rely on. So basically local governments are struggling to provide for its residents.

How big a moment is this for China? Well, I think it's important for China because China right now is at a shifting point. It's at a junction in terms of demographics and economy. If China wants to continue its economic growth, it has to make sure there's enough babies, you know, young workforce to support the economy. The workforce, which has been the pillar of the Chinese economy, has been shrinking for years. And that has rippling effects throughout the economy. Right.

So that's definitely worrisome for the government. So that's definitely worrisome for the government. And so far, the government is coming up against a major roadblock, changing attitudes towards motherhood. The government's efforts to try and encourage people to have more children happens at the same time when women is having more awareness about their rights. They are realizing it is time for them to think about what they want and what they need at this moment of their lives. Either people in their early 20s who are saying, I want a job, you know. And those who are in their early 40s saying, I'm happy with one. I'm refocusing on my career. Things like that.

Coming up, we'll hear from one woman about why she's hesitant to have children. under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your team to your Uber account today. Need a great reason to get up in the morning? Well, what about two? Right now, get a small, organic, fair trade coffee and a tasty bacon and egg or breakfast sandwich for only $5 at A&W's in Ontario. Women in China have a lot of reasons for not wanting more than one kid, or not wanting kids at all.

They say kids are expensive, the economy is weak with high unemployment, and they're still often expected to be the primary caregiver, not just of children, but of husbands and aging parents as well. Some of that is true for Simona Dai. She's 31 and kind of a nomad these days. She lived in the U.S. for a long time, and when I talked to her, she was in Thailand. But Simona grew up in China. I still remember the moment I read the news about China becoming two-children policy.

I was sitting on the plane, and the plane just landed, and I opened my phone, and then I saw the news notification. So I sent it to a friend immediately, like, have you read this? Like, we're now two-children policy. When Simona was born, China was still under the one-child policy. But her family, like many others, broke the law. She was her parents' second child. She was also the second girl. And this was a problem in her family because they wanted a boy. I think my parents, they didn't do much parenting because all the other people did the parenting for them. With my case, I lived

with other people one month after I was born because they had to hide me so that they can continue to try to have a boy. Traditional Chinese culture preferred boys to girls. So under the one-child policy, China saw a rise in gender-based abortions. Even now, I think people will say things like, oh, if you don't have a boy, then you must have done something wrong. You must have done something wrong in your previous life. You must have done something in your current life. How did all of this affect you?

So before I left China, I kind of feel like I couldn't talk to anyone about these because the one-child policy is there. And every time I tell people that I actually have a older sister and a younger brother, people will be like, oh, that's like interesting or it just kind of, they will react a bit negatively. So I chose to not to tell people about that. So I think it was only after I came to US, I started to kind of, I think when I was like looking at other American families, they all have three or four, five kids and then they are fine. So I was like, I guess it's OK to have three kids.

It's like not a crime or nothing to be ashamed of to have three kids in your family. At 26, Simona married a man in the U.S. who happened to be from her hometown in China. Marriage, Simona says, meant a lot of pressure to have a baby. Did you think you would have kids? Yeah, I think in the beginning, I didn't really think it's a big deal. I think actually it was because both families, his family and my family, they were really pressuring me. Between me and my mom, like a relationship has never been super close,

but it just got worse ever since I got married because every single message she sent me was about, you should have a kid now. So as a very rebellious person, I was like, no, I'm not going to have a kid just because you want me to. It must be coming from me. If I ever wanted one, then I will have a kid. Simona says she also began to lose faith that her husband could be an equal parent, which made her even less inclined to want to have kids. I felt like I need to have a partner who will be really devoted and who will be co-parenting really, really, like 100% joining the effort of co-parenting, then I can have a kid probably, maybe.

But then with my previous partner, I felt like that never happened. I didn't feel very confident if I ever have a kid that we will be like doing it all together type of feeling. So that didn't happen. So I didn't have a kid. Eventually, Simona says she chose to end her marriage. So did that pressure to have kids play a role in your decision to get a divorce? Yeah, I think it was kind of to a point where I feel like I was yelling at my mom, like just stop pressuring me because

I was trying to tell her nicely that, you know, I need to make sure it's me. It's me making the decision, not you. And I also felt like, because my ex-husband, he was a bit older, he was already at a point that men in my hometown, they will have kids by his age. So I felt like, yeah, I don't want to waste your time anymore. So let's just, you know, end it here. And then you can have another try with another woman. Now, Simona hosts her own podcast called Oh Mama. She said it was inspired by conversations she had with her mother about having children. The show looks at birth and marriage,

mostly from the perspective of Chinese women. You've interviewed other women, women of your generation, our generation, about their feelings on marriage and children. What have you heard from them? Were any of them similar to you? Did others have very different opinions? Most of the women I interviewed, they're mostly online. So if you're on

Chinese social media, you'll read a ton about women, feminism, and all those stuff. A lot of them have kids, but most of them wanted to be on my show because they felt like you can have kids, but it has to be an informed decision. What did you think when the Chinese government started encouraging people to have more than one child? I think, first of all, it's not the government's role to decide how many children that a woman can have. So whether it's one, two, three, I think it's just ridiculous. Women can decide on their own. And then also I kind of feel like a bit maybe resentful, like personally, I'll feel a bit resentful towards these changes because it was the government who decided that a lot of women, a lot of girls cannot be born. But now years later, they decided that, yes,

we need more children now. Simona is part of a generation of Chinese women who've become more vocal online about their experiences around relationships and family. But this comes with a risk. The Chinese government sees feminism as a nefarious ideology backed by foreign forces. Now, Simona worries that women in China could be under threat like generations before them.

Except this time, it's for choosing not to have children. Given how brutal and all the ways they use to force people to have less children, I think things will get more brutal if we don't have more children. I think there definitely will be ways for them to pressure people, pressure women to have more children. Thank you so much, Simona, for your time. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Any other thoughts? I think it's a just very long journey for Chinese women to kind of think and talk and discuss more about all these feminism and then birthrights and all those things because it really only started for regular people to start talking about these maybe five years ago so sometimes I think people get frustrated or upset about what's happening but

I think things are just kind of progressing slowly so I think I'm a bit optimistic about slowly. So I think I'm a bit optimistic about the situation. I think eventually it will get better, but it just will take a long, long time. That's all for today, Friday, January 5th. Additional reporting in this episode by Shen Liu. Don't forget that on Sunday, the third episode in our series, Artificial, the Open AI Story, comes out. You can find it in the Journal feed. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal.

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Heather Rogers, Jonathan Sanders, Pierce Singhi, Jeevika Verma, Lisa Wang, Catherine Whalen, Tatiana Zamise, and me, Jessica Mendoza. Our engineers are Our theme music is by Additional music this week from Fact-checking by Mary Mathis. Thanks for listening. See you on Monday.